/biz/ - Business & Finance

It seems that a cult of personality is the business venture with the highest possible ROI. Having a crowd of people eager to hold your bags is like cheat codes. People like Trump and RK clearly have something going for them, although it's hard to determine how much is luck.

So I have been thinking about the fundamentals of creating willing bagholders. Of the elements that can be determined at a glance, humor seems the most significant. Trump is funny. Internet memes are funny. Roaringkitty's investing advice is to pull Uno cards. Humor seems both to disarm people and to make them not take the situation too seriously. A stock getting pumped and dumped is a bad feeling, but if instead it's a token called "only fucking retards buy this ;)" then instead it's fun. It also helps undermine counter narratives, because people who complain about how we should take this seriously are not funny and kind of suck to be around.

A second element is never telling the audience that they're wrong. DFV obviously will not DRS his GME shares, because he isn't a retard and is playing a completely different game, but he's never going to say to his baggies that any particular element of their theory is wrong. Instead he will post memes and entirely nonspecific "hype", which to them sounds like a confirmation of their crayon scribbled theories.

The third is the creation of an enemy. Here DFV is just lucky, as reddit created this narrative out of thin air for him. Nevertheless the enemy is essential to the functioning of the cult of personality, because it creates a desire for solidarity and loyalty in a "fight". People will overlook negative qualities of the figure if they perceive them to be a leader in a battle that needs support.

Nevertheless, there needs to be some kind of catalyst to transform a person from a moderately successful personality into a cult figure. Perhaps the most important thing is to be positioned to benefit from whatever instability may occur in the future.