I have never seen HN comments get as bad as the past few days. There have been multiple 1000+ comment threads. I've seen oodles of comments that are just sentence fragments barely more coherent than "to the moon". Righteous fury and conspiracy theories abound. This has clearly struck a nerve and bridged the gap between HN and reddit more than ever before.
* GME was illegally shorted 140%, maybe by one company, and a stock being shorted 140% is somehow intrinsically bad/evil/shady. None of this really seems to be the case regardless of the utility.
* GameStop was being driven to bankruptcy by hedge funds shorting it. I'm not sure what the logic is here.
These narratives almost seemed designed to rationalize the manufacture of a short squeeze; something the SEC seemingly has some strong opinions about.
People talking in terms of 'shorts', 'positions', 'rights to buy' etc. or any kind of analysis, are missing the point - mostly what is happening here is straight up mania on a stock.
This is a study in memes not markets.