I've been lurking/commenting for a while now and I've seen WSO become an unfortunate reflection of the drivel I can find on any social media site. This site went from some of the most prescient pre-crash analysis that the internet could provide combined with some hilarious satirizations (made that one up but so did Shakespeare) of models and bottles to another internet cesspool.
I understand that politics and the current sociopolitical climate are inextricably linked with finance but can we get back to a degree of escapism? Can this site be fun, smart, and truly useful again?
I agree but you should also think about the fact that finance careers have become a bit more mainstream attracting a wider pool of candidates. Who are allured by the high pay, prestige and "easiness" of the technical skills necessary.
With that in mind, you will also be attracting people with misogynistic, slightly racist to actually racist, red pill kind of views. Nothing wrong with that but most views are wrong or misinformed.
Multiple threads with the same political topics, threads created by trolls that get a lot of responses, topics you'd hear discussed by dude bros, pseudo-intellectual rambling so on and so forth.
Here are some threads that I find absolutely dumb:
Would you fight for your country?
How do I ask out this girl from a conservative family?
Is lion really king of the jungle?
I didn't get bid from a fraternity advice?
Are the 99% being conned by the 1% ? They own the rat race ? I feel like a hamster in a cage.
Why are rational people so scarce on campuses?
It's a shame really because this kind of attitude and bullshit belongs to the misc. section of the bodybuilding forum (Pretty confident a lot dude bro users frequent this place often).
Do these BS threads exist? Damn, I'm triggered now.
Agreed, the percentage of "Off Topic" threads I see on the front page seems to be rising over the last year.
this thread triggered me.
in all seriousness, I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I took a break from heavy WSO use this summer and it was great, no political bullshit,. on the one hand, those discussions could go well if we had civil discussion and trying to seek others' points of view, but on the other hand, 100% of the time those threads get derailed and turn into mudslinging.
here are some threads I'd like discussed, perhaps AndyLouis can get eddie or some intern to talk about it
I could go on, but that's an idea of what I'd like to see. unfortunately, I can't/don't want to dedicate the time to creating threads like that all the time, but I'd certainly join in on the discussion.
I'm with the Brofessor.
And how does it go against Occam's razor? I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this.
Occam's razor is a simplified concept in that it depends on ceteris paribus. In the real world, this is obviously almost never the case. And so, having more data can help us make better decisions. However, converting data to information has economic costs associated with it, and so the quality of the data is important; in other words, the data needs produce an economic benefit that justifies the costs of processing it into something useful (information).
I've tried to give a very general response, since your point itself seems to have been framed in a very general manner. If you meant something more specific, then perhaps it will be possible to provide a better response.
And I'm not a crazy person who gets their advice from Peter Schiff (although I do find his podcasts moderately enjoyable), but he's been outspoken on the precise subject of gold, fiat currencies, and cryptocurrencies.
thanks for these, will send out to our team
I clearly don't log in often enough but the "data bubble" is a fascinating 'what if' scenario.
Creation of data is happening at an exponential rate but most of it is uninformed horseshit. What does that mean for data driven professions? Can we tame robots to separate the wheat from the exponentially larger chaff?
See this is the stuff that brings people here. Thanks as always @brofessor
A couple comments:
Finance and politics are too interconnected for politics to not be discussed on a finance site - especially one with a off topic forum. If you want escapism, read a book. You're not going to get it here.
That said, the state of political discussions on WSO these days reflect the state of political discussions in real life in that they lack any nuance, are entirely fueled by anger and self righteousness, and often resort to childish name calling.
Political discussion on WSO also reflect the political division of real life. Just a few years ago, you had a mixture of free market liberals, fiscal conservatives with socially liberal views, and stauch conservatives posting on WSO. Essentially, unless some hot button topic came up, everyone agreed. In 2017, conservatives are completely fractured, Trump has become a lightning rod, and political discussion on this website is both actually more polarized and simultaneously more focused on that polarization.
Some really high-level and prolific posters have become tremendously politicized and polarized in their postings since the 2016 election. Whereas before, they posted mainly about more on-topic things, now their posts are overwhelmingly political. So, as a reader of the site, you're simply going to see political posts more often.
Is this good? Is this bad? Meh. Most political arguments on the internet are obnoxious, but that still doesn't stop me from delving into them from time to time. Politicization of everything is the world we live in, it seems, and it makes sense that WSO would reflect that.
Yeah, I had a guy ask me the other day, "do I like politics". I said, "not really. I'm just interested in economics (or finance) and a lot of it is driven by what's happening in Washington". From macro policy, fiscal policy, to characteristics of average consumers, it all impacts the top line and the bottom line. Hard to just ignore it.
