What is the origin story of Philippinefailblog.com? When did it come into existence and why? We will seek the answers to these questions in this brief article.
Philippinefailblog.com started out as philippinefailblog.wordpress.com. This page is no longer available. It has been deleted entirely.
Philippinefailblog.com started out as philippinefailblog.wordpress.com. This page is no longer available. It has been deleted entirely.
But a trail of breadcrumbs leading from one blog to the other does remain scattered across the internet.
 |
 |
And of course the good folks at the internet archive have a copy of philippinefailblog.wordpress.com on its servers. http://web.archive.org/web/20100501000000*/http://philippinefailblog.wordpress.com
The first capture on the archive for PFB wordpress is May 1, 2010 and it interesting to note that all ten posts are identical to the first 10 posts on philippinefailblog.com. Same publication date also, April 28, 2010.
This begs the question, which came first? Or perhaps they were both born together like twins.
The archive's first readable capture of PFB is for June 2013 and includes this bit of information:
With a little more digging the answer becomes quite clear. The wordpress site was first and filofail, who is now known as CaptainPFB, transferred all his posts over to the new website.
Searching through the internet archive is a bit wearisome. Not all the information displays correctly and that makes it a real pain to read through. What is clear is that PFB Wordpress had a regular readership that interacted with site. Plenty of comments and plenty of agreement with filofail's opinions.
One recurring sentiment regarding PFB is "I'm not alone." "I'm not alone" in thinking that this place is messed up. "I'm not alone" in thinking that burning trash or having fiestas until 5am is beyond rude. "I'm not alone" in my suffering the barbarities of Filipino culture.
The whois data for PFB lists March 28th as the creation date of the Philippinefailblog domain name. And so with a growing readership, Philippinefailblog was born on March 28, 2013.
It's interesting to note that around the time PFB wordpress was born another Wordpress blog with the same motif was also launched.
That blog also had lot of interaction and an obviously large readership but the author abandoned the website with the last post being dated April 5, 2010. And so there was only PFB.
So much for the origin of the PFB domain. What about the origin of the PFB idea? Why did CaptainPFB even begin blogging about his experiences in the Philippines? I submit to you that the catalyst for the whole endeavour was his battles with PLDT.
The very first blog post on PFB Wordpress is dated April 28, 2010 and the subject matter is PLDT. On this same date filofail commented on someone else's blog which was detailing their experiences with PLDT's failures.
|
Note that in his comment he claims he had been fighting PLDT for two years. So since 2008, and likely earlier, CaptainPFB had been fighting with PLDT and their terrible service. Perhaps to celebrate the small victory of now having "a consistent connection every day with no interruptions" he decided to launch PFB Wordpress to document both his struggles with PLDT and his struggles with Filipino culture. He then seeks out this blog which he had perhaps already been following and posts a link to his newly minted blog. It is also in this comment that we see the PFB domain name for the first time albeit as a typing error on his part.
Fast forward to December 11, 2012.
 |
| https://pldtsucks.wordpress.com |
Filofail starts a new blog dedicated solely to the incompetence of PLDT. At the same time PFB Wordpress has been growing for two years and is only a few months away from moving to its own domain. Yet CaptainPFB's problems with PLDT are so severe he thinks the situation deserves its own blog.
There are not many posts on the dedicated PLDT blog and only one of the posts, dated February 22, 2013, makes it over to PFB. A year later there is an entry stating that the site moved to its own domain pldtsucks.com but this website is now defunct and there is no indication it was updated regularly.
So out of much struggle comes success and the fruit of CaptainPFB's struggles with PLDT is PFB.
