Something about this site has began to concern me lately. I hadn't intended to speak up about it until I saw the top post of the week: some random guy asking about a master's at Vanderbilt, accompanied by a whopping 80+ SB's. Not sure how that happened, either it's a glitch or it's WSO's content promotion mechanism gone awry (a lot of consumer social companies – looking at you, Fizz – will artificially jack up upvotes in order to provide the semblance of an active and engaged user base). Most likely just a glitch, even though I've never seen this happen before.
Anyhow, I wonder what happened to this site.
Where were the days of serious discussions on contemporary issues within finance? Of rich AMA's from experienced industry professionals? Of legendary veteran users dropping their nuggets of wisdom, which the rest of us were lucky to scramble to collect? Or even of a quality shitpost - one that, in its creative satire, simultaneously entertained and illuminated a real subject?
I need not comment much on the state of affairs nowadays – one simply needs to take a casual glance at the front page to see my point. We now find ourselves left with a mostly barren landscape of logistical matters (this group or that group? this program or that program? comp at X firm?), low-effort shitposts, political discussions, complaints about DEI followed by political discussions, or way-too-eager high schoolers.
My anecdotal account of WSO's decline traces back to around a year or two ago, when WSO started to more heavily moderate its content, culminating in the inauguration of a new team of moderators. The decline in quality and number of posts on the site, either as a result of these aforementioned initiatives or merely concurrent as a matter of coincidence, seems to me to have started around then. A contingent of power users – many for a variety of site-related or personal reasons, and some, perhaps, in protest of moderation – began to drop off. Ever since, it's been steadily and slowly downhill. In my view, once these anchor users left, along with the real engagement they created, interest in serious discussion began to dissipate.
The question is: are we in a temporary drought, or is this secular decline?
And if the latter is the case, then what happened? Are the kids just brainrotting now? Are the effects we see here just a reflection of broader decline within the finance industry? Is discussion moving into other forums, or other mediums entirely, whether digital or not?
I'd like nothing more than to see, for this site, a return to its glory days. We were all the better off for it.
Yeah, feels like forever since we've heard from the likes of @thebrofessor , @IlliniProgrammer , @CRE , @APAE , @redever , @Sil , @rickle , @TheBuellerBanker , @Rabbit , et al.
Sometimes, people move on, things move on, life moves on. Guess that's just how it goes.
Very very honored to be on the same list as some of those you mentioned. I was getting into high school when I found this community and people like @APAE, @IlliniProgrammer, @Eddie Braverman, @DickFuld and the like were OGs.
Am stll around man, mostly lurking. Find me in DMs if you have to more to shoot the shita about than DEI, women/minorities stealing your jobs and UBS.
Agreed. I’ve noticed way less traffic and fewer quality posts over the past couple years, and particularly the last twelve months. Couple thoughts:
This is by no means an exhaustive list, just some thoughts to get the convo started as a regular user / occasional poster.
I'm thinking it's the AI. I've done it as well. Was looking for something car-related recently using AI. I realized that all the data was being pulled largely from user based forums. Two thoughts from this:
Bingo, it's a real problem and honestly any pure forum /ad based business is likely in trouble long term.
Agreed with the forum needing more Q&As... We're still actively certifying a lot of users so we'll get better here. I think this is a really natural way to get our professionals more engaged and students more excited.
We're on it.
On the censoring, nothing major has changed for many years... We occasionally get a subpoena every few years and try our best to fight it but the niche forum business has its challenges, especially with the top apps continuing to grab mkt share (IG, TikTok, yt etc)
We're not sitting still and will keep pushing to get strong human interaction on here.
