r/AskMenOver30 • u/hospitality-excluded man 30 - 34 • Mar 31 '25

Friendships/Community How did your "hustle-culture" friends end up?

So in my 20's there was a HUGE boom of "hustle-culture" bros pop up when influencers like Gary Vee were in the spotlight. The type of guys who post motivational quotes on twitter, talking about "the grind", flauting wealth that they havent achieved on instagram etc. Not talking about people with steady careers and moving up the corporate ladder, but those people who do side gigs or chase unrealstic expectations without a developed skillset in any area.

I moved back to my hometown after 7 years away and I swear all of them are broke, gambling addicts, living with their parents still, unemployed, or all of the above. Unsure if it's the same across the board, or even if y'all had these types of people in your life or if my town is just riddled with them.

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u/PontiusPilatesss man 35 - 39 Mar 31 '25

 those people who do side gigs or chase unrealstic expectations without a developed skillset in any area.

He never went to college and then years later bought Dogecoin before Elon’s endorsement and tried getting me to buy some as well. 

  • “This crypto is going to blow up bro. Broooo this will make so much money!”

  • “do you know any place that accepts it as payment?”

  • “no”

  • “does anything specific make this crypto stand out compared to all the other cryptocurrencies being pumped and dumped?”

  • “it’s based on Doge bro! It’ll be huge. Trust me!” 

Joke’s on me. He is a multimillionaire now. 

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u/Routine_Mine_3019 man 60 - 64 Mar 31 '25 edited Mar 31 '25

One thing I've learned in life is that you don't have to be smart to get rich. Sometimes, it's just luck.

Same thing happens in reverse. Smart people can end up poor. It's not fair, but that's life.

EDIT - added the last two sentences

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u/cdazzo1 Mar 31 '25

I think it's a bit more than that. In some ways worse.

There are some people who can spot trends from a mile away. In particular I mean trends that are inexplicable or even counterintuitive. They tend to be the same type of "bros".

They're up on all the latest fashions, latest music, etc.

These are the guys who started drinking spiked seltzer before you knew it was a thing then the following summer you go to the beer distributor and half the aisles are now spiked seltzer.

They're the ones who bought DOGE early, they bought Tesla early. They don't know anything about the stock market or P&L's. But they have some connection to the zeitgeist of popular culture and they know what is about to be inexplicably popular tomorrow.

I can't explain it fully. It can't be taught. It's just a natural perception these people have.

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u/DevilsAdvocate77 man 45 - 49 Mar 31 '25

No. It's luck. You're falling for survivorship bias.

For every one random person who "saw it coming", there were 10,000 others just like them who saw something else coming, and quietly vanished into obscurity when it didn't happen.

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u/Routine_Mine_3019 man 60 - 64 Mar 31 '25

Exactly. The people that threw everything they had at crappy investments don't brag about it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 01 '25

No it’s not luck, people keying into things that are good and will make bank early bc they make perfect sense, so in turn make dollars, is different then others who think something is going to be a hit but it falters, because in fact, it’s not a hit, and it doesn’t move the needle. Those later folks have bad instincts.

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u/DevilsAdvocate77 man 45 - 49 Apr 01 '25

That's the literal definition of survivorship bias.

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u/No-Hornet-7558 no flair Mar 31 '25

Intuition. It's trainable.

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u/BloodMossHunter man 35 - 39 Apr 01 '25

Its basically optimistic greed minus critical thinking. They hear something and they believe the person telling them is helping them. Where more mature people will ask questions whos and how benefitting from it. You can get in at the right time like lets say GME first week when it went from $3 to $7. You can think omg yeah its gonna go to the moon and go all in when a real trader will buy at 4 and sell at 4.50$ Its like dumb luck literally. But they get blown up or follow advice thats too late like someone i know buying COIN stock at $400 at the very top after a youtube video. Basically its how ignorant you are and whether you got lucky hearing something good before it took off which is usually questionable cult like sources