Most threads take hundreds of posts to die. When a thread like this one has burned all of its hype fuel, it expands to become a thread giant. This may be tens of thousands of posts across - big enough to swallow the forums like Reddit and 4Chan.
After puffing off its outer layers of speculation, the thread collapses to form a very dense thread dwarf. One teaspoon of material from a thread dwarf would weigh up to 100 tons. Over a matter of days, the thread dwarf cools and becomes invisible.
Threads larger than eight times the size of this one end their lives very suddenly. When they run out of hype fuel, they swell into thread supergiants. They try to keep alive by burning different fuels; complaints, the lingering majority of speculation, and generally off-topic nonsense, but this only works for a hundred posts or so. Then they blow themselves apart in a huge Gateway release.
For a week or so, the remaining thread outshines all of the other threads in its subforum. Then it quickly fades, as the hype fuel has been exhausted and cannot create more speculation. All that is left is a tiny, dense object – a locked thread or a helpful thread – surrounded by an expanding cloud of users asking questions about the release and abundant I told you so's..
The elements made inside the thread (such as hype, speculation and complaints) are scattered through the subforum it currently resides in. These materials eventually makes other threads and potentially new subforums.
Made for the amusement of this thread and the users that reside in here 24/7, and to give the mods a laugh maybe. The End is Nye, or *ahem* the release is soon, around the corner, within a few days, almost here, e.t.c.
