Three Olives posted:

I don't understand what problem they are trying to solve, isn't digital status signals just Instagram? People can work out pretty easily from Instagram if you actually have money or rented a Lamborghini for a few hours.

chaosbreather posted:

Lamborghinis and Instagram in general are both great examples what I’m talking about. People with real status drive solid mid-tier cars for 30 years and never ever let anyone take a picture of them let alone take one themselves to share it publicly. If you actually interact with these types you’ll understand how many mountain ranges there truly are from poser new money to the actual elite. New money will smile and wave at any price for something that has the possibility of making them seem charismatic, buy rounds, give weird gifts. Old money – real money – will blanch at seeing any bill, because they see almost none. To them asking for $10 is like $1 million, an attack on their hoard that they should probably consult someone immediately about to defend and retaliate.

The thing is, status symbols are actually valuable with these people. To be in is to never want for anything again. Once you are old money you can definitionally never actually be broke. Lambourgini will beg you to let them send you a car. But you can't simply buy yourself in, that's like buying yourself a wedding band to pretend to be married. And if you're not in, a watch or a Lambo is just so much chalk on your back, a self-marking mark, and then insta lets you advertise it to a sea of grifters. To be in with new money is to be chum to that sea.

The thing that gets me is none of this is new or secret, people just have no idea. If you're even a little well off with a bit of luck you can go to the right sort of parties as long as you act the part and don't poo poo your pants, that sort of party can, on occasion, result in the kind of rapid social mobility these oinks crave. But instead these people wear shat-in pants proudly and loudly sell them to others.

Oolb posted:

I don't know about that. It's pretty in line with the GameStop, WallStreetBets kind of aesthetic. Slackers and losers calling attention to the illegitimacy of the financial system by simply asserting themselves in a clever way. And that's enough to look cool. I mean, what would it take for them to legitimately "look cool"? To be rendered like classical paintings? That's literally Nazi poo poo.

Sombrerotron posted:

The GameStop affair was a curious and briefly "successful" attempt at subverting the market in order to make a surprisingly decent quick buck at the expense of Wall Street

ranbo das posted:

Oh people looked at order flow and robinhood users were net sellers during the pump. Most of the big money was made by, surprise surprise, hedge funds at the expense of other hedge funds.

It was initiated by reddit, the big boys jumped in and really made the big bucks, then reddit was left with the bag. This is all conveniently ignored because it doesn't affect the reddit narrative.

LordArgh posted:

that's not what's happening here

Random Stranger posted:

The redditors managed to punch a hedge fund in the nose, so good job there. But, yeah, by the time it got wider attention the punch was over and there was some real pump and dump going on by people who had deep pockets. I recall telling people during the week when the mania was happening that the time to buy GameStop was a month before and now was the time to get out before they were holding the bag.

Oolb posted:

I don't know about that. It's pretty in line with the GameStop, WallStreetBets kind of aesthetic. Slackers and losers calling attention to the illegitimacy of the financial system by simply asserting themselves in a clever way. And that's enough to look cool. I mean, what would it take for them to legitimately "look cool"? To be rendered like classical paintings? That's literally Nazi poo poo.

They're interesting. The apes are all so OVER IT.

kw0134 posted:

A bunch of retail investors who were basically bagholders going into 2021 because buying GME in the height of a pandemic when most video game sales are digital anyway made out when it went from their $10 cost basis to $40. Good for them!

Redditors hyped it, but it was the real market makers who pushed it to $400 where a bunch more idiots brought at the nice price of $420.69 (I wish I was kidding) and there they remain, down 70% on their "investment" because diamond hands. It doesn't take Nostradamus to see a surging stock and scalping the rise and selling for a $30 gain per share ten minutes later, and a lot of algos made a poo poo ton of cash that way.

Call Your Grandma posted:

Parkingtigers posted:

japegs

Random Stranger posted:

The redditors managed to punch a hedge fund in the nose, so good job there.

jokes posted:

No, it was hedge funds punching other hedge funds. Reddit was just a ring on the already-launched fist.

