| > /r/wallstreetbets exists for a different reason If anyone wants to know that other reason, I used to be a mod there (low bar, but keep reading) WSB existed in a void surrounded by personal finance forums full of the dumbest financially illiterate crowd being spoonfed Robert Kiyosaki and Suzi Orman all obviously sponsored by Vanguard. In fact, it still exists in that void. If you wanted to talk about trading volatility derivatives without being in some 1990s-layout investment banking forum, there was no place to go. WSB was the light, its forum rules specifically saying its the place where trading the VIX is normal. That is its utility. A place for people with a risk tolerance slightly above an undocumented wage slave. Okay, that was hyperbole, I don't like personal finance forums and Wall Street Bets is the opposite of them. Not everyone is born sucking at basic money topics and not everyone is too risk averse to consider financial products outside of the mold. Actually, let's take it one step further, not everyone was raised around a stigma of money and maybe isn't completely ignorant as a product? Obviously that isn't the prevailing culture, and there aren't many communities that catered to it. Anyway, outside of WSB the only other communities at the time were in trading guru chatrooms, the ones you subscribe to get into. Now everyone might be joking around but they are worshiping the guru. Its pathetic. WSB was made for options traders to make jokes and wild trades that had a week to pay off. It then got co-opted by penny stock traders pretending like it was the new Yahoo finance board, and now it got co-opted again by the most denegerate options traders in history and it is marvelous! Its even better than what it originally was and the financial meme niche is new and hysterical. Hopeless 20 year olds fueling the flame? Sure, that is pretty much what happened. I'm glad they made the venue, it is wildly popular now, and the options market is wildly liquid in ways I could have only dreamed of. |