Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution | Meaningness \ stacker news ~mostly

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Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution | Meaningness meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

914 sats \ 8 comments \ @Scoresby 17h mostly_harmless

This article has been posted on SN two times before: in 2022 (#8738) and in 2023 (#251076). Apparently, nobody posted it in 2024. It's never really gotten much attention.

I am giving it a whirl this year: it's not the sort of article I generally agree with. But I've been thinking about Bitcoin and adoption and how all that is going lately. Perhaps there are some useful ways of thinking about it that can be garnered from this kind of analysis.

Serious subcultures are usually eternalistic: the New Thing is a source of meaning that gives everything in life purpose. Eternalistic naïveté makes subcultures much easier to exploit.

I think this is true of many Bitcoiners today: it is a source of meaning. And that very fact probably makes us easier to scam and dupe. So rather than steeling ourselves against the scams and elevating our consciousness to constant vigilance, perhaps we would do well to build out lives beyond Bitcoin.

It's good, from time to time, to think about the question: what would you do if Bitcoin was over, and you had to move on to something else?

Having an answer may make us better at making a world where Bitcoin is never over.

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202 sats \ 2 replies \ @endothermicdev 4h

I'm not sure what I would do - probably get back into more engineering. I used to spend a lot of time at my local makerspace and was into 3d printing, milling, etc., and making prototypes of anything and everything.

About the original article - I feel like I'm noticing a lot more mops lately. I'm sure there were plenty in previous cycles, but even then it seemed like the new entrants were still interested in an entirely unique technology, or breaking the existing financial paradigm, or at least sympathetic to these interests. I browse the bitcoin subreddit every now and then, and it's changed drastically from even a few years ago. It's full of comments celebrating selling bitcoin to pay off a mortgage or become a homeowner. Because that's the real goal apparently. I've similarly noticed comments about how nobody actually bought and held for >5 years ("those are just bots!!"), and that bitcoin might "go to zero" at any moment. I don't think many people there are interested in using it either, it's just a line item in their robinhood account or something. I one point I would have pushed back against these notions, but at this point it would be spitting into the wind.

Anyhow, it's nice over here on SN!

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 4h

go to zero at any moment

That's definitely a tell. I did appreciate the article's sense that some of this is part of the natural course of things: clearly, if Bitcoin is going to gain widespread adoption, it will attract many people who aren't particularly interested in the tech. The question is will there be so many of those people that they weigh the project down.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @endothermicdev 3h

Weigh it down in what way? In terms of the protocol, software and consensus? I think bitcoin has, so far, had a pretty good history of technical merit winning out. That certainly could change, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

In terms of the asset, I do wonder what will happen to adoption and price if there are enough new adopters and they are dead-set on keeping it as 5% of their portfolio vs. equities, real estate or whatever. They see it as an alternative to some tech stock. If that's the case, and they're rebalancing regularly, it will certainly become correlated to every other macro asset in that portfolio. Does it then just end up back in the hands of those with higher conviction over time? I'm not sure if this would stall out adoption or cause a loss of interest due to the price action for long enough to make a difference. At any rate, I wouldn't expect it to act like a debasement hedge or a 21M/∞ asset until the average marginal buyer/seller treats it as such - which could be quite a long time indeed.

304 sats \ 2 replies \ @Murch 2h

I’ve referenced this article in a discussion recently about why the OP_RETURN debate is actually the most harmful at the social layer: it’s a divorce among the geeks, with creators and fanatics being at odds.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 2h

I hadn't thought about it this way. I'm not sure I fully follow it though: is the analogy that creators are devs and fanatics are "plebs" or "bitcoin maxis" or whatever term is current for referring to Bitcoin enthusiasts?

If so, it does make it seem more of a dire situation than I imagined.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Murch 1h

It’s not a perfect analogy, but the split does map pretty well. The “invent a new thing” and “riffing off each other”, would be devs working on the protocol, LN, node software, wallets, Ecash, Ark, Statechains, other L2s, as well as cryptographers, BIP authors, and protocol researchers, whereas “contributing energy (time, adulation, organization, analysis)” fits pretty well to describe meetup facilitators, podcasters, conference organizers, community moderators, newsletter authors, and other hardcore bitcoiners.

In our case, there are some geeks and fanatics on both sides of the debate, but I would say that each is more heavily represented by one or the other.

I’ll leave it to others to identify the mops and sociopaths. ;)

123 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 3h

Here's yet another posting of it from April 2025! #961397

I remember because I commented, haha. I pointed to similarities with the Gartner Hype Cycle #909279

I think these group dynamics are powerful forces and present in many domains, which is why the topic is so evergreen

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 3h

Good find! didn't come up as a dupe because it's not a link post.