The nihilistic rise of ‘loss porn’

It’s been a terrible few weeks for that guy you know. Bitcoin dropped to a ten-month low (apparently thanks to something called ‘stablecoins’), while $1 trillion has been wiped off the largest tech companies on the stock markets. ‘Retail investors’ – non-professionals with little more than an internet connection – are struggling.

You might expect many of them to put their heads in their hands and log off. But that would be to misunderstand the nihilism of online culture. Losing is the same as winning, only better. The thing to do is to post evidence of your catastrophic losses. It's called ‘loss porn’ and if you look at the ‘WallStreetBets’ page on the social media platform Reddit, particularly in the last few days, you’ll see some proper filth.

In the 1980s, successful investment meant you were a good person: you had the right to tell anyone who would and wouldn’t listen how shrewd you were. But in the age of Reddit, posting wins is showing off and a bit lame.

What’s more fun, or cooler, is to parade your despair to the rest of the bedroom army. If a plucky investor on Wall Street Bets – which made the news last year after the Gamestop short squeeze – dares to start a victory lap, they’ll most likely receive a demand to ‘post loss porn’.

Some of the loss stories are quite seductive. A novice lost $60,000 on his first day of trading Gamestop options. One trader made $5m off a $35,000 investment, then blew 93 per cent of it in a week. Phwoar. A prolific Reddit investor promised to cut off his penis if Gamestop closed below $450 at the end of the day. It did.

Loss porn rides through Reddit on a wave of anxiety and schadenfreude. It’s easy to see the attraction for the reader. ‘Thank God that’s not me’ is a good way of affirming you’re one of the elect. Had a bad day with dogecoin? That’s alright: you can always feel better by finding someone who put their life savings into GM, not GN.

Like actual porn, there’s probably more enjoyment for the object of attention than the subject. But there’s catharsis for the losers. It’s a defence mechanism – to laugh at yourself before others do, ‘owning the insult’ as a tactic to blunt the pain. The mad mood of these forums prizes commitment to the cause, not financial prudence. It shows you know that nothing matters. It’s also important to take pride in being ‘a retard’; someone who is hopeless.

Again like actual porn, loss porn is not exclusively a male thing, but women are definitely in a minority. One person asked: ‘Where the women at’? None were forthcoming. There’s quite an endearing sense that women are too pure for this lark ('stop trying to drag them down with us', one investor wrote).

These Reddit forums show a fascinating rabble of surprisingly self-aware, slightly troubled men (with probably quite a few Patrick Bateman posters between them) who’ve found their drug, and know it’s not good for them. They present themselves as cursed with the urge to bet, and damned by the inevitable losses: 'we’ve achieved a level of retardation that goes beyond retardation'.

But the remedy is almost always laughter. After losing hundreds of thousands, one gambler emptied his palms to show Reddit his remaining $1,500. They told him to 'buy a velvet rope so at least you go out in a luxurious way'. It’s a form of stoicism.

After losing as much as some of these young men have, what better than to be laughed at, memed and told to ‘pick yourself back up’ and called a ‘king’? The Wild West of retail investing can’t be wished away: it’s now something anyone might get into, like football, gambling or cooking. For the unlucky many, there’s the adoration of their peers and the delight of sharing the shock of economic Armageddon.