What about retail investors who looked at Gamestop before all this and thought it seemed like a reasonable investment, only to get wiped out by "irrational downward pressure" from hedge funds conspiring to short the stock 136%?

We'll have to wait and see a bit, but the huge pop in Gamestock was likely more the result of funds covering shorts, not retail investors continuing to buy at these prices. So it feels really disingenuous to blame retail for these wild swings when they would not have been possible without the irresponsible hedge fund trading that came before.