Recently, I saw the funding rate being pushed to quite an extreme level again, with a bunch of people in the group eager to try and take the opposite side.

I usually prefer to hold back first: rates are basically emotional taxes, the more excited you are to pay, the easier you are to be educated by volatility.
Especially now, with attention spans flying fast, memes + celebrity calls, the old player's phrase "don't take the last lap" really isn't an exaggeration.
Later, I realized that my most stable approach is actually: if you can't tell who is stubbornly pushing the rate in this wave, don't fight it head-on, better to hide for a couple of days and wait for it to cool down… otherwise, winning feels like luck, and losing is very reasonable.