Gospel According to Gamestop
When money becomes piety
“TO THE MOOOOOON!!!” was, perhaps, the first paroxysm I saw scrawled on the Reddit mobile app as I anemically scrolled down the screen of my iPhone. My steady diet of internet memes has certainly inoculated me from paying much attention to random strings of capital letters, yet I kept seeing these indistinct battle cries. “DIAMOND HANDS, I WILL NEVER SELL,” preached the commenters on the popular subreddit WallStreetBets (WSB); an online community of stock market investors that had historically been a caricature of personal finance communities. Recognizing some sort of topical rip current was forming, I surrendered myself to its force and was sucked into the sea of content being spewed from its depths.
“The short squeeze is happening. Buy now and we’ll hit $600 by Friday,” one commenter assured thousands of similarly optimistic onlookers. It seemed as though WSB was attempting to thrust the stock price of the notoriously defunct company Gamestop up the charts by banding together and purchasing it. Some community members, including the now celebrated Keith Gill, pointed to the stocks valuation as being far too low and purchased numerous call options. The entire community joined in and was focused on this objective, which seemed to be a group money making venture. Simple enough.
But then I found underpinning this hysteria was a recalcitrance towards large hedge-funds like Melvin Capital Management LP that were short selling Gamestop stock (the ticker of which is GME). The purchase of GME would weaken these short-sellers, who were betting the stock price would instead fall. This stock was taking on a meaning for these internet dwellers that was entirely divorced from making money. It was being branded as a protest to market manipulation by large corporate hedge funds. “Finally sh***ing on the big corporations, DON’T LET UP,” read one post among the many defiant sentiments. As this obscure corner of the internet started to appear on MSNBC and other mainstream financial reporting, it turned into a chaotic ride. As I watched from the sidelines as the markets opened on Monday morning, I realized I had drank my entire cup of coffee before noticing I had been totally enthralled by the spectacle of this mob. Users posted every second, even crashing the subreddit site, with passionate expressions to “BUY! BUY! BUY!” The community soared in popularity; now at over 10M followers.
As more and more people bought into the hype, the influence of this grassroots movement grew undeniably stronger. Investors assured newcomers, many of whom knew nothing about the stock market, to throw as much money as they can at GME. It worked, too. “I have two grand and no clue what I’m doing, but I trust you apes,” one user confided. There are times every now and then when it’s clear some massive shift in expected behavior is taking place, and for the GME craze that came as a deeply expressed faith in the markets. This blind faith was building amid a moment of prospective financial salvation. Despite very little due diligence or support from predominant investment experts, so many average Joes were on-board and ready to get rich on the stock market. How could this not work? Believers in the power of invisible market forces congregated and rejoiced at the site of green lines on the charts.
Faith in speculative market movements is not a new concept, but there’s a novelty to how the barriers to adopting it were lowered. Gone are the days of austerity gatekeeping the stock market. Robinhood and the new wave of Cerberean tech-company-brokerage hybrids put the power to sign up for an investment account into an easy smartphone app. Just as in the Apostolic Age of Christianity, the Good Word of Gamestop proliferated through the vectors of ideological engagement by reaching more disciples through more spaces to preach. When it only requires three minutes to create an account, everyone’s smartphone now has the power to demonstrate acts of faith by smashing the big green “BUY” button. WSB was (and mostly still is) a central church where daily comment threads are masses filled with reassurance to its shareholding parishioners. “Don’t listen to the bears, BUY and HOLD,” the community affirms.
I must say, as I maundered through these online venues I found them powerful and influential in my psyche. Amidst the echoing chambers of WSB, hearing praise after praise of GME’s inevitable skyrocket, it was easy to see how even ardent skeptics could be convinced to buy. The cacophony of voices reverberating, just as in the nave, makes one feel so much larger than themselves. Like an eternal place in heaven that drives religious adherence, the promises of vast wealth drives this deep faith in the stock market. When everyone is becoming a daytrader it seems to just make sense; why would you wait and get left behind? There is a greater life waiting for you. Those that are optimistic on the stock’s growth continue to buy and encourage others to do the same. Some might wonder what happens if the stock declines, but that doesn’t matter. As we know, true faith cannot waver. “For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” — James 1:3