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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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I have a buddy who was/is(?) still into the GME and AMC stuff. He tried to convince me that the mother of all short squeezes you mentioned would happen in about June of last year. I just told him to not invest what he couldn’t lose, etc. but it was troubling to see him constantly latching on to that and other cope excuses for why his meme stocks were not working out.

He isn’t well off and has a lot of issues in his life, most of them genuinely not his fault. It’s easy to scoff at what he’s doing, but I think the degenerate betting you see in the crypto/meme stock space is more rational than I first gave it credit for. If you’re a young man with little assets, no education, no girl, and no status, what do you have to lose if you make a terrible options play and go bankrupt, really? And what do you gain? Possibly a life free of working a shit job until your body gives out.

You might run the numbers and find that the odds are so low that it is not worth the risk. I’d tend to agree, but If you’re the type to run those numbers I’d bet you’re more likely to have something resembling a degree, stable job, and financial assets.

There are issues with those online communities you described but at their core they’re a place for young men who aren’t doing as well as they’d like to shoot the shit and find some camaraderie. We used to have wars, robust priesthoods, and high risk high reward jobs like whaling (we still have some jobs like this, not as many though) to deal with excess men. What pressure valve is there for excess men today?

I don’t think we should bring those things back, because most of those things are terrible. But men are disposable and for many the risk/reward of hustling crypto/NFTs/stocks does seem to make sense.

You're right about vulnerable young men. I remember reading that the average Robinhood user balance is $200.

Update: it's $240.

The issue is that meme stocks are worse than lottery tickets - when people win (ie, AMC runs from $5 to $72 last June) people refuse to even take their winnings! It's a lottery with worse chance to pay off, and the cultish behavior causes people to lose even when they win, so whilst I see gambling as rational when evaluated as LAMBOS OR RAMEN, it seems to reduce to "ramen".

I'm convinced that the HODL meme is a sociopathic way for current bagholders to get others to raise the price of their investment to the ideal cash out point. Many of the people who bought at the bottom made out with lifechanging money.

A lot of them though, yeah. They're just idiots. I begged my friend to sell his Gamestop stocks at his buy-in price when the stock rallied back up to it, but he held on for the MOASS and is now in the red. I don't know what can be done to protect those types, short of just not allowing them to spend their money on stupid things, which opens up a new host of (worse) issues. As the adage goes, "a fool and his money are soon parted."

EDIT: I may be undervaluing the clout you get in these communities for HODLing and hanging on well past when you should have sold. For some people, the money may not even matter and it’s more about the clout and fun of fucking around with like minded men with a normally serious topic like investing. Again, not my thing, but for some that may be worth it.

I may be undervaluing the clout you get in these communities for HODLing and hanging on well past when you should have sold.

Someone should suggest the concept of going on the internet and telling lies.

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