One thing many small shorts following the lead of the big name shorts don't realise is that the success rate of the big names is actually quite small. They are usually running the type of strategy that VCs do when investing, in that they expect to have a massive success on maybe 10-20% of their positions, mediocre/falt returns on 20-30%, and complete losses on 50-60% of positions (or some variation of these types of numbers, sometimes its 10/10/80 split)
Someone like Chanos or Einhorn is usually only risking a relatively small percent of their portfolio on a short bet like Tesla and hoping it pays off (but is completely fine financially if the entire position ends up worthless), whereas many of the retail shorts seems to be betting unusually large amounts of their net worth on Tesla short positions under the deluded belief that the big name shorts "can't be wrong" - when in fact the big names are usually wrong on most of their short positions (in fact being often wrong is part of their strategy).
