Retail traders are buying the dip in Meta stock, but on Wall Street Bets, users proclaim 'FB is over'

• Retail traders are buying the dip in Meta stock after the Facebook parent reported an earnings miss.
• On Reddit's Wall Street Bets, though, some proclaimed the social media giant was "over."
• One user likened the company's push into the metaverse as a Hail Mary.

As retail traders rush to buy the dip in Meta's stock after its earnings miss, some on Wall Street Bets said Facebook is at its end.

Shares of the social media giant sank 24% early Thursday after its fourth-quarter earnings report revealed a first-ever drop in users and a multibillion-dollar loss on its metaverse bet.

Retail traders poured into the price dip as Meta was the No. 1 stock on Fidelity's tracker, with the number of buy orders far exceeding the number of sell orders.

But in discussions on Wall Street Bets, the subreddit credited with driving meme-stock mania last year, retail traders seemed less enthused by the opportunity.

"FB is over, Metaverse won't save it," read one post, that had more than 3,000 upvotes. The user likened Facebook's push into the metaverse, a virtual world in which people interact as avatars of themselves, to a Hail Mary, and said the company "had to create some narrative" that would justify investing in it.

In messages to Insider, the user said Meta would need an "army" of content creators in order to achieve the metaverse it's described.

The company formerly known as Facebook rebranded to Meta last year as a sign of its push into the metaverse. Critics, however, say the company is behind the curve and have been offput by a large corporation building a virtual world expected to be driven by users.

Others on Reddit, meanwhile, remained more hopeful on Meta shares, citing 37% year-over-year growth in revenue. The company has long been a favorite among retail investors and was the 15th most popular stock on trading app Robinhood as of Thursday.

Another post with 14,000 upvotes on Wall Street Bets begged Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg to post his so-called "loss porn," a practice in which users share their egregious investment losses for others' entertainment.

As Meta stock tumbled, Zuckerberg faced a more than $24 billion hit to his fortune, according to Bloomberg, which said that would bring his net worth down to $97 billion from $120.6 billion.