I have never been an early adopter, something that has probably dealt me more harm than good over the years, at least from a financial standpoint. When something new is launched, I usually greet it with a lot of skepticism and hesitation. It is certainly not the way of the smart investor because we all know those early days is when the hype runs the most, and massive financial and attention capital flows in.
Who would've thought that people would be able to generate life transforming wealth simply be making short TikTok dance videos. It sounds kind of absurd that I doubt even those who jumped in initially had no idea what they were going to have such success on the platform. Such is the power of the attention economy though, and those who can quickly jump aboard the hype Train are oftentimes rewarded for doing so.
People love sensationalism. We love bright and easy captions that we can easily follow and place quick judgements on. Sometimes we might actually have our more logical sides going contrary to what the crowd says, but we deliberately tone deaf ears. Perhaps the most frustrating part in all these is that it seems to be a continuous cycle that is repeated time and again. When something doesn't quite work out we simply move on to the next big thing.
We see these in virtually all major sectors of functional economy. The fastest and surest way to grab attention is to create sensationalism and give people something to rally round irrespective of the motive or outcome. Those who are experts at grabbing attention and understand the nature of things have positioned themselves in such a way that they'd always be talked about irrespective of the outcome. The worst publicity as they often say, is no publicity.
Hype though for those who don't immediately benefit can be very tricky. For those who fell victims to scams on the crypto space for instance, jumping aboard the Hype Train can prove very costly financially. Other times it ends up being a huge time waster that we willingly sign up for because everyone jumped in. I saw an ex colleague make money in just under a year of his venture into crypto that I can only dream of making even till date, because he was 'lucky' to get in early on one of these scammy looking crypto projects.
Acceptance
What does one do though, finding ourselves in such a situation? We're in an era of hype whether we want to accept it or not. I still retain my stance on being hesitantly cautious with these so called new launches, but i'd be wrong to say jumping in early/blindly has never benefitted anyone. The next bull run will drive a lot of attention into the crypto space once more and it'll be left to us to successfully navigate all the attention. Two can play that game.