Not long before r/wallstreetbets graced the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek ("Reddit’s Profane, Greedy Traders Are Shaking Up the Stock Market") I found myself chuckling uneasily at its memes celebrating the gradual, then horrific, fall of the stock market.
Like 4chan, the memes are juvenile and offensive in pretty much every way, but they're also funny. There's a gif of the plane crash in Flight, but where the altimeter is "Robinhood Account Value", or the Order 66 one when Robinhood stopped working, or the Game of Thrones one that I can't find any more because Reddit doesn't let you search comment threads.
It's not a healthy place to be. There's no avoiding the idiocy or the threads where people describe how they turned $1000 into $100,000 by shorting the market that make you doubt all of your life choices. Even the memes get a bit stale.
But this week, there's been a shift. It started with the surprisingly upvoted Just Don't Fucking Dance:
On an alignment chart, r/wallstreetbets is chaotic neutral at best. It's funny. It's hateful. It's maudlin. It has no idea what the fuck it's doing. It's out to make as much money in the flames as it can. And for this Scottish-Chinese, it's pure America.
Like 4chan, the memes are juvenile and offensive in pretty much every way, but they're also funny. There's a gif of the plane crash in Flight, but where the altimeter is "Robinhood Account Value", or the Order 66 one when Robinhood stopped working, or the Game of Thrones one that I can't find any more because Reddit doesn't let you search comment threads.
It's not a healthy place to be. There's no avoiding the idiocy or the threads where people describe how they turned $1000 into $100,000 by shorting the market that make you doubt all of your life choices. Even the memes get a bit stale.
But this week, there's been a shift. It started with the surprisingly upvoted Just Don't Fucking Dance:
In reality, there is a world of hurt out there. Think about how depressed you were the first time you blew your account... That's the fear most of the world has right now with their life savings and retirement funds. More importantly, people are actually worried about the health and safety of the people they love. We didn't start the fire, and if bankers make money on bad events why not autists as well. I agree. Be safe, play the market. Just don't fucking danceThen a couple of days later, someone who's made a tidy sum talks about how their parents have lost thousands and are having trouble sleeping. They seem almost... human?
On an alignment chart, r/wallstreetbets is chaotic neutral at best. It's funny. It's hateful. It's maudlin. It has no idea what the fuck it's doing. It's out to make as much money in the flames as it can. And for this Scottish-Chinese, it's pure America.
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