Thread by @sbspalding

After reading a bajillion articles on GameSpot, and spending more time than I usually do puttering around WSB and FinTwit, I think a lot of journos are seriously mischaracterizing this event.

My complaint is premised on three assertions:

1. MANY of the people playing this game understand this pump will not last forever.

2. MANY of the people playing this game understand hedgies are playing too.

3. This isn't about money for many of them.

I think the reflex instinct to believe that these folks are naïve children futzing around with stuff they don't understand borders on condescending. While there are clearly some people riding the wave, most have decided to participate in this campaign for deeper reasons.

We live in a world where so many people never feel like they can't affect any part of the wider world. They feel powerless and isolated, tossed around by forces so insanely bigger than them as to be nearly incomprehensible. This is especially true in finance.

Finance where people are often paid millions of dollars a year to guess at coin flips; paid more when they succeed, and never censured when they fail. Meanwhile huge sections of the country have a hard time paying rent.

So they did what they were told to, they took what little cash they had and put it in the market. More than that, they went in search of an edge, a way to win at a game that has always felt rigged.

These aren't folks who are going to get anywhere making 6.5% on their $50 checking account balances. These aren't folks with well funded 401Ks or engineering jobs. These are people who know in their bones that if they don't try SOMETHING they will likely die broke.

One could argue that there should be a better outlet for people like this, I would argue the same, but we live in the real world and right this second there isn't. So they had to stitch their own bootstraps and pull themselves up by them.

So they found a tiny loophole in the logic of the market and poured their money into it, and you know what -- it worked. Even if some part of that success is being driven by other hedge funds front running their trades, it still accomplished one big thing: it gave them hope.

Hope is important, especially these days. People need to believe they can DO something about their situation, that they have agency and power. As GME ran to the moon these folks felt, perhaps for the first time in a while, that they had accomplished something of value.

They felt like they had got one over on the finance folks who always seemed to win while they lost, who were always bailed out and coddled by the system that cared nothing for them. There ACTIONS, their COMMUNITY, and their DRIVE had had meaning.

Heck, they made it onto the national news! People on CNBC were talking about them, and the hedge fund managers they hated were losing their minds. How much is that worth to a bunch of people who have spent their entire lives feeling ignored?

When I go onto WSB I don't see people who are looking to become millionaires. I don't see people who care if they manage to earn a few extra bucks. I see people who are deliriously happy that they've found a game they can win, one where the rules make sense.

Will these trades eventually fall apart? Of course they will! Do you think these folks haven't read the five billion think pieces explaining that to them in excruciating, mind numbing detail? Guess what, they don't care, because for now it's fun, it's meaningful, and it's theirs.

I believe that people should invest in real stuff over long periods of time. I think speculation is dangerous. I talk about that on thus dumb website all the time. But I can't bring myself to try to drag these folks down because they've chosen another path.

Maybe we should fix the stupid world? Maybe we should give people a better way to feel human than having to organize bull raids on hedge funds? Maybe we should create systems that allow folks to live good, decent lives without taking obscene risk? But until we do, here we are.

So before you go trying to educate people on what this is or isn't, perhaps it would be useful to ask them WHY they're doing it. You might be surprised at the response. /rant

While you're here, maybe check out Give Directly. They provide rental assistance for people who have been hurt by the global pandemic. givedirectly.org/covid-19/us/

Also, School Lunch Fairy, they help provide emergency funds to public schools so that no student ever has to go without a hot meal. School lunch debt is an obscenity and we should be embarrassed it exists. schoollunchfairy.org