this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
328 points (98.5% liked)

The Internet in Ancient Times

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Welcome to the stone age... or the bronze age... or the iron age... heck, anything with an 'age' is welcome, except our modern age or any ages to come.

This is about what the internet was like thousands of years ago back when it all started. Like when Darius the Great hired mercenaries via Craigslist or when Egypt invented emojis.

CODE OF LAWS

1 - Be civil. No name calling, no fighting, keep your flint hand axes inside your leather pouches at all times.

2 - Keep the AI stuff to a minimum. It gets annoying and old fashioned memes are more fun for everyone.

3 - None of this newfangled modern 21st century nonsense. We don't even know what "21st century" means.

4 - No porn/explicit content. The king is sensitive about these things.

5 - No lemmy.world TOS violations will be tolerated. So there.

6 - There is no ~~rule~~ law 6.

Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established. A righteous law, and pious statute did he teach the land. Hammurabi, the protecting king am I. I have not withdrawn myself from the men, whom Bel gave to me, the rule over whom Marduk gave to me, I was not negligent, but I made them a peaceful abiding-place. I expounded all great difficulties, I made the light shine upon them. With the mighty weapons which Zamama and Ishtar entrusted to me, with the keen vision with which Ea endowed me, with the wisdom that Marduk gave me, I have uprooted the enemy above and below (in north and south), subdued the earth, brought prosperity to the land, guaranteed security to the inhabitants in their homes; a disturber was not permitted. The great gods have called me, I am the salvation-bearing shepherd, whose staff is straight, the good shadow that is spread over my city; on my breast I cherish the inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad; in my shelter I have let them repose in peace; in my deep wisdom have I enclosed them. That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and orphans, I have in Babylon the city where Anu and Bel raise high their head, in E-Sagil, the Temple, whose foundations stand firm as heaven and earth, in order to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries, set up these my precious words, written upon my memorial stone, before the image of me, as king of righteousness.

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 2 months ago

He should have listened to them, if even WSB comes together to tell you how stupid that idea is, you know you've got a real stinker on your hands.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 months ago (2 children)

19 year old doesn't have a lot of personal savings anyway not a big deal Time to start saving again. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 78 points 2 months ago (6 children)

That person had 400$ and now owes 56k

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

$400 left.Who knows how much he started with initially.

E: started with about $7k

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Where the hell is a teenager finding 7k? That takes some bootstraps pulling.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't know how this one got $7,000 but I do know that some teenagers have jobs and it isn't very hard to save money when your needs are taken care of due to living with your parents.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I had about 8k saved up when I was 17, mostly for college.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

There are a lot of upper middle-class kids who start out adulthood with tens of thousands of dollars.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

You can make $7k by 19 relatively easily if you never spend money on stuff and your family is large and generous with the birthday cards

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

If you're working full time and still living with your parents then $7k is easy to save up.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That's what we call an ouchie.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

I'm pretty sure that can be cleared with a bankruptcy. Considering a 19 year old isn't likely to have any non-exempt assets, they can go bankrupt with basically no penalty other than having a bankrupcy on their record for the next 7 years.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If I understand correctly, they can sell the shares they were forced to buy and get back most of the $56,000 they owe.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

When you short a stock, you borrow a stock, then sell it, then you buy it back at a (ideally) lower price. Then, you have to give back the stock plus interest. This person can’t sell the stock because they have to give it back. It wasn’t theirs to begin with. They were just borrowing it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

Yeah, but the big number (-$56k) is not from a short, it's from a call getting assigned. He sold it naked (didn't have shares to back it) it expired ITM, and he has to cover. The broker is going to give the shares to the call buyer, and OP is out maybe a couple hundred bucks whatever the difference between spy close price, and the strike he sold *100 shares depending on what SPY closed at that day. He's not -$56 k on that trade.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

He's in a better financial position than I was coming out of college. And it sounds like we both got a valuable education for our money.

[–] JackbyDev 2 points 2 months ago

Well, not exactly, his brokerage bought 100 shares of SPY and charged him the price of that. He can just sell them.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The problem with options trading is you can lose more money than you invest.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

They are betting that they can make more than they are investing, with the downside of losing more than they are investing.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That has got to be the stupidest reasoning for doing something on the stock market that I have ever heard

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Then this person has won r/wallstreetbets, because the entire sub is a meme

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Making any kind of profit on this sub is seen as a tragedy

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

Wait till you hear about the gourds...

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Isn't it the risk of trying to make money with money? It's like gambling. If you don't want to risk losing that money, don't play that game.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago

The thing is that what this guy did is absolutely gambling. Investments are gambles but the risk is low. This was just putting everything on 00 and when it didn't pay out, he got as much credit from the casino he could and bet again.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

it's not like gambling. it's gambling. except more stupid because they shorted fucking copper based on their opinion on medals.

[–] JackbyDev 7 points 2 months ago

At least with normal stocks you have an asset at the end. This was options trading though lol. And shorting, which is like the most risky thing. You have finite possible returns but infinite possible losses.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (1 children)

19 years old. Life savings. 🙄

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

i thought it was code for daddy's money but apparently it was 400 bucks.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Boomers keep telling me I should have put $20 in my savings account with every paycheck starting at age 18 and I'd be able to retire at 65. Dude was not going to be able to retire at 65 apparently.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

the fun part of it is that a combination of inflation and stagnating wages means $20 keeps getting smaller in terms of value but also keeps becoming a larger part of your disposable income.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

He had $400 left in his account before the margin call. The trouble with options is that they can be very highly leveraged, meaning you're trading on credit, and you can lose a lot of money really fast (and likewise, gain a lot of money really fast). Most brokerages don't even let you trade on options until you can prove you have knowledge of how the market works. So the kid is probably smart, but like many smart 19 year olds, not smart enough.

This guy owes the brokerage $56k.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

400 bucks you don't owe for rent is a lot when you're 19.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

How can copper possibly go up in price, its a soft metal, low tensile strength, not resisyent to acids, tarnishes easily. Literally useless except for, I dont know, pots or whatever! Literally nothing else in the world uses copper!

  • This guy
[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So probably a fake story is what I'm reading?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

i wouldn't outright call it fake,
at worst its misleading.

he misunderstood his account info and didn't loose as much as he thinks.

wouldnt be the first make that mistake.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Oh shit, that reminded me of that guy who thought he owed something like 90k and killed himself only for the account to be settled the next day and he had earned money.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

that was exactly the same issue.

thats why the comments are so uncharacteristically helpful and serious for r/wsb

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How did they learn he made money if he was dead?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

It was in the news. I guess his family or friend checked the account afterwards?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

If he's making that mistake he should not be trading lol

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Nanni gonna write a yelp review

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

So he expected something like: "Those bronze medals look awful! Time to rip out all that copper piping and wiring from my home and dump it on the market!"

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

God I miss old WSB the memes were so spicy and loss porn was better than pornhub. I'll never forget that kid that got $800,000 loan on futures only to go like -$1.5Mn in debt lmfaoooooo.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Oh no!

Anyway…

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

That’s about what I’d expect from wsb. Delusions of grandeur combined with complete failure to understand the modern world.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago
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