They suffer primarily from NGU fomo trauma and the sunk cost fallacy, but the communities certainly create a sort of stockholm syndrome. I see people on twitter/x that have been promoting alts for years and they are starting to sound desperate in a way I haven't seen before, like nobody loves their puppy and they don't understand why.

So why is bitcoin different? It's in the foundational ethos of self-sovereignty over ponzi networking. We don't bitcoin because it will be more valuable in dollars tomorrow, we do it because everything else is garbage and this is the way out. You can see this in the OG bitcoiners who have realized that getting people to buy bitcoin is not helpful to anyone--as the buyer is still thinking in broken terms. Some people need to learn the hard way, and for others, helping them to learn about what's broken in everything else is the best education that will ultimately lead them down the right path. The right path is one that people will find through a scientific process of reduction and discovery without having to resort to proselytizing behaviors.