The Shyamalan Fallacy of Promises: Defining When to Sell
It would be better for my soul (and yours) to write optimistic articles about exciting projects testing the outer banks of Blockchain tech.
Instead, I'm going to define that cloudy mental ruse, used by Crypto/NFT teams to keep you and I invested long enough to lose it all.
If we can define it, we can recognize that it's time to sell when there is still liquidity.
I call it: The Shyamalan Fallacy of Promise
Of course I’m referring to filmmaker M. Knight Shyamalan, writer of such smashing hits as The Sixth Sense and Signs.
He has plenty of other films, but I want to focus on the reveal in The Sixth Sense, because it changed the way audiences watch movies.
“I WAS TOTALLY FOOLED!”, they’ll say.
“HE WAS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME!” they’ll say.
“WHAT A CRAZY REVEAL!”, they’ll say.
For decades, this movie inspired professional (and amateur) screenwriters to sit down, open up a blank document and proceed to write…
…nothing but promises.
They all start with the idea of a reveal, hoping to capture the Shyamalan magic twist.
So they spend hours, days, weeks outlining how they’re going to…HIDE THE TRUTH FOR ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY PAGES.
Every scene is crafted and calculated to to point at the fact that...something BIG is coming. You'll know it when you see it next time you watch. If you want a good example, watch the first season of Westworld. Not a terrible series, but they were telling us that we're inside of a mystery to crack "the maze" the whole time.
Now, I'm not saying that these writers are all scumbag scammers with intent to rob you of your time.
But this formula rhymes with scam and many writers can’t see why crafting an entire story around a reveal is a problem. Writers are always genuinely convinced that their reveal is worth the wait.
But waiting is not an experience.
So here's the facts, friends: Shyamalan did not sit down to write this movie about the reveal. He did not write it about a dead man that thinks he’s alive. He did not write it about ghosts.
He wrote a compelling story about a child psychologist who desperately wants to help a troubled child. This is why we loved every scene.
We loved the journey. The twist was a bonus.
The Shyamalan trick: You were never asking yourself if he was dead or alive. So we were never trying to "crack the code" of the story.
There were a few other films (in that era) that blew off the top at the end, but 99% of the rest just faded into mediocrity, and eventually forgotten. Sound familiar?
My humble advice is this:
If you find yourself invested in a project that makes an announcement about something BIG that's coming:
GET OUT NOW, especially if you're in profit.
It's hard to do, because hype is a seductive game and it works.
The only reason we stay invested in these projects is because they make us afraid to miss out on life changing money.
FACT: any project with the goal to "make you rich" is not looking at the big picture.
Think about the odds for a second:
Let's say 1% projects actually go 20x-100x
This means we should always be looking for reasons to NOT invest
Even if you're in a project that 10x'd, you're still going to have to sell, and they're still going to be telling you that something BIG is coming
99% when that BIG news comes, the big money dumps because they need your liquidity
So...if you were to trim your investment prospects down to the very few that build and share their vision without hype language, your odds of catching the BIG news are so so so much higher
There is a dark truth behind the hype, whether the project is a scam or completely legitimate: They're afraid to tell you what's happening, because it's not good enough to maintain your confidence.
If I stand in front of you with a sheet draped over an object and spend weeks pointing at it repeating:
“You’re gonna love it”
“You don’t want to miss it”
“Get ready”
“You won’t regret it”
Well, it’s no longer possible to fulfill the anticipation that I intended to give my audience, because there is no journey. There is no experience.
All the symptoms can also be found in the discord community: They have to sustain the hype by repeating these promises ad nauseum and shaming holders for selling every time the “highly anticipated” announcement of the next BIG NEWS loses a bit of credibility.
They shame you for having 'Paper Hands', and being weak. That's not a healthy community.
So just get out.
At the end of the day…
In this congested space, largely defined by scams and hype cycles, we’re not very smart if we believe in promises.
Therefore, we can conclude that a community of blind conviction ‘diamond hands’ are...um...kinda dumb.
I'm guilty of holding too. Because I know that most founders and hype teams do believe in what they're doing, so it is real for them.
But it's your money.
So…to get back to our beloved Shyamalan’s smashing hit The Sixth Sense:
Without a troubled little boy and his child psychologist, we wouldn’t give a shit whether Bruce is dead or alive.
Take care out there, because the game will always be rigged against you.
Original Content, Copywright© ProofofBeans 2022. Similar Version first published on Medium
Cover Image: Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels
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