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Comment by this_user | Hacker News Reader

The only thing more ridiculous than the rise in the GME stock are these attempts to frame this is some sort of culture war. All this is is a bunch of people on an online forum trying to make a quick buck; it's not some grand statement against Wall St. or whatever.

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It may have started for the lulz but has seemingly morphed into a culture war/statement. I think for each person involved, it means something unique to them, which is culturally and historically significant.

No, that's the narrative that e.g. bloomberg tried to sell by quoting single digit reddit posts. Contrast that to the OP's where they describe their GME position in pure financial terms, or the WSB admin's statement (he explicitly says it was never political). These mainstream pieces can't understand wsb, memes or irony (they probably think gamers are literally "rising up") and their audiences are financially illiterate.

It's more than one thing. There are lots of different people involved with a mixture of motivations. It's not just playing out in a single forum, either.

And while I'd agree making a "quick buck" is a driving factor, arguably "the" driving factor, that term is also relative. The average time between trades for a high-frequency trading investment firm is 40 seconds. It's out-of-place to talk about these folks making a quick buck when average trade times are measured in seconds and money is made based on having a PHYSICAL location that enables faster trades by nanoseconds.

Have you visited recently? It’s definitely about sending a message, they want to bankrupt the short holders.

Indeed. If you visit now, you'll see that the top pinned post (beyond the "daily discussion") is about people recounting their personal tragedies from 2008 financial crisis. Casual scroll around other post paints the same picture - there's a strong emotional undercurrent to this now, and the emotion is a giant middle finger towards Wall Street.

It’s hard to not see some element of “war” here when the rules are changed so dramatically and arbitrarily to advantage sellers over buyers. There is literally a freeze on buying certain stocks for certain investors but not others.

You don’t get much more class warfare than that.

And let’s be honest no one was talking about stoping buying in any names the hedge funds are collectively long

The culture war thing is so mystifying with this especially since like Wall Street bets on both sides. So when you're pumping some random stock for supposed ideological reasons you're probably helping a bunch of Wall Street firms with bets on that side.

It's obviously both, to some extent, and it's less a culture war than a class war.

Attempts to frame it as Good Guys vs. Bad Guys situation is an exceptionally good way to rally people to your cause.

I take it you haven't seen the posts on WSB like this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6omry/an_o...

but every day it gets worse

...yet.

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