Before I tell you what I'm advocating for, I want to prove two things to you. One is that we're fucking stupid. Two is that we're increasingly normal.
Exhibit one is the stock-which-shall-not-be-named saga. DFV correctly identified a trend that some random people bought in on and mildly fucked some folks on wall street. It was a good time for most of us. Fast forward a year, 2 years, 3 years, and "The shorts never covered." Look at the fucking graph and I'll can show you when they did. Maybe they've finally died out (I blocked all of their subs) but how long does it take to see the writing on the fucking wall?
Exhibit two is crypto. Some fucking losers wanted to replace fiat currency and thought that best way to do that was to torture half a million GPUs into verifying transactions 24/7. Some people made a shit load of money, crypto doesn't use GPUs anymore, but this "alternative currency" theory has proven to be complete dogshit. Nobody uses crypto to buy things, they use it to make money by selling it to other people
Regardless, we keep coming back here to read the fake posts, AI generated nonsense, and shit DD from some 19 year old who just discovered the concept that "doing your own research" can apply to the casino they don't have to leave home to access. We're still fucking here. Why? Who cares?
We've all heard to buy shovels during a gold rush. Peter Lynch said the only advantage retail has over investing firms is that they can identify what companies make things that are valuable to real people. Are you a real person? What do you use? Who makes money on our shitposts and degenerate gambling if not us? One easy answer is the person on the other side of the trade, but since we can't invest in them, maybe we should be looking at who's skimming off the top. Who's making money from us?
$HOOD $RDDT
You want to short reddit subs without losing if they win? You want to make money off shitty posts and dumb-ass sentiment and stupid teenagers with more money than sense? Buy what you know.
Will these companies find ways to grow in the future? Who the fuck knows? I don't give a shit about fundamentals and neither do you. Will they keep milking users in the meantime? Absofuckinglutely. Reddit will inject adds, sell your data, and fuck you raw so you can keep reading shitposts from the dumbest people and bots on earth. Robinhood added crypto scams and legalized gambling in the form of "predictions markets" to squeeze ever bit of juice they can from their dumb fuck user-base. If there's one thing I know, it's that predatory companies in a predatory environment will eat their lunch and yours too. Why not buy in?