Exactly. This in turn devolves into a race to the bottom where you are basically speculating on the speculations of others. Content then becomes popular for no other reason than people thought that other people would find it popular. So basically like the real stockmarket. We don't need more things to be like the stockmarket.
One aspect that is often forgotten is that the quality of a social platform is a product of the quality of its constituents.
If you make a platform 100% free and open, it will encourage low quality participants. The network effect often stops paid sites from starting, but the rewards are there if you can somehow otherwise select only for a mature audience.
this isn't how the stock market functions at all however. you described how a nonpro/retail participant on /r/stocks or wsb believes the stock market works.
This is actually a very plausible explanation for the valuations of Bitcoin and Tesla and, to a certain extend, this is exactly how the stock market operates right now.
Maybe it didn't work that way in the past, maybe it won't in the future, but the current environment seems to be very much like how the parent poster described it.
