> if you believe your short thesis enough to put money behind it, I’m more rather than less inclined to believe that you believe

Not really. The short seller just needs enough people to believe their claims. How true or important those claims really are is only relevant to the extent it helps or hurts the narrative.

I don't totally disagree with the idea that putting your money where your mouth is lends some degree of credibility. But when you're taking a short position on a company and then publicly sharing opinions and information that might drive down the stock price of that very same company, it's reasonable to ask if they're simply taking a financial position in a theory they believe in or trying to create a set of circumstances that benefit their financial position.

To put it another way, the incentives for an organization that benefits from a stock price going down mean you should take anything negative they say about the financial health of that stock with an enormous grain of salt. Making a bet that a stock will go down makes me think you believe the stock will go down, but only to the extent that making that bet won't actually drive the stock price down absent any other factor. A short selling firm (or people connected to a short selling firm) putting out press releases designed to drive down a particular stock price 100% don't meet that bar, unless they can demonstrate they have no financial stake in the outcome.

People make these statements about shorts but never about longs.

Shorting stock is very hard, the upwards trajectory of the market and overall optimism of American market participants works against you.

There are far far far more hype men on the long side than short.

Putting you money where you mouth goes has limits too though. In poker, there's the concept of buying the pot. As a short, you can try to continue funding your play in hopes everyone else becomes convinced. Of course, you're also going to want to use your position to convince others your play is sound with whatever you have at your disposal. So blog away and convince everyone you are the sane play while hoping nobody realizes your description of the emperor's clothes is made up

Every time you think you are smart and everyone else is stupid, you are probably wrong.

I remember figuring it out at a bank office while trying to decide which line was the right one. While bank branch offices with lines are rare these days, the concept remains solid.

If you put money on your shirt AND make public claims that you’re right and the shares are catastrophically overvalued, those two kind of cancel out.

They might be right that Backblaze is doing shady accounting, but they also might benefit from the perception the company is doing shady accounting.

We have people buying shares and arguing their thesis that the company is undervalued all the time.

Those people also stand to benefit yet many people see it as fundamentally different for reasons that escape me.