Just typing October in the title shows how long it has been since I made a written post on here. One of the reasons why I haven’t posted in a while is due to the pain in my right shoulder. With that being said this post is only partly inspired by my own pain. This post is mainly inspired by Reddit. So what does Reddit have to do with pain? Actually more than you might realize.

The pain that I saw throughout many Reddit communities was internal pain. Before you stop reading because you think that this is a spiritual post, it’s not. This is a post about that has no real title. Also when I say internal pain I am not talking about internal injuries, but pain such as emotional pain. So let’s actually officially start this post.

One of the communities that inspired this post is called Wall Street Bets. The people who post on here seem to love causing themselves financial harm. Most of the post are picture of the portfolio losing over 80% of it’s value. Just the other day there was a post of someone using their student loan to fund their portfolio. They then went all in on their option trading and ending up losing all their initial investment. I know what some of you are thinking, it’s their money so let them do what they want with it. That is true but you will understand why this part is important. Sure their are a few post of people making money going all in on a stock and getting lucky but it’s only a few. And wouldn’t you know it but these are the post that most of the new investors see when they join the community. They have tunnel vision and only focus on the post of gains rather than losses. They suffer from the fear of missing out which is an internal pain. They are scared that they are going to miss the next big IPO that they will blindly invest in anything. This may not seem like pain in your eyes but it is pain especially for their wallet.

Another Reddit community that inspired this post is AntiMlM. This community is there to help educate people on the truth about certain companies and practices. This community coupled with the Entrepreneur community show one of the biggest internal pains people have…. Financial Pain. I have no problem with the AntiMlM community but the stories on there hit home. For those of you who don’t know I was in a network marketing company for a couple of years. Many of these companies reach out to people who are having financial difficulties. They present them a “business opportunity” with the promise of making an income with minimum work required. People who have financial pain are quick to jump on this because it sounds like a no brainer. How do I know, well I jumped into one of these for that same reason. So what does a community about multi level marketing have to do with an entrepreneur community? The entrepreneur community is packed with BS posts saying I made this amount of money in this much time and you can do. They are targeting novice entrepreneurs into buying their programs or video classes on how to become an entrepreneur. Their are some other posts about how easy it is to become a drop-shipper or fulfilled by amazon seller. You may say that people would never be dumb enough to believe something they read online but some of my personal friends fell for those types of post. They believed that it was easy to make money by drop-shipping. They believed all of the information to be factual because the person had nothing to gain from them following his advice. That is until the original poster started selling their own Plug-in that is essential in maximizing profits and streamlining the process.

Many companies out there feed on a person’s pain. Look at companies that don’t require good credit to purchase items. You end up paying a premium for goods because of a low credit score. Cigarettes pray on addiction to drive sales. You can smoke tobacco in a pipe and not get addicted to it but where is the fun in that. Companies that offer pay day loans (which in the state of NY are illegal) prey on individuals who have no rainy day fund. Alcohol is marketed as a way to help forget your problems. The lotto promises a chance at a life of luxury for just one dollar. Pharmaceuticals make money selling you pills to alleviate your pain while causing “mild” side effects. Josh, companies have to make money so isn’t it okay to use someone’s pain to make money. Yes and no Doctor’s for example make money for treating us when we are sick. Physical therapist make money helping us recover and lessen our pain. The world is not only black and white because there are gray areas.

So what was the point of this post? I still have no idea. I was originally going to do this as a podcast episode but I felt this deserved a written post. This post is more of a rant of things I have observed on Reddit and in life. Don’t let people prey on your pains. If something sounds too good to be true then it probably is.