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Comment by zzleeper | Hacker News Reader

Are you two sure WSB hasn't reached an eternal September event? I find that with 8MM subs, the signal-to-noise ratio will likely remain just too high.

I've been looking for alternative subs, but besides e.g. theta gang I haven't really found anything useful

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I think if and when the newbies get burned, they will disappear and forever write off WSB as a personal scam. I'm thinking like the common folks that bought BTC at $19K in 2017. I really don't think too many of them have bought back in after they sold for a loss and likely want nothing to do with it ever again.

The big difference here is that holding GME isn't like holding BTC. Sure, many people say BTC is a scam or that it'll crash and burn, but holding through dips with BTC has historically been the correct move. I highly doubt holding GME is going to turn out well for anybody, so those losses are more "permanent" than say BTC. But you're right, a lot of people that got "burned" on BTC might not come back, but there's also a lot of people that held and are actually better off for it.

Sure, I'm not making any statements about BTC's future trajectory, just that those who bought at the last peak and panic sold near the bottom even after waiting for months or years are not coming back. Same with GME, except I'll bet a pretty penny it's not surpassing its peak again like BTC did. If you put your faith into a community (WSB) and lost all your money, you're not coming back. You might not even invest in the S&P500 for a long time because it will all feel like it's rigged against you.

Yes, I think it has too many followers right now. Perhaps it returns to 'normal' after the hype wears off. It has happened before just not to this scale.

Subreddits never return to normal after mass subscriber events. The users might not contribute, but so long as a fraction remain active on the same account, WSB posts will stay in their feed, and they will have the power to vote, and therefore dictate the content of the sub. The participating community will always be a minority, and will inevitably grow to disagree with the majority of users, nonparticipants, who simply dictate the content of the sub because of their higher voting power. The number of votes on a post always exceeds the number of unique posters in the post. I've seen it ruin several subreddits already, with easy-to-consume, low effort content swamping the frontpage.

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