All the people screaming "YOLO I can't care if I lose X" seem to be missing the fact that their money isn't "lost"; it is ending up in the pockets of a few at their expense.
It's fascinating to see how many people really just want to fuck with the rich and how many care about normal people getting life-changing money. It's much more altruistic than I imagined.
I chucked in £30 on Free Trade.
I don't care if I get that money back. I just want to see the rich people suffer a bit, know that they don't have all the power.
Everyone is aware of that. The group of people that will get rich are those who bought the stock 2 weeks ago or earlier.
Heck, when someone put their entire life savings in ornamental gourd futures WSB crapped about that person saying how stupid that was. They aren't stupid. They are fully aware of what they are doing.
Then FD's (weekly OTM options, what it stands for is offensive) became super popular.
But I agree, it was always a good mix of memes and DD. I remember some activision DD which was along the lines of: "look at the name, act and vision! Two things a company needs to succeed".
Like every thing in the world that gains massive popularity, it attracts the normies who want in on the action, but aren't willing to do the, quite literally months or years (depending on how deeply you throw yourself into it) of learning required to even understand most of the DD posts there.
Yes, there was the occasional ridiculous trolling, like convincing posters on /r/investing that /r/wallstreetbets had a Lean Hogs Insider Trading Ring (which still makes me laugh out loud to this day), but it was far more rare.
Yes, the meme posts have risen dramatically, but there's still occasional good due diligence there, its just now you have to sift through a mountain of shit instead of small hill of it.