Many shitcoin/meme coin Telegram groups that you might stumble into have strict no FUD policies. Some even lock the chat at convenient moments so that folks cannot enter and voice their dismay about a project, warn that it might be a scam, or otherwise bring any critical attention to how the project is being managed. Why is that?
Simple: project teams - especially teams of outright exploitative projects - often wish to effectively silence any voices that may be critical and thus dull the hype their fervent holders create. There's a thin line between being critical of a project in the sense of offering valid feedback and critical in the sense of trying to cast aspersions on the project, effectively seeking to persuade holders to dump their bags. Depending on the admin and moderators of the project, the threshold of this line may move.
One of the most toxic rhetorical tricks that will continue to be run over and over again in the crypto space is that one should always be bullish about the coin or token being hyped up. However, it's tough to tap into the motive from project to project. Keep in mind, I'm primarily talking about the meme coin or shitcoin space here. There's a cottage industry of rug pulls, honeypots, and other variations of pump and dumps that poach the most proven hype messages and keep them proliferating. The sheer pace and magnitude of hype that pump out of some projects is enough to ignite FOMO and prompt a thoughtless buy in moments. The problem is, many of the projects that launch in this space with positive, long-term intentions use the same hype tactics. In either case, criticism is frowned upon and even moderately negative, yet truthful and accurate criticism is often written off as outright FUD.
Let's unpack each component of this acronym, taking each element to be a step in a process.
Fear: "an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger; anxious concern"
Fear is an emotion. Even the negative feelings that come up when reading a line of criticism can fly a red flag that one might be reading FUD. Frankly, if you and the rest of the community want to see number go up, then no negative feelings are allowed. That is to say the chat admin and moderators are ultimately curators of feelings. As soon as a comment wades a little bit too far into the hot waters of criticism, some moderators will drop the ban hammer and avoid entertaining it as legitimate critique. For some straight up exploitative projects, anything that may produce a negative feeling is purged immediately and erased from the ongoing LEDGER of feeling that is the chat. Of course, this feeling arises because it prompts an "awareness of danger," namely that one may lose their money. This leads us to the next step:
Uncertainty: "not having certain knowledge; not clearly identified or defined"
Uncertainty is when there is all of a sudden a crack in the glass and one realizes they might not be so sure about the project anymore. Let's say an anticipated roadmap event never happened, there is an inconsistency in the whitepaper, there is contradicting communications between the team members, or perhaps the team, or part of it, has gone missing. Even if all these aspect check out, one starts to recognize that even the most valiant efforts to hype the project, the most bullish marketing moves or the newest upgrade to an aspect of the project falls flat. One becomes uncertain that there is any chance of recovery or even about the legitimacy of the project. Bear in mind, the team might also be feeling FUD in the background, but will continue to hype up the project for days or weeks even though they know it has little chance of revival. This is where we get to the last stage in the process:
Doubt: "to believe that (something) may not be true or is unlikely; to have no confidence in"
"Always bullish" is another phrase for unwavering confidence. In fact, if there's one thing that the shitcoin space runs on, it's manufactured confidence. Once someone believes that a project has a very low probability of upwards price movement and the bearish blues set in, one is squarely in the realm of doubt. Confidence is undercut and the exit sign starts to look like it might be worth walking towards. Sometimes fear will slide (fear is often seen as a noobie emotion that the community can help correct), perhaps less frequently uncertainty, but doubt is typically the thing that will get censored the most. If fear is the opposite of enthusiasm and uncertainty the opposite of certainty, doubt is the opposite of trust. And while many folks in the crypto space boast about the trustless-ness of blockchain technology, many shitcoins are highly centralized and the trust lies primarily in the hand of the teams who are keeping them alive.
Curating a space to be always bullish is a systematic measure. When questions cannot be answered sufficiently and proof cannot be given, many moderators will resort to banning. In short: this is a suggestion to carefully consider what a team counts as FUD. The boundaries they draw can be very telling.
The definitions used in this article are borrowed from https://www.merriam-webster.com/. The thumbnail image is a remix of https://pixabay.com/vectors/angry-charge-bull-horns-animal-45977/ and https://www.pngall.com/wp-content/uploads/2/Runner-PNG-Image-File.png
Stay safe out there.
