One year ago today, the hammer that everyone but the most devoted Kool-Aid drinkers knew was coming finally fell on a wide swathe of churners. 

While shutdowns are always a part of the game and we must take them in stride, this wave was particularly notable. First, it wasn’t just whales that were caught up – people that were technically doing magnitudes less than the whales (but dolphins in a vacuum) caught the ban hammer as well. 

But more importantly, it felt like the opening salvo against the infinitely scalable couch MS that had proliferated in the community over the last few years. As we all know now, this is exactly what it was.

I think a lot of people let the fact that you’d start hearing the Scarface money counter synths playing in your head every time you logged into your MR account cloud the fact that what the whales (and some dolphins) were doing wasn’t sustainable. 

We talk quite a bit about volume and velocity to make sure the math maths on our plays. With enough of both, margin sometimes takes a back seat when doing the value equation. 

It’s one thing to go full hog on a low-margin, high-volume play if it has no other utility. But even the most avowed haters of this play (of which there are many) will admit it had additional use cases.

It ended up being a great example of one of the very few things I remember from taking 3 econ courses in college – the tragedy of the commons. 

Of course, nothing in life is black and white, and not all of the blame belongs with the whales. I’m generally an advocate for going hard, and everything was ok until it wasn’t. But I do think it was fairly easy to see this ending coming.

While scale created the pressure, it wasn’t the only accelerant. If whales were the volume related stress that caused this shutdown wave, the grifters I’m always railing against were the straws that broke the camel’s back. Selling the hard work of others to anyone with $40/mo with zero context of how to operate led to some really dicey situations for beginners. 

This is the epitome of the kind of play you shouldn’t be spoon fed – you need to learn, make mistakes and understand the level 100 (and level 200) concepts of churning and MS before starting. But because it was a simple way to blast spend, the course sellers were more than happy to give it to anyone. 

Now here on President’s Day in 2026, the game has changed quite a bit. The referral offers that made this so valuable are long gone. Finite caps have been placed on the most important categories. Hell, you can’t even use Amex at Costco. 

It’s more important than ever not to be a one trick pony, but I still believe in butterboy’s thesis that you need to find your France. I just don’t believe that this one should be anyone’s France. 

As my friend Andrew loves to remind me every time I act like /r/churning was the genesis, this hobby has been around since the advent of loyalty programs. Gamers are gonna game, regardless of the speed bumps along the way. 

It sucks to see good things die, but I get more optimistic with every day that new angles will last longer when so much casual interest died on this day a year ago. 

Sahil cholejil!