The problem with success (or progress towards success in the...

The problem with success (or progress towards success in the case of PLS) is that you will see people that, instead of being happy for those who picked a winner, will do and say anything they can to cut them down and justify why they didn't get in themselves.

They will look for any argument they can to justify to everybody and themselves as to why it will fail even if those arguments have no basis in reality (eg. oversupply, crashing prices, hard rock being too costly, lithium is the most abundant resource on the planet and everyone including Jim down the road could open a lithium mine in his backyard if he wanted, brine is the godsend and no one ever faced any issues ramping up production etc.). There are (at least) two motives for this behaviour:
1) Tall poppy syndrome - people just don't like to see other people succeed.
2) Those same people DO see value and they will do anything they can to downramp to pickup their own piece of the pie because they deserve it and Mum and Dad Mary and Joe are just simpletons who are cutting in on their hard-earned (ahem) right to make the money out of it themselves.

For every one person that gets caught insider trading/manipulating markets etc there are many times that who don't get caught.
You just need to do your own research and listen to those who aren't trying to steal a piece of your pie.