Some are immune prior, some become immune, and others will always get sick...

This is the business model.

Spike, Plateau, drop....

I'd like to hink that those of us on HN are fairly immune...

You know what would be an interesting model: figure out the ratio of users on a site to users on HN for given things to determine a prediction of stupid adopters to smart adopters.

Then take that ration and apply it to the total adoption, and determine the real profit margin a site could get.

I am not sure how this would work, but I think we can derive the number of people that will do stupid investments of time vs those who see through the scam...

(I am positive this is what quants are masters at...)