The more I learn about this, the more plausible it seems that someone is attempting a "legal" (read: unable to be regulated or checked) way of initiating crowdfunded short squeezes. Regardless of the intentions, the consequences and dangers are real. Lessons are being learned from this, and not necessarily by your favored underdogs.
The fact that this wasn't a one-off and the trend keeps moving to other devalued companies doesn't help. Neither does the utter failure to accurately identify and understand that the people egging this on the most might not even be Americans with a vested interest in the safety of the economy. But that certainly doesn't discount GameStop's history of predatory and risky behavior to try something "viral" like this, either.
Fantastic if this raises awareness and lights a fire under someone's ass to stop this kind of behavior regardless of who engages in it, no matter how powerful or how many. But I'm not expecting a fairytale ending to this, because this isn't really even Robin Hood or anything. It sounds like the SEC is looking at this and saying "Oh, shit. This was a major blind spot. Why wasn't anyone looking at the poors?" And I get how encouraging that is, especially when a big hedge fund is one of the first very visible victims.
Personally, I think this is an offshoot of the larger amoeba that has been tapping into people who (wrongfully or ignorantly) consider themselves oppressed and therefore collectively try to make a difference that still somehow manages to only benefit their group. You know, instead of participating in Occupy Wall Street or anything back when they could have made a difference if they really cared about this stuff in the abstract sense. It's not like the WSB crowd exists in a vacuum or that their membership doesn't overlap with other problematic groups and movements on the net.
The timing—immediately after a large number of assholes with a decent amount of power suddenly became disaffected—is not lost on me, either. Also, Elon Musk is basically a human red flag.
However, fucking LOL at the "Join the revolution by participating in the most capitalist behavior possible!" people. Honestly.
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