Reddit has been a place where communities come together to share their opinions/expressions about various topics. It is one of the more underground social media platforms where you can find discussions from years ago about the most random, oddly specific topic. But no one has really given the platform as much credit as it truly deserves, especially with the recent Wall Street situation. Today, I’m here to explain the situation and show how Reddit can play an influential role in changing the world around us.
What Happened between Reddit and Gamestop?
The true power of Reddit was unleashed when Wall Street hedge funds began shorting GameStop to $0. The hedge funds’ plan backlashed heavily due to the Reddit community on r/wallstreetbets setting a time for a massive buying streak, in an attempt to make the hedge funds think twice about betting against companies we all love and cherish.
GameStop, a gaming-oriented retail store, has not been the most lucrative company recently due to online alternatives of purchasing video games and action figures. Although it is almost obsolete, GameStop still has a special place in all gamers’ hearts. The fact that Reddit, an online community platform, had the power to make the GameStop stock go up to $483 at its peak is amazing. This action made Wall Street lose over 7 billion dollars from shorting the stock.
This made ordinary people, who had put all of their life savings into the GME stock hoping to make big bucks, millionaires overnight. It totally paid off in the end and will make hedge funds think twice before shorting stocks to $0. What blew millions of people around the world away was that an online platform had the power to do this.
This could have never been accomplished 20 or 30 years ago because there were no big online communities such as Reddit into play. Wall Street is very corrupt and wanted to make thousands loose jobs, so they could make a pretty penny. Reddit totally dumbfounded them as they lost billions overnight due to a scheduled mass buy. How incredible is that!
My Analysis of the GameStop Situation
Wall Street does not want the average American to be making money off the stock market because they want total control and want to make all the money they can by betting on small companies’ misfortune. Reddit spent their entire marketing budget on a 5 second super bowl ad that had a super impactful message on all American people. The ad explained how an idea and a community of people are a force to be reckoned with. As well as how underdogs can make anything happen if they have enough people backing their idea because, once people put their mind to it, anything goes.
Finally, the ad even hinted at how finance textbooks can be changed in the future due to this event. It was truly history because it had never happened before on this large of a scale. Investing will be looked at totally differently due to this event and hopefully many more events such as GME will occur in the near future! The Wall Street corruption can now be put to a stop by the average American people who are very smart and capable of doing so. Jobs will change due to this as well, and many jobs will be created to research how to make another event like the GME. This is the first stock of many that will be affected positively and “go to the moon” as reddit users would say.
Stay tuned to The Roundup for more coverage of dramatic stock market changes!