Thanks for caring,
Patrick
I read an interesting article that seems adjacent to this problem. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/will-ai-choke-off-the-supply-of-knowledge-8a71cbcd?utm_source=chatgpt.com one thing that really shocked me was this quote
"Consider the fate of Stack Overflow, a website where software developers ask and answer questions, becoming both a wellspring and repository for knowledge. But then developers started putting their questions to ChatGPT. Six months after its introduction in November 2022, the number of questions on Stack Overflow had fallen 25% relative to similar Chinese and Russian language sites where ChatGPT wasn’t an alternative, according to a study by Johannes Wachs of Corvinus University of Budapest and two co-authors. The drop was the same regardless of quality, based on peer feedback, refuting predictions that AI would displace only low-value research. As of this month, the number of questions is down more than 90%. Why should anyone other than Stack Overflow’s owners care? Because, as tech writer Nick Hodges explained in InfoWorld, “Stack Overflow provides much of the knowledge that is embedded in AI coding tools, but the more developers rely on AI coding tools the less likely they will participate in Stack Overflow, the site that produces that knowledge.”
this may not have any correlation at all but I think multiple forums are seeing a similar trend and I have seen the content drop off over the past 2 years on other forums I follow in unrelated industries as well.
The end of your link being “utm_source=chatgpt” is killing me
I forgot the name of the article and had to go to ole faithful.
patricks hatred of free speech is the obvious source. we cant even have fun on here anymore
Simple:
1) more anti-DEI posts
2) more UBS hate posts
3) more hardo high schoolers posting
I think about what kept me coming back to this community and it was the people.
Obviously couldn’t put a face to the name but you always knew there were specific people here you could have engaging conversations with. Or just folk who had interesting opinions or good content. Personalities came through. Now the balance has tipped to anon posting and you can’t tell one person from the next. I legit think there are folk with multiple accounts just talking to themselves lol. Only so much DEI / UBS discussion I'm willing to read.
The general tone has also changed. A lot. People talk at each other, not to each other. Very similar to the trajectory of other online communities and the world in general. They’ve become megaphones for opinions, not forums for discussion. Everyone dies on the hill of their opinion with their fingers in their ears. Not saying it’s good or bad, I’m guilty of that too.
We really have to point the fingers at ourselves and not at Pat and mods. A community is only as good as its members.
Been here a long time man, and I don’t see that changing. Don't post as much because the discussions just aren't engaging. Best convos I have now are on DM which keeps me coming back.
Agree with this. More accountability and genuine debate before. Now it’s just a way to sling your own (probably wrong) opinion into nothingness
So among all those reasons, the only thing that is under control for WSO is to remove censorship so this becomes entertaining for more users. Because information on finance industry also became widespread (influencers/different guides/GPT), you'll also find less people coming here/being grateful for the help they received to then come later to "repay" (as a grateful act) for the help they got from - which is an issue WSO should be concerned becuase it lost that "unique"/monopolized insights on recruiting/banks/etc. as they are now competing on those insights with influencers/AI, hence you have less people coming than people that stop engaging.
I can't see any serious comeback unless WSO removes censrship and this becomes peak entertainment (I get it that it needs to look professional because at the end of the day this is a means to sell guides/products/courses, so need to play the part to make it look professional, but the forum side suffers because of this).
Yeah dude you hit some solid points.
In general, I'd be shocked if finance in general will continue, because the industry pay isn't worth while. Sure you can be an associate making 200k+ but what's the point if you're on call 24/7 and not actually doing any of the fun selling and only doing the grunt work? I make no where near bankers, but I'm satisfied with my life + career and enjoy where I am progressing. Sales and Trading would've been the ultimate career I would've embarked on in finance, but even that is getting cut YoY.
yo pat. read this shit
Holy shit you weren’t kidding about the Vandy post getting 88 bananas. Also, don’t think there’s a way to restore the site. I’ve found pockets of activity on WSO where there’s some decent amount of engagement. I.e HF forum people will have lots to say on pods and risk strategies or in ST forum if you speak about commodity trading there’s a handful of active users who will contribute. You have to know where to look.
