The Tragedy of Chat:
Wrong! Rear Echelon Revelations
The Tragedy of Chat
By James J. Cramer
11/20/00 8:09 AM ET
URL: thestreet.com
Is it too late to save chat? What a tragedy that this form of communication, so vibrant and exciting during the formative period on the Net, now seems like something that exists only to raid stocks down or make fun of or lie about companies' prospects and managers. In the Web site business, we have various ratings systems that tell us who is gaining and who is losing traffic. Lately, I have noticed that the sites devoted to chat have taken it on the chin.
Let me give you my theories about why that is. First, I think chat was never something for the masses. Instead, I think there was a core group of rabid posters who were intent on driving out all who disagreed with them. They would stake out boards like vicious homesteaders and scorch anyone who came in with anything but the party line. Now those posters, who were, for the most part, playing the newer economy stocks, have been rocked for massive losses. They were thinly capitalized to begin with (that's Wall Street gibberish for "they didn't have much money").
The angry posters are a shadow of their former selves. They have moved on to whatever angry endeavor that will sate their streak of unbridled viciousness, although I suspect that only the Web hosts, so desperate for pageviews, would tolerate such outrageous conduct. (You see, to monitor the claptrap that passed for security analysis you would have to add thinking staff and cut out the most active posters, hurting your revenue line and boosting your costs. That's not what a Web company is going to elect to do at this stage of the cycle.)
And you know what is a shame? At one time I envisioned chat being this place where reasonable people debated the merits of companies. While I was playing blackjack this weekend, I met some really nice people from Halo, a little $3 technology company. They were very excited about their company, despite the stock's fall. I can remember a time when I would have gone to the chat boards as part of my research of stocks I liked, and I would have run Halo by that gantlet. Now, though, that's strictly preposterous. If there were anyone still paying attention to Halo on the boards he would just be some disgruntled loser trying to attack others who expressed interest. That's just the nature of the chat game.
Hard to believe that this could have been a legitimate method of analyzing securities at one time, after the cesspool it has become. I am done swimming in it, for sure. |
