Getting absolutely chopped to pieces by iv crush this week

honestly starting to feel like the options market is just a massive casino where the house has literal x-ray vision Tried to play the earnings run up on a couple small caps this week. I didn't even hold through the actual calls, sold right before the bell, and still got absolutely murdered by IV crush. it just feels impossible to win when market makers can just pin the price exactly where it hurts retail the most on a friday afternoon to make sure all our contracts expire worthless. Was venting to a buddy about how rigged the whole dark pool setup feels, and he was trying to get me to move my remaining port over to web3. ended up just scrolling through the bonk coin integrations out of pure frustration, and it actually made me laugh how a literal meme ecosystem somehow has more transparent liquidity mechanics than these supposed "regulated" penny stocks getting naked shorted to oblivion on the daily. not even saying I'm switching to that stuff (I know the sub rules regarding crypto lol), just venting about how broken the traditional small cap and options market feels right now. probably just going to take whatever scraps are left of my buying power, throw it into SPY shares and take a break for the month. anyone else getting completely wrecked by these random intraday dumps or am I just timing my entries horribly?