This site has pivoted from working professionals to students (for better or worse; get that bag Patrick I’d do the same). So a majority of its user base consists of such. Having a forum for verified users to post could be interesting. Possibly reaching out to industry seniors for Q&As, having them create in depth analysis or write ups would be interesting. But just seems like GPT can answer a lot of these questions or you can read an actual white paper or blog directly.
Gotta give people a reason to use the site, reason has shifted from people chatting about their working experiences on Wall Street to trying to get to into wall street.
Queue I miss the old Kanye but WSO parody.
coming from the experienced 30+ year old side, it's the racism for me.
not sure what happened with gen z, probably the shitty economy, but that's no reason to be a hateful angry racist misogynistic idiot.
there's very little incentive for the old guard to help those who are angry and hateful, just think about it.
gen z was raised on the internet. a lot of the "racism" and "misogyny" is half-satire.
Seriously, people have no chill anymore. Everybody is so loudn and angry all the time.
It’s victim mentality. I think I’ve seen one or two comments that I’d consider racist on this site. The dude is apparently a VP at a PE shop and is using comments that would’ve never considered racist 10 years ago as an excuse to not help people who want to follow in his steps.
I’m in my 30s and have been reading/posting here for over a decade. It’s honestly just part of a broader dilution of the internet. To end up on WSO in 2008-2010, you had to be actively seeking out learning about finance, career paths, how to break in. Once you gave every dipshit a smartphone and they started living their lives on reddit/twitter/tiktok, some inevitably find their way here.
For the real old school guys reading, it’s essentially a larger-scale version of eternal September.
Tbf it was the same even in 2016/2017. I didn't find out about this site until a buddy of mine in college told me to check it out. I was fresh out of leaving the Law School grind (decided it wasn't for me) then found WSO and presto, I broke into finance thanks to the threads on this site.
I wish I knew what the OG WSO was like
Not sure if I ever experienced OG WSO. But definitely experienced better times. You could come here and get honest answers about a lot of things. People would answer fundamental banking and business questions, trading questions and nearly everything related to finance and business as a whole. Every single area of finance was pretty well represented.
However, during Trumps first term crackdowns on free speech started to happen heavily on right wing talking points. This was at a level I had never seen. People with MAGA hats got attacked in the street by left wing groups. Businesses big and small began to fear being aligned with anything right wing to a point where it was palpable. WSO was not folding to any of the ban speech culture - trust me. Then Covid was a massive issue for free speech. That was probably my lowest point in terms of activity on here since I joined. A lot of things changed across the internet/society as a whole. Fear was to a point where people completely dropped logic. 2022 they reopened and everyone tried to act like nothing happened - which is fucked. Since then, the pressures on certain ‘controversial’ subjects has eased a bit - owed in large part to Elon buying Twitter. But now when you go to most sites you see a lot of AI to a point where it is making scrolling unenjoyable. A lot of people are struggling and frankly the web is a time suck. People are much less open to people with different ideas - and hopefully that changes because the world is a darker place when really very little has actually changed.
Summary, the politicization of everything is a problem it makes life much less enjoyable - politicizing everything aspect of life was also used to control people in the Soviet Union. Add in that people’s lives change. Some of us have kids. Technology isn’t really making peoples lives easier it’s just raising demands. It was 9-5 my entire life and in about the last 6 months it has become 8-5. There are a lot of shifts happening.
I loved WSO during 2016-2020, there would be a Drumpfy argument at least once a week.
I remember. I was in just getting to high schoolish.
Look up posts around 2006 - 2008, especially any of the Bear and Lehman folk talking about it. Most of you won't know ibankingoasis. Vaguely remember @DickFuld being pretty tell it like it is but putting out good content.
Look into the contributions of people like @Edmundo Braverman. Absolute legend and one of the nicest people here. Look up his feature on Playboy.
Memory escapes me but find the thread of that dude who couch surfed with a bunch of people here. This was my "holy shit, what an amazing community" moment. I met a lot of folk here iRL, some I still keep in touch with.
Look up APAE is black lol. Legendary and very introspective moment.
