Chiang Mai Professionals, Expats, and Digital Nomads

Retro Recess presents: Loose-Leaf Playground, where writers get to practice.

A relaxed, welcoming space where words get to play, and writers get to practice.

Join us to write alongside other writers in a calm, creative atmosphere. Each gathering offers light prompts, generous quiet writing time, and optional sharing. Work on your blogs, stories, books, poems, journal pages, half-finished drafts, or brand-new ideas. No pressure. No perfection. Just show up and write.
As the club grows, Loose-Leaf Playground will also offer special writing workshops, themed sessions, and guest-led experiences for those who want to explore craft more deeply.
📅 Date: Every Wednesday
🕖 Time: 5PM - 7 PM
📍 Location: Rare Finds Bookstore & Cafe
💰 Price: 100 baht
Open to writers of all levels. Come as you are. Bring your words. Let them play.

Most people are using AI completely wrong.
They’re prompting tools.
Testing ideas.
Playing with outputs.
Meanwhile… a small group of founders are quietly building systems that actually run parts of their business.
This session shows you how.

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### 🔍 What You’ll Learn

• How AI is actually being used in startups right now
• Automation systems for leads, operations, and growth
• GPT, local models, and private infrastructure
• Real use cases (not YouTube fluff)
• Tools, workflows, and experiments from founders

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### 👥 Who Should Join

• Founders and startup builders
• Developers and engineers
• Digital entrepreneurs / nomads in or coming to Chiang Mai
• Anyone curious about AI + business (beginner to advanced)

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### ⚙️ Format

• Live demo (systems in action)
• Open discussion + Q&A
• Optional: member demos / tools

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This isn’t a webinar.
It’s a working session with people building real things.

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📍 Chiang Mai (Online / Google Meet)
🔁 Bi-weekly
🧠 Bring questions, ideas, or something you’re building

Louis Theroux’s recent Netflix documentary, Inside the Manosphere, pulled back the curtain on a deeply disturbing internet subculture. But the true tragedy of the film isn't just the shocking rhetoric of influencers like Myron Gaines or HSTikkyTokky—it's the millions of young men watching them.
Men today are suffering in silence. In an era of profound alienation, the traditional pathways to community, purpose, and male friendship have largely disappeared. Young men are desperately seeking a tribe, a sense of belonging, and a roadmap for navigating a complex world. The "manosphere" recognizes this pain not as a crisis to be solved, but as a multi-million dollar market to be exploited.
This dialogue will dismantle the predatory grift of the modern manosphere. We will explore how these influencers use rage-bait, "matrix" conspiracies, and performative hyper-masculinity as low-hanging fruit to trap men who are simply starving for brotherhood. Rather than blaming the men who fall victim to these algorithms, we will examine the societal vacuum that makes this exploitation possible, and discuss how to build the genuine, resilient communities that men actually need.
Topics Covered:

• The Business of Male Pain: Analyzing the Theroux documentary to understand how influencers commodify male loneliness, turning the search for belonging into get-rich-quick schemes and paid Telegram groups.
• The Tragedy of the Silent Sufferer: Why men are so vulnerable to these grifts, and how society's failure to provide safe spaces for male vulnerability leaves them isolated.
• The Illusion of the Tribe: Deconstructing the performative, transactional nature of internet "brotherhoods" compared to the reality of authentic friendship.
• Building Real Brotherhood: Practical steps for creating non-transactional, deeply rooted connections with other men that foster true antifragility and intellectual honesty.

Socratic Question Outline:
Part 1: The Trap (Analyzing the Documentary)

• In Theroux's documentary, we see influencers constantly pivoting to sell courses and subscriptions. How does the manosphere disguise a predatory financial grift as a "brotherhood"?
• Why is it so much easier for a young man to buy into a shared online grievance than to find a real-life space to express his struggles?

Part 2: The Victims (The Epidemic of Silence)

• Society often mocks or fears the young men who consume this content. How does this lack of empathy push them further into the arms of online grifters?
• If a digital "tribe" requires you to constantly project dominance and hide your insecurities from your peers, are you actually accepted, or are you just performing a role to avoid being ostracized?

Part 3: The Antidote (True Connection)

• The influencers in the documentary display an incredibly fragile, defensive form of confidence. What does genuinely antifragile male confidence look like in the real world?
• What are the practical steps to building a real, intellectually honest brotherhood that doesn't require tearing others down or buying into a subscription model?

Recommended References for Context:

• Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere (Netflix, 2026): For a direct look at the influencers profiting off this subculture and the young men consuming it.
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: To understand the difference between the fragile, performative egos sold online and true, resilient confidence.
• Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves: A compassionate, data-driven look at the structural challenges and silent suffering facing men and boys today.
• Suicide by Émile Durkheim: To understand the sociological concept of anomie (normlessness) and how a lack of social integration impacts male mental health.