WSB is probably controlled by a hedge fund (or some sort of big-money entity), because it grabbed and held media attention and that has value. It’s not like Reddit has ever been anything but susceptible to capture and control by botnets and bad actors.

Durzel posted:

I kinda feel like GME is ground zero for much of what we’re seeing today. It was basically the perfect fairy tale rags to riches story. A bunch of people made a bunch of money really quickly, with negligible effort or due diligence, undermining The System and giving their imagined acolytes, hedge funds, a bloody nose in to the bargain. Even the media lapped it up, as a David vs Goliath story amongst all the dire pandemic news.

Problem is no one ever considers the bag holders, or imagine they will be one themselves. Nor can they grasp the concept that hedge funds don’t only bet one way. Now every stock that these animated investors look at is “the next GME”.

Crypto is that “minimal effort, get in early, fundamentals are irrelevant” sentiment taken to the extreme, and NFTs take that concept even further than that.

There’s certainly money to be made in all of this stuff, only an idiot would believe there isn’t, but It’s not built on anything and as such is extremely vulnerable to the bottom falling out with zero warning. Even GME, AMC, and other meme stocks have a floor price. They have assets and they have business fundamentals, even if they don’t square with their current stock prices. Crypto just has belief, and how much of it can sustain?

kw0134 posted:

The allure of free money has always been present, and this is just a rerun of other bubbles in the past, from the first dotcom bubble, Japanese real estate in the 80s, hot stock tips in the 20s, railroad stocks in the Gilded Era, land speculation in the Northwest Territory, the South Sea bubble, tulip bulb futures, pieces of the one true cross, etc. etc. etc.

Greed never changes.

LordArgh posted:

that's not what's happening here

Hammerite posted:

I like the style of goon that thinks that bored apes being ugly is good, actually because art that looks nice is for nazis

ikanreed posted:

We just make up people to get mad at sometimes, don't we?

orange sky posted:

https://twitter.com/mekkaokereke/status/1476357249840791553?t=acDzIIWdkCafpXCkFBjgpw&s=19

Good thread on how it's just more upward transfer of wealth

Sombrerotron posted:

The GameStop affair was a curious and briefly "successful" attempt at subverting the market in order to make a surprisingly decent quick buck at the expense of Wall Street, but like pretty much all things crypto, the supposed political and/or economic idealism fuelling it is all an entirely meaningless façade. There may be a few actual believers (and they're fooling themselves or just naïve), but the vast majority is only in it for the quick buck - and in the case of crypto it's even more laughable than with GameStop, because it's only worth anything at all because of the existing financial system. Without the fundamentals of modern capitalism and the existence of traditional currencies, crypto would cease to exist as well; not because it wouldn't be needed anymore, but because it has no appeal whatsoever without the prospect of ultimately netting you great quantities of traditional currency for which you did not have to do any actual work. NFTs are the product of the same naked greed (and misunderstanding of how all of it actually works).

As for your last argument, consider the fact that you yourself described Bored Apes as "hideous". Consider also that each Bored Ape (just like the multitudes of competing NFT series) consists of a very basic and aesthetically unappealing template with a number of randomly selected items pasted onto that template. There's no interesting or cohesive artistic thought behind any of it, it's just a matter of making one simplistic base drawing and then creating a whole bunch of unrelated paraphernalia. The very concept, if you're at all critical about art, is incredibly off-putting. The very least any NFT-creator could do to make something look interesting is to make something that doesn't depend on a computer rolling some virtual dice, but which rather is entirely the product of a human mind which has put genuine thought into all aspects of its composition.

Oolb posted:

I don't know about that. It's pretty in line with the GameStop, WallStreetBets kind of aesthetic. Slackers and losers calling attention to the illegitimacy of the financial system by simply asserting themselves in a clever way. And that's enough to look cool. I mean, what would it take for them to legitimately "look cool"? To be rendered like classical paintings? That's literally Nazi poo poo.

They're interesting. The apes are all so OVER IT.