I encourage you to notice the tone and substance of those conversations. Smart, opinionated but respectful of each other.
If you had an opinion of substance and worth respecting, people engaged. Nobody bitched about "censorship". That's some copout shit man, sorry. If you had content of substance to say, people engaged. Now its all about "but nobody listens to my bullshit, Pat loves censorship". Look at all the complaints on this thread.
The community was about the people. You knew who was who, even if you didn't know who they were irl. Nowadays bros want to just shit on women, DEI and UBS as "analyst-1". Weak af.
I was a young, completely non target nobody who didn't know his head from his ass and this community showed me the path. I'm still trying to find ways to give back. The tone of this community nowadays makes it really hard to do that.
Similar to you, got on this site in high school and didn’t experience peak of the personalities from late 00’s. But I remember reading a post by @goldencinderblock about him beating his Xanax addiction and moving on with his life. Then you had an entire thread about people discussing drug use or addiction. Something like that wouldn’t happen now.
That's about when I started reading as a very forgettable troll working in accounting and thinking about switching over to finance (I might have left by the time you started posting). Very interesting vibe in the late aughts but I have no point of reference to say whether it's "bad" now.
My son is a freshman in college now and my wife is pushing WSO guides on him for a few years from now so 1) holy crap and 2) Patrick that's a really long close but you're finally going to get a sale off of me for that free T-shirt in 2010/11
I don't think the internet will ever go back to web 1.0 style forums, this is a microcosm for change everywhere. Those of us who predate social media and smartphones are like the last generation of people who wore suits as their only primary attire. We lost many small elements of the site too; certified user private areas, blogs, weekly roundups, chronological threads without nested topics etc...
Decentralized internet was so much fun, man. Forums hit way different when bringing people together via common interests vs. today when everyone is just… here.
In a year's time your GPT will be able to act more WSO than WSO could ever do.
Nobody seems to be mentioning that new users can’t upvote or downvote anything, which pretty much kills the chance of real engagement from the onset
Really? I think this is just to prevent abuse /spam...
I was banned from commenting for like half a year for simply participating in shittalking about censorship.
Now our greatest topics are - Which perfume should I buy? London comp, Am I gonna make it or it’s over (freshman and hasn’t received any offers yet), target high schools, hating on immigrants in ib (because of skill issues), chatgpt
By throwing monkey shits you only prove my point. So go ahead, I won’t edit my original text
We are in dire need of a great “__ is paradise” post
Too long didn’t read but I agree. I want new@Master of Prospects posts. This forum is going to shit.
Legit, bottombuckethardo was alright
Oh yeah, BBH. And all of his alts. H/Y/P/D and "waspy broads". Wonder where that guy went
Need higher bar to entry. Make work email or school email required to post and comment on WSO. This way we can bifurcate the prospect tierlist slop and actual real discussions.
And then you make sure the emails leak so they could be traced back to the poster
What happened to the guy that would make all of the posts about VP busting nuts and shit. Those were peak WSO for me
I think the anonymous posting / commenting feature is largely to blame for this site's decline. Once people realized they don't have to tie their name to the content they put out, however meaningless an online persona may be, more low-effort threads and commentary emerged. This eventually led to more trolls, more rage-bait commenting in legitimate threads by said trolls, and a higher number of shitposts / low effort posts in general. Ultimately, there are more people now posting and commenting anonymously than posting under usernames. Thus, low quality begets low quality as discerning contributors use the website less frequently and do not engage as much as they once did, if at all.
Yeah, I wonder what would happen if we didn't allow anonymous posting anymore? Likely a lot more burner accounts I'm guessing? Maybe we could split test this somehow...
I think society as a whole has just gotten a lot more pessimistic over the past 5 years or so. I'm a pretty new user, but even scrolling through old posts trying to look for answers I can tell that this site used to be a lot more populated by people in the industry vs people trying to get into it(students).
