Since a coworker brought it up last week, I've found myself glued to r/wallstreetbets and the ongoing GameStop narrative--the short squeeze, retail investors vs. hedge funds, and the man u/DeepFuckingValue himself. Although I don't actually have a position in GME, it really does feel like a special moment in (Internet) history: it's rare to see such unity at such scale, even if mostly in the forms of memes and a new dialect (e.g. "WE LIKE THE STOCK", "this is not financial advice", "🚀🚀🚀🚀💎🙌").
Some other events this reminds me of:
Of course, there are a ton of smaller-scale fads that come and go on Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok--for example, in recent memory:
But this one has reached a global following, eliciting comment from well-known public figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elon Musk, and panicked responses from firms like Robinhood and Charles Schwab. It's pretty incredible to witness live how the Internet can facilitate a massive movement of regular people, and kind of refreshing after we mostly saw the downsides last year of polarization, misinformation, and radicalization.