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Comment by kilroy123 | Hacker News Reader

I preferred it before GME and all that craziness. So before 2020.

Just not the same anymore.

2020 was marked by a 10x increase in comment volume, largely coming from both incredible, pandemic driven, market volatility as well as stimulus checks and stay at home orders.

It is very unlikely (I hope) that this environment will happen again.

Nonetheless, can you express exactly what it is that "just [isn't] the same anymore"?

Not OP, but IMO WSB used to be interesting because it represented a small contrarian movement within the highly structured world of finance; a ‘secret club,’ if you will. I always browsed WSB primarily because it was fun, not because I expected to get mega-rich; after the GME blowup/meme-ification/massive media coverage, now everybody and their grandma trades OTM options (and now penny stocks and cryptos and NFTs etc etc) and it just isn’t cool anymore.

I agree, I think there's definitely been a large cultural shift when it comes to retail investing. Lots of people these days want to find the one play that gets them to retirement.

That culture shift extends well beyond WSB, but I think its at least somewhat less obvious here. In my experience, most of the time when people throw out price targets, at most they're predicting a 20%, 25% move, and not the 10x, 100x, or 10,000x you see elsewhere.

I don't think there's really a way, from a moderation perspective at least, to take the dreamers out of the equation... other then waiting and letting them get blown up by their high risk plays.

And just a note, r/wallstreetbets hasn't allowed penny stocks, crypto, or NFTs for many years. (NFTs never)

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