I think WSO is an echo chamber at this point and with the job market being this bad it makes a lot of people, myself included, a lot more negative and vocal about it being bad. On one hand there's almost 2 or three posts a week about analysts ans associates being burned out and wanting to quit the industry and on the other hand there's 2 or three posts about a kid not being able to make into the industry. Just all around bad news.
WSO are the users and the users are WSO so I'm not sure how you could solve this problem unless you start getting a lot more selective on who you want to admit(not sure how that would work).
I think the industry is at an all time peak when it comes to being so competitive so there's a lot more frustrated people.
Forums just aren't a thing anymore. This is a web 1.0 relic. Impressive honestly that it's still going.
Thanks... We have some ideas to try and keep it going stronger. I agree there are some difficult trends around search, mostly driven by AI that make organic growth difficult... We're being forced to spend more of our time building on our socials because that is where our people are spending more of their time.
There used to be a lot of good content here. Eddie Braverman and some other characters. A lot of them probably wound up with families and moved on or made their exit from this line of work.
Biggest difference I can think of is- WSO was the place to come if you wanted info on high finance. Today, just ask ChatGPT.
Any ideas on how we can lean into the human element to make it better?
There was a time when I was looking forward to attend a WSO or finance meetup in NY. I met some genuine and decent members through WSO.
These days, I simply wouldn't go anymore.
Am I older than before? Yes, more advanced in my career also. So, there is less use to meet new people and contacts. But the general vibe is also different now.
Tend to think this is restricted to the IBD forum more than anything. RE/HF forums have some great synthesised, hard-to-find-otherwise intel - these threads being recent examples. https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/real-estate/20252026-market https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/hedge-fund/ama-credit-hf-analyst
The difference in thread quality between each of the finance sub-sectors is a hundred percent a thing. Whether that's to do with how specifically commoditized IB has become? Difficult to say.
I also agree with this. The job search forum is also pretty bad but that's to be expected.
Speaking of forums, what happened to the Wealth management forum? Seems like the only one you have to actually search for and can't click on.
I’m not as old as some of the legends that are referenced here but I started using WSO 10+ years ago. I recently returned out of boredom when delayed at the airport. Here are my thoughts:
Anyways, this is a long winded way of saying, this blog is downstream of the finance industry, which is downstream of global growth (since excess capital flows through developed financial centers). The world isn’t growing anymore, AI probably won’t dramatically change things bc we are very far away from AGI. Makes perfect sense that young ppl who end up on the internet sound like they are frustrated / mad about life. They have no future. They’ll never afford a home, even if they do go into banking / PE. If they are on WSO, they probably aren’t having sex. What do you expect?
Thanks to everyone that posted here. Obviously a lot to chew on... I agree with a lot of what is being said here but I think we can evolve and do a better job on the forum side.
Maybe I can host a Q&A since it's long overdue.
Thanks,
Patrick
Can we get a decent non-glitchy app?
LBO and fire patrick. How much?
first of all, I have a frozen peak account with my main deck being made of level 8’s and whatnot. Levels don’t matter as much as the deck does. Another thing, try to ONLY upgrade the cards in your deck. That way you save coins, and also keep your exp low, therefore going against pretty bad people, or low level people. But my advice is to constantly battle and open chests. chests give a good amount, free chests are better than silver chests, golds are even better, but the best easy access chest is the crown chest. They are WAY worth it. And continue battling and winning for about 20 times. The gold from those wins add up to about 300 gold, and plus crown chest and other chest should be about 1000 gold per 24 hrs. Donations also help a lot too. Rares give 50 gold each so a clan with a lot of people in it should help a bunch too. and make SURE that if you have to leave or something, that your crown chest has at least 1 crown in it. After that, when 24 hours elapse, you can get 2 crown chests which is a LOT of gold. So make sure you are making the right “financial” decisions and upgrade the cards you need only in your deck. That’s one of the reasons there are level 5 people are in legendary arena. So as long as you are getting max gold every day and make the right decisions after a certain time, you’re going to have more than enough money for stuff.
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