The YouTube algorithm served me a video today of an expat ranking all the countries he’s lived in (quite a few…). At one point, he mentioned that Portugal has gotten much more expensive, offers fewer freebies for expats, and that expats are facing more backlash. I replied, asking whether the rising prices and the backlash might actually be related.

Someone (not the content creator) replied, telling me that people need to stop being delusional. They claimed there are tens of thousands of abandoned properties in the interior of Portugal, and insisted that locals just need to move where they can afford to live, work harder, or train for a better-paying job.

It’s wild how delusional some people are. They completely remove themselves from the equation, view themselves as some kind of “bringer of prosperity,” and genuinely think it’s okay to price locals out of their own hometowns while telling them to move away and stop complaining.

If you want to move abroad, don’t be like this person… Anyway, time to stop feeding the trolls.