ET and Its Discontents

One thing that struck me yesterday was the intensified and extreme level of hostility exhibited by some posters. Free floating hostility by free floating posters. One presumes that everyone here is connected to trading in some way or another, else why come here? So what is it about being connected to trading that breeds such hostility? A clue: ultra-hostile posts tend to be devoid of meaningful trading content. They tend simply to denigrate the victim and to aggrandize the poster. Aha! Inferiority. Humiliation. Powerlessness. Anger. The market will do that to you, the bitch!
 
Such bad behavior is characteristic of a healthy four year old actually. We all go through that stage. When people are traumatized they slip back a stage or two of development, sometimes all the way back. Perhaps these traders are so bad, so utterly ill fitted for trading, so utterly ill advised at dealing with adversity, so utterly steeped in the mindset of things being geared to the slowest learner, and so otherwise unemployable that they cannot cope and are reduced to the four year old stage of development? Perhaps they will come back to the markets again and again to get their punishment, as they got when they were four years old? Perhaps if we truly understood them they would be good for an ongoing laugh?? Perhaps we should thank them for the money as well?
 
Thank you for your thoughtful post, Maxpi. I think that the cause is suffering, as well. Somehow suffering doesn't build character in a trader the way it supposedly does in other arenas of life. Perhaps because it is so easy to blame outside influences and not see the fault in ourselves. I pay particular attention to when my favorite (and unfavorite) posters post, and there seems to me to be a lot of anxiety avoidance here, escaping market monitoring at critical moments when the stress of decision making may be too much to bear.

I watched ET closely today because I made reasonable profit in the morning and decided to sit the rest of the day out. Some prominent people were posting at times when I thought they should be attending to the market. Very telling, IMO.

Today I decided to follow a particular subculture on ET, the theory being that something might be learnt from their interactions. I shan't mention who because I don't want to be stalked by them here. A very scary group of thugs. Supposedly serious people were flinging verbal feces at one another, as you say, like four year olds. What must they be like in person? One shudders to think!

You mentioned learning at the rate of the slowest learner. What is hard about A-B-C, or 1-2-3? Trading is actually quite simple, and we only complicate it because we lack the courage to approach it simply. Some of the trading screens we see are astonishingly complex. And multiply redundant, IMO. I think that those who cannot approach the market confidently are like those who cannot approach a woman with confidence. Losers.
 
An analysis of the peculiar zeitgeist of ET sprang to mind at the end of compulsively and voyeuristically reading the two leading current Jacktractor threads, only one of which started being about that august gentleman. As they spun further and further out of control, spawning new aliases and generally taking the level of discourse down to the gutter, I was curiously disgusted with myself for wanting to dive into the mudbath with them. It was only the greatest self-restraint, coupled with the fact that I was inexplicably sober, that prevented me from doing so.

Then I realized it: ET exists so that otherwise rational men and women, prosperous enough at least to own computers and to afford internet connections, and clearly not living on the streets, may abase themselves with utter abandon. Yes! ET is all about self-abasement. Petty gamblers argue incessantly that trading is (or is not) predicting. Men of otherwise good repute troll for the odd buck from the odder sucker. Jack, clearly from the open record a man of some community distinction, lowers himself into the cesspool so rabid from constant abuse that he babbles. People whom I KNOW actually trade, post during RMH. It was then I realized that I would rather my wife discovered me surfing porn than posting on ET.

We have abasement here in all its forms: fawning sycophancy, Tourettes' given free reign, hot anger overwhelming cool logic, MPD run rampant, incoherent insomnia....The list is endless.

There. Now I have done my part. I feel so much better!
 
I was in the army reserve at one time and had to go through basic training. The most difficult part about this process for myself was living with 60 guys in one large room for 8 weeks straight. Thats 60 young guys from around the nation with varying levels of maturity and sanity.

The emotions in that large room ran strong at times and there were many fights to be seen. Lots of tension.

Message boards like these remind me of that large room. There are thousands of people on this message board with varying levels of maturity and sanity from all around the world.

The hostility, in my opinion, comes from immaturity and youth. You can bet that if the 60 guys in the large room were all above the age of 30 then there wouldnt have been the same level of tension and everyone would have worked together.

As I see it, the hostile and abusive posts are probably coming from some young insecure guys who havent had the life experiences to understand what being a mature man is all about...
 
Michael, thank you for your insights. Two thoughts. What would it have been like in a room with half men and half women (also a situation we lack)? And, from the perspective of my age, there must be a behavioral reversion breakpoint past 30, because some of the biggest jerks here are over 60.
 
Quote from Duref Mudgins:

"... What would it have been like in a room with half men and half women...a situation we lack?..."
More...

And did anybody stop to think, what it would have been like in a room where *each* person were half-man and half-woman... you know, hermaphrodite?

Yeaaahhh, that could get somthing going...
 
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