As IF Times

link:  https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/hawk-tuah-girls-meme-coin-crashes-from-500m-to-60m-in-minutes-fans-in-meltdown-101733405915215.html

The name Hailey Welch may not be a household name to average people, but she achieved meteoric notoriety in the past year over a simple unrehearsed response to a question posed of her in a street interview; likely when she was over-refreshed.  From that response that went viral, Hailey became known as the ‘Hawk Tuah Girl’.  As an example of Andy Warhol’s dictum that everyone has their 15 minutes of fame, Hailey became ubiquitous as she was interviewed by everyone who had a podcast.  She threw out baseballs at games, had to hire a manager, created a merchandise line and acquired millions of on-line followers.

What else was there to do?  Well, in following the most recent tide of cultural fashion, she created a digital currency…of course!  On a platform called Solana, the Hawk Tuah memecoin was launched.  As befitting the hysteria which is the digital currency space, the valuation instantly rose to a valuation of $500 million dollars!  But wait! The Cinderella story quickly became a pumpkin when within 20 minutes of launch, the valuation had crashed to only $60 million.

Naturally a wave of outrage erupted as people who had bought into the meme token, then lost a pile of money, were indignant that this could happen.  It seemed outrageous that you could actually lose money on buying nothing!  Hailey went from being a heroine to a scoundrel overnight.

Those of us who’ve been around long enough to have lived through numerous market cycles are frankly amused at the outrage surrounding this fiasco.  As is standard for human nature throughout time, blame is always directed everywhere except where it rightfully belongs….with oneself.

The modern crop of internet speculators are such ripe victims for naïve market activity.  They don’t know a treasury bond from a James Bond, yet they are lured with visions of instant wealth by others who have purportedly done the same thing successfully.  There is a distinct difference between price and value. As reference for those who don’t know the difference, price is the level at which parties agree upon when they have different perceptions of value.  Somebody thinks something is cheap, while the other party thinks it’s expensive.

In fact the ‘Hawk Tua’ memecoin is an excellent example of any free market, including stocks, real estate, jewelry, baseball cards and especially art. There is in fact no absolute inviolable value of anything, only the price at which an item can fetch from another buyer.  The only reason that anything has any value at all is because someone else thinks there is a benefit to owning it.

Despite this basic truth, there are entire industries and countless people employed with the premise of advising people what to buy and to assess valuations of all manner of assets.  The fundamental reality of all free markets is that a price exists for an item only at that point in time and is entirely dependent on the confidence of the market players.

History is rife with examples of crazes and fads that have existed throughout time and through many different cultures. A classic work which documents some of the more famous ones is “Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds” compiled by Charles Mackay.  He documents the environment that gave rise the infamous “South Sea Bubble” and “Tulip-mania”.  With humor and hindsight, he documents some of the greatest human foibles and neuroses throughout history.

Suffice to say, it must be in the human condition to be swept up by a frenzy of the mob and that once ensnared, the mob will have a life of its own, overwhelming individual’s ability to act intelligently.  So for those who got swept up in the Hawk Tuah frenzy, or Bitcoin fever, or real estate panic, or collector watches; congratulations, you are the mob.

link:  https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-12-03-european-journalists-leaving-x-despise-free-speech.html

In 2006, a group of young people including Jack Dorsey started a little company named Twitter which was in fact only a side venture of their main project at the time.  Twitter was originally meant as a short messaging application allowing only a few characters to be sent, so the messages had to be brief and to the point.

The idea gained traction amongst early adopters and by 2013, after an IPO raising $1.8 billion, it was valued at $25 billion.  While that was an eye popping number, Elon Musk came along in 2022 and paid $44 billion to buy the entire company.  While numerous other social media messaging platforms have appeared since Twitter, now rebranded as X, this platform remains the most widely used and referred messaging platform in the world….not to mention the most influential. It is so influential that some authoritarian governments, such as Brazil’s, actually banned the use of X by their population.

Nowadays, X is the source for the most up to date information on every event worldwide since everyone who uses it can be a conduit for news. How quaint to think about the environment of a few decades ago when you had to wait for the 6 o’clock news.  Even professional journalists had to have an exposure to the platform to stay current with world affairs.  Of course, the flip side to the flood of current information was the proliferation of opinions on any given topic, many of which are considered controversial.

Until Elon Musk purchased and rebranded the platform, Twitter took it upon itself to censor posts which were not in line with the views of the owners.  Thus, as in most media companies, the views of conservatives were censored or just outright banned. Twitter fell into being an echo chamber for left leaning views as did all other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

As Musk took control of the company, he reinstated the principle of free speech to the platform and thus, X truly regained its reputation as being the forum for the exchange of ideas, opinions and news.  To this day, users from across the ideological spectrum use X for their messages to the public, from celebrities, to the plain folk, from politicians to tyrants (often the same).

An odd thing happened since Musk’s takeover.  Now that X is a conduit for freedom of information and opinion, legions of once active social justice posters have publicly left the platform, including most recently over 300 European journalists.

If you think about it, why do journalists even exist?  Their notional job is to report news and events.  Currently, with eyeballs everywhere and with access to platforms such as X, we don’t need a middleman to tell us that a house is on fire.  We can observe that by ourselves.  Information is available, it’s current and it’s accurate.  Journalism these days consists of reporting on an event and supplementing it with commentaries entirely misleading or inaccurate.  Thus, a burning house will be characterized as a result of policies not friendly to climate change.  A couple of people seen sneezing at a venue constitutes evidence of a massive pandemic. It’s as if you ordered a meal at a restaurant and the waiter regales you with a narrative of how the food was artfully prepared by culturally sensitive craftsmen using only natural ingredients and socially acceptable techniques.  So, basically you get a free side dish of sanctimony that you didn’t ask for.

We don’t need middlemen to report the news. It reminds me of the old cliché about consultants; they look at your watch and tell you what time it is…for a fee.  The 300 ‘journalists’ quitting X are enacting a real life ‘Blazing Saddles’ moment, they are threatening their own livelihoods in protest of not being able to spin the news their way.  They’ve all but admitted that they no longer control the narrative, thus they are superfluous.  The past dozen years or so have exposed the majority of media to be fatally biased at best or are loyal mouthpieces of the governing establishment at worst. How often have we seen numerous media outlets use exactly the same phraseology to characterize an event… as if it were orchestrated?

We can say without exaggeration that Elon Musk has single-handedly restored free speech to the world.  He has allowed people to see that their views, though not blessed by the mainstream, are not unique; that many feel the way that they do.  This is an enormously powerful revelation and will have an enormous negative impact on authoritarian governments everywhere.