i've been trying to figure out why the 2026 drawdown feels so much more personal than 2018/2022 even though it’s not nearly as bad price wise. my take:
a lot of people on here have decided there's now a clock running. ai is coming, the door to escaping the middle class is closing, and if you haven't made it in the next couple years you're on ubi as a pleb forever.
i don't know if that's true. but it doesn't matter if it's true. people here believe it, so they're putting a deadline on themselves and when the market doesn't cooperate on that timeline it feels like they’re missing the last train out of a burning town rather than “just a bad few months but we can recover”
this also explains retails pivot to memes as a “fast track” to making it.
add instagram to the mix. 22 year olds in mansions and lambos all over your feed, most of them you suspect got there by rugging people like you.
envy is one of the strongest emotions there is, and envy plus a ticking clock is my guess to why we are seeing crash outs instead of just "this cycle sucks but we’re all in this together bros”
it truly is diff now
You’re not just a person in the universe.
you’re the universe experiencing itself through you. You’re the vessel through which existence takes a temporary form and gets to discover, experience and explore what it means to be alive and perhaps the most remarkable part is that you get to decide what you make of this brief opportunity to exist.