Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

It's not a comedy, it's a tragedy- and it's not "society" that dislikes volatility- it's the elite on Wall Street who do risky, highly volatile shit in order to make a quick, easy dollar for basically doing literally nothing at all of value- all they do is play games with money- they produce no actual product or anything of value- and every single time it blows up in their face they want hand outs or bailouts. They are the single most worthless part of the economy who do nothing but leech and should die.

I agree with some of this, less so with other parts. I’d probably not wish anyone to die. But yeah, society dislikes volatility. People point to the stock market and make political decisions based on “the economy”

They rarely say, “all that is made up and I don’t care.” Maybe the should. I mean, this whole thing is people spending money in essence to eff with rich people. Which is funny, though the end result is creating value out of nothing, which will ultimately not exist soon enough.

I made a lot of money yesterday on the market.  Probably will lose today.

How Wall Street thinks the Reddit-fueled GameStop trade will unravel (cnbc.com)

Lot of interseting takes here

https://www.elevenwarriors.com/forum/anything-else/2021/01/120892/recent-stock-market-happenings

A more general lesson perhaps is how social media and broad communication can enable a larger group to impact a small "professional" group, in this case to their loss.

On a tangent, this is something I think about a lot - how unnatural it is for a person to communicate directly with so many people.
Think about physically talking to a group...what's the most you could reach - within earshot?  The Greeks designed their amphitheaters to enable sound to carry.  The Aztec or Olmecs apparently had a valley in which they'd gather to hear the leader/god/whatever, whose voice could reach over 100,000 pairs of ears.

But today, we have famous people online directly communicating with tens of millions of people.  Maybe an idea isn't supposed to reach that many.  Maybe one mind shouldn't be influencing that many others.  Our brains haven't had time to adjust to the gradual, eventual lead-up to something like that - it's happened in 25 years of the interwebs.  One generation. 

Consider that - what's the absolute most people you could directly communicate with in 1995 (or pre-widespread use of the internet)?  100,000 in a stadium with a mic?  We've doubled that about 9 times in 25 years.  It's not okay.


*All of the top TV audiences of all-time are sporting events or tragedies - not a person sharing their opinions about this and that

Consider that - what's the absolute most people you could directly communicate with in 1995 (or pre-widespread use of the internet)?  100,000 in a stadium with a mic?  We've doubled that about 9 times in 25 years.  It's not okay.


*All of the top TV audiences of all-time are sporting events or tragedies - not a person sharing their opinions about this and that

I'd guess a presidential state of the union address on the radio back in John Boy Walton's time (Great depression & WWII) would reach the same number and percentage of the population

one person sharing his opinion

Yes, it's the change that regular Joe's can connect with millions, not just "leaders".

I find Hitler's rise to power to be fascinating as an example of how one person not known for being much of anything could motivate millions of people.  That was fortunately an unusual situation, there are other examples in history of something similar of course.

Gamestop could issue stock but that announcement would of course change the market rapidly.  GME was up 66% last I checked, today.  Anyone still short is getting hammered.  I bet options are very pricey, if they are traded.

And I highlight, again, that this creates a situation where because there are so many voices out there, people can create their own reality by picking the ones they want to listen to. The ensconce themselves in an echo chamber of confirmation bias, to the point where I may live in a completely different reality than my neighbor.

IMHO that's new in human life.

30 years ago, we had three main networks all basically running the same narrative on the nightly news. They might have been right or they might have been wrong, but the entire nation lived in the same narrative, with the same facts, and had to deal with each other within one reality.

Now one side lives in one reality, and is never exposed to the other. While the other side lives in a completely different reality, and is never exposed to the other. When the two come into conflict, literally they cannot even discuss the differences because the bridge is too far between them.

I don't know how this ends... But I can't think it's going to be good.

This.