Gatekeeper Extinction
Empowerment, Warren Buffet & GME Merchandise
🧠 Thoughts & Readings
Other things I can think of where I have the impression that gatekeepers are being removed gradually through technology-based services:
Giving feedback to companies: Social media removed the customer service employee as a gatekeeper -> Viral videos, shitstorms
Publishing: No need for a publishing entity/newspaper magazine in the age of Substack, Wordpress, Wix and Co. -> bigger variety of information but also more polarization, people like me writing a newsletter
Entertainment Industry: Removal of middlemen and agencies by TikTok, Youtube & Instagram -> Influencers
Trading: Barriers to trading have been lowered sequentially - from the days where you had to call your bank to High-Frequency- Trading and Robinhood -> Gamestonks
Gatekeeping: Platforms enabling users to curate and flag content (e.g. Wikipedia and now also Twitter) make traditional content moderators redundant -> Wikipedia’s biggest challenge awaits in 2021, rebirth of gatekeepers?
What’s the effect of vanishing of gatekeepers? I’d say it enables community building and leads to (a feeling of) empowerment.
Wikipedia
Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority.
But obviously there is also a (potential) downside to empowerment. To say in the words of Spiderman: ‘With great power comes great responsibility’.
Preliminary Conclusions:
We/online communities can do massive good in the world e.g. investment into sustainable stocks or
It will be normal in the future that people curate or produce some kind of content (e.g. on social platforms, forums, newsletters etc.) in their free time. Virtual volunteering will become mainstream.
Think twice before doing/writing/publishing things online - whatever you put out there can have consequences and you are (almost) your only gatekeeper [1]
🤓 Learnings
Currently learning about: Personal Finance & Sustainable Investing 💸
The effect of compounding is almost always underestimated.
“99% of Warren Buffet’s net worth came after his 50th birthday. 97% after his 65th birthday. If Buffet had retired at age 65, you would have never heard of him. He would just be another guy in Laguna Beach with 200 million bucks which there are a dime of a dozen of in Southern California. The reason why he became worth 90 billion dollars is that he kept investing fulltime through today at age 90.” [2]
✨ Random
The World Wide Robin Hood Society saw their biggest increase in followers throughout the past week
There is a page to by GME Merchandise
Attempts by popular bloggers to make sense of r/wallstreetbets.
[1] Yep, I did sleep over this.
[2] Venture Stories Podcast: The Psychology of Money wit Morgan Housel.
[3] Why has the World Become So Weird.
[4] R/Whitehousebets