The chances of making some money from stock in a Silicon Valley darling is not really comparable to having plowed money into a meme coin that was literally created as a joke.

Absolutely I do. And I could have sold when my Aunt told me how the teachers had a Doge pool at work and the guy at the electrical counter was looking at his Doge and telling me about it. There are smart ways to invest in the silliest of endeavors.

Unless you were weighing DOGE vs FTC or something though and went with the latter, it's different? It's not just Oh if I knew then what I know now I could've made so much money; it's I almost made this decision, or could have, but explicitly decided against it.

I had a badly timed offer of something (I don't really remember might just have been an interview, or contracting work, on the back of some OSS contribution) at Cloudflare pre-IPO, and I do occasionally regret/wonder what-if, because it's not just a random hypothetical, it was an actual opportunity I made a decision against. (Doesn't help that it's still a company on my interested-in list, much like the trap in investing of liking a stock but wishing you'd bought it lower when you first thought of it, and so continuing to not buy as it climbs (or not even investing necessarily but just being a consumer in an inflationary environment).)