In addition to political polarization eating any civil discussion, I think you are seeing the law of triviality take a hold of the forum as a result of younger demographics. Not that politics is trivial, but it's a topic where everyone feels entitled to form and espouse their own opinion, however uninformed. Topics that are more substantive and technical require a certain depth of experience or knowledge, so its less likely to garner wide participation.
The second part is conjecture, but I'd also wager that Twitter and social media platforms have created an environment that encourages self-expression over expertise. People who would have been satisfied observing discussions on different threads now feel compelled to contribute however unqualified.
Political posts used to be restricted in years past. I'd encourage it coming back again.
As a wise man once told me, trolling is gay.
Thanks for the comments everyone...I'm not sure there is an easy answer here. Our policy is not to allow political commentary, but as many members mentioned above, it is difficult to police if people are not flagging and/or just flagging posts where opinions are expressed that they disagree with.
I will give it some thought on how we can limit these and boost the more interesting "on topic" discussions. AndyLouis
Thanks, Patrick
Well Patrick (WallStreetOasis.com), if that's really your policy, you (collectively) are doing a pretty thin job enforcing it. I've eased off this site the past couple weeks because it's gotten so bad on the political front.
Your right-hand bar ("Popular Content") is formulaic, I get it, but right now there's (a) "Take a Knee: Trump, the NFL...", (b) "Living in a city you hate, due to work", (c) "Why are rational people so scarce on campus", and (d) this thread ... all highlighted as the most feature-worthy content to engage around.
At a glance the second one (city) seems incongruous, but you open it and it is one of the worst offenders in terms of ad hominem attacks, meme-board level language, and general immaturity.
It's like reddit took over WSO. CRE hit it on the head; part of it is a sign of the times (this is just how the social media generation [I'm part of it] engages around political topics today), but even back during the previous election cycles there was a level of near intellectualism in how people discussed things.
What can we do to go back to this? thebrofessor has a great list of topics, but even if someone starts each of them off with a thorough, well-researched post, they'll inevitably devolve into literal shit-flinging as a dozen core users go at each other's jugulars and a bunch of bystanders jump in and out of the trollfest for whatever reason.
Can you create moderators? It's probably a bad idea to handpick users (I remember that's how some of the better subreddits ended up dying, when user mods eventually picked other user mods who changed the culture and wound up killing the place) to actually parse through the forums, but can you create a supergroup to review flagged posts?
Anything. It's getting bad. Even when I see ideas that resonate with my personal viewpoints, the caliber of the conversation is so awful I close out of the thread before getting past a couple dozen comments.
I don't disagree and it's largely my fault for letting threads get out of hand in several cases (as mentioned above). If we have a stricter policy of respect (even to those with whom you disagree), I think things would improve somewhat, but in many cases we will have to either close threads and/or remove a series of comments after they are made.
The issue is moderating in real time. Even if we see/read all threads, the chance of our team being able to review all of the flags and get things cleaned up (and then answering all of the resulting PMs from angry users complaining about censorship) before a large % of the site reads it is low. It is a very difficult task, but we can do better and I have instructed the team to be more strict enforcing our user guidelines and removing content where attacks on character instead of factual points are made.
Thanks, Patrick
I jusr think people should self-police, or scroll on. Seriously, if someone wants Topic A they can write about it. Y'all know who the usual suspects are in political talks, etc., so ignore them.
Most of the people talking about "how it used to be" came around when I was already saying the same thing. Change is inevitable. Most of you are free market lovers, we can surely find more ideas than asking Andy and Patrick to layeth the smack down.
This is the unadulterated truth. Also don't like how most ib posts are bullshit prestige whore fuckfests that use 3rd-degree sourced arguments "Elite Boutique vs Bulge bracket/ Which bank will put me in best b-school/Why can't I get interviews from ivy"
Miss the good ol' days of cracking jokes on wso and other stuff that actually has to do with the industry.
I do like the wso podcast.
I really appreciate the words which he shared
Be the fucking change.
Hasn't this site always been a reflection of its readers/viewers? If some of the more interesting posters with deep financial/economic analysis etc. have stopped contributing, maybe there's a supply/demand issue? Some people don't like the political stuff, but they enjoy the lighter material/monkeying around that others don't like, etc. Just read what you like. I've made it clear I don't like all the religion posts that much, and guess what? I read other topics.
I don't have the answer - it might be fun to tell noobs to "use the search function" but you chase away people. You might be really impressed by your command of a hot button political issue, but could consider stepping away from the keyboard after 7-8 attempts to prove someone wrong. Instead of complaining to Patrick or anyone else, you could always write something you'd want to read on here.
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