A lot of drama has unfolded on the Internet lately after Reddit’s subreddit r/WallStreetBets propelled a meteoric surge in American videogame company GameStop’s shares soaring over 400% this week, after aggressive touting of GameStop’s stock by several of its members.
The soar in GameStock was the result of actions that appear to have helped fuel a so-called short squeeze in GameStop (GME) stock, where investors who had used options to bet against the stock needed to cover those bets by buying shares.
WallStreetBets has since turned its attention to other stocks, with movie theatre chain AMC (AMC) spiking more than 300% on Wednesday.
In a post soon after making WallStreetBets public again Wednesday evening, the moderators outlined their struggle to manage the group’s surging popularity.
Also Read: How a Reddit Forum Led to 300% Surge in GameStop Stock and Then Full Drama in Wall Street
“We have grown to the kind of size we only dreamed of in the time it takes to get a bad nights sleep," they said. “We’ve got so many comments and submissions that we can’t possibly even read them all, let alone act on them as moderators."
While the unprecedented surge in the stocks made possible by a bunch of folks on Reddit may be temporary, the fiasco led to a surge of memes and reactions on Twitter. Some (understandably) were completely clueless as to what was unfolding in front of their eyes and even with words such as “stock market" “Wall Street" thrown about casually, netizens couldn’t help but get sucked into the viral trend online.
I’m too sexy to understand how the stock market works— gaming disorder pawg (@roun_sa_ville) January 27, 2021
Gamestop unveils their new store interior layouts… pic.twitter.com/Nb6mwJppgk— Seth (@SaxNStrikeouts) January 27, 2021
“It’s a movie theater stock that’s extremely undervalued right now, yes I know it’s a pandemic” pic.twitter.com/3sXVRG5JMx— 🐪 Miskeen and 5'14" (@MoodyKnowsNada) January 27, 2021
Me pretending to understand the stock market in order to partake in the GameStop memes pic.twitter.com/56bLVdALy6— arianna (@mrtaytoofficial) January 27, 2021
I have no idea what this GameStop thing is but I plan on playing a lot of video games to find out— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 27, 2021
GameStop sitting amongst Tesla and Amazon after reddit users make it a Fortune 500 company pic.twitter.com/AVUtcjs6gl— Jordan Deeb (@Jordan_Deeb) January 27, 2021
GameStop. AMC. Revolution. We meet at dawn.— Tim Dillon (@TimJDillon) January 28, 2021
Multiple people told me how the game stop thing works and I still don’t get it. pic.twitter.com/pywWdYsLRw— Table Salt (@Sin_Salt) January 28, 2021
Please stop posting about the game stop stock market whatever I hate the fact I’ll never be able to understand what y’all are talking about pic.twitter.com/LcJWgVVBcl— bratty.kel (@kelkel1551) January 28, 2021
While it was private, a subreddit called WallStreetBetsnew, meanwhile, gained more than 100,000 followers in around 30 minutes on Wednesday evening. That subreddit was established in March last year. On it, users urged their peers not to panic. Others encouraged buying even more stocks in revenge for the outage.
(With CNN inputs)
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here
