In the context of hard-forks, people will ask "who decides which side of hard-fork wins: miners or nodes?" The answer is neither; consumers are the ones who decide the fate of a hard-fork. When a hard-fork occurs, consumers have the choice of buying/selling on either side of the fork. And they spread that out over time, since they don't make decisions at the same time (unlike individual whales).

When the BSV and BCH forks occured, a lot of consumers sold the BSC and BCH sides and bought the BTC side. This is the one major case in which arguing against shitcoiners publicly is a good idea. Consumers will find eventually find arguments for/against each side of a hard-fork and go with what makes the most sense to them.