There's a site called move2nz.com, which we used when researching the migration to NZ. At one point, I remember reading a very personal and hostile remark by one of the 2 site owners/admins, and thinking, wow, she must be having a really bad day. I then discovered that any day was a bad day if someone said there were things New Zealand scored low on. Or when they criticized a sponsor. Or tried to meet offline without move2nz sanction. Or tried to call the admins on any of these bizarro behaviors. You get the idea.

It wasn't long before I ticked them off, of course. There's absolutely no use trying to get some people to see reason. What can you do with someone who doesn't understand that traffic is gold, and I (and other public enemies) was generating plenty of those with our posts? So in partnership with another expat, I set up a community, Expat Exposed, devoted to the downside of NZ. Someone has to do it, and anyone who doesn't agree or want to know can just avoid the site. See how that works? All bow before the segmentation power of the Internet.

Intriguingly enough, numerous people sent me an e-mail to the effect of, I like what you're doing, I stopped posting on move2nz after being shouted down, or I was kicked out for just setting up my own NZ blog, then branded an idea thief. After talking to several people, I was amazed to find out that the admins had actually threatened people with lawsuits simply for wanting to hang out together online and offline, outside of move2nz. As if that weren't nutty enough, they were apparently in the habit of reading the private messages of members they took a dislike to.

To be honest, I grew increasingly aghast that none of these people had bothered to go on the record with their story. By choosing to simply drop out of view, they not only failed to provide a check for this kind of behavior, but they also left the door open for new arrivals to walk into the same kind of unpleasantness and distress. This doesn't sit right with me. So, here are some move2nz-related correspondences and observations for public perusal. You can decide for yourself whether these are the kind of people you want to get close to or not.

"this blows me away..... and I hope this not going to turn into a whinging pom thread... I must also commment that there are people in the world that are not happy unless they are complaining..."