In popular culture movie adaptation of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta which shot to fame, the lead character, 'V' says that ideas are bulletproof.
While ideas may be bulletproof, executing an idea and continuing a revolution may be two separate things - with both being at opposite ends of the spectrum -- and that's what may have happened with Reddit's r/WallStreetBets.
If you've missed out on the market mayhem, WallStreetBets exploded into the mainstream, moving from the front page of Reddit to the front page of the New York Times and nearly every other major news site. The subreddit's short-squeeze of GameStop helped shoot up the price of the video game retailer's stock a mind-boggling 1,700% from the beginning of January to Wednesday (before it fell again Thursday), captivating the minds and wallets of investors — both casual and institutional — and financial regulators.
But while millions are now discovering WallStreetBets for the first time, it has been building momentum throughout the pandemic. One can trace its epic rise to a perfect storm of favorable conditions: the exponential growth of the app Robinhood and its no-fee options trading, the extreme volatility Covid-19 brought to the markets, the stimulus checks mailed to millions of Americans, the lack of televised sports for much of the year, and the unwanted free time stuck at home the pandemic has forced on many people.
Describing itself as if "4chan found a Bloomberg terminal," the forum's giddy nihilism, inscrutable language and memes fueled a war on a perceived corrupted mainstream.
And it's led WallStreetBets' evolution into an unprecedented force of retail-investing financial radicalism, offering the allure of get-rich-quick gains to a rapidly expanding audience of millions.
Many celebrated WallStreetBets' war on GameStop short-sellers as a populist campaign against hedge-fund raiders looking to profit off the destruction of a well-known retail brand like GameStop. But unlike many other similar online communities, there is also a clear financial goal for the people in it.
But fringe online movements have shown that internet culture can lead to extreme behaviors, making radical ideas palatable for people raised on memes and 4chan in a way that they likely wouldn't be, at least at first, if presented in a straightforward manner. In the case of WallStreetBets that extremism has a real financial impact - but can it last?
A new subreddit - r/GMEBagHoldersClub documents what its like to see the rise, with memes, advice and...more memes. It correctly documents what it feels like to have been 'left holding the bag' in the entire scenario. Created on January 2021, it has amassed over 2,300 subscribers already (at the time of writing this story).
Unlike r/WallStreetBets, it's a lot more light-hearted: It’s a group of people posting about how they bought into the stock late or waited too long to sell. They’re the people who know they’re idiots, and that they are, to some degree, screwed. They’re ready to admit that and make fun of themselves.
Yeaaa from r/GMEbagholdersclub
Aside from the memes, it's also a learning experience. One post on the subreddit summed it up, saying “It was a good learning experience,” one post said. “Will keep holding the bag 💎🙌 because it will serve as a good reminder...hope everyone takes care. Don’t beat yourselves up."
When part of the draw of a place online is the community, the shared language and jokes and memes, what happens when new people unfamiliar with any of that come suddenly flooding in? The community gets bigger.