The story of GameStop

In 2021, a group of Reddit users ran an investment scheme on GameStop … Here's how it all came crashing down.

Transcript

00:00The sentiment was one of revenge, robbing from the rich, and giving to the poor.

00:18You're in a group of 10 people or millions of people, and everyone is saying,

00:23hold the line, hold the line, we're in this together.

00:26That's very powerful and very persuasive.

00:30And it can put a hedge fund at a business.

00:51It's ridiculous to, you know, invest in that old system that the boomers have allowed to

00:58decay and destroy and exploit it for their own profits.

01:00But I think people are desperate, and there's literally no social safety net in America

01:06anymore, and people are willing to take a gamble.

01:16It's hit a level of mainstream attention that even I was shocked by.

01:21You have this whole movement behind you, and you want to see how far it can go.

01:28The internet is completely upending the traditional power structures of our economic

01:48system.

01:49It can be very dangerous because you also have a lot of people that are probably not going to win.

01:58It felt like a scam, right?

02:08When you play against the house, the house will always win.

02:10The bankers will always win.

02:12People who really did not have that money and took out loans or, you know, took money

02:18from their retirement and really, like, use the last bit of cash that they had, sometimes

02:23from their hourly jobs, sometimes they're unemployed and they're using it, they're

02:26putting it in this stock as a Hail Mary.

02:29There's this growing underbelly of anger and resentment and frustration with the system

02:35in America.

02:36I think we're in a very dangerous spot because that doesn't just go nowhere.

02:47Look at the landscape of people that are writing laws in our country.

02:50These are not people that are at all in touch with culture or the internet or where culture

02:55is going.

02:56And that's very scary.

02:57I feel frustrated that these lawmakers and these people in power have completely abdicated

03:02their responsibility in terms of caring for the public.

03:17If you got rich off the GameStop stock once, you know, that's great, but that doesn't put

03:21you in the halls of Congress.

03:22These communities have taken collective action on stocks, but they haven't taken it against

03:28the financial system itself and revolutioning the financial system.

03:31I think that means probably voting in lawmakers that actually know what they're talking about

03:35when it comes to the internet, getting out into the streets, educating people about this

03:39exploitative system that we live under.

03:41And I think, like, this was kind of a little bit of a wake-up call to some of these bankers.

03:44How can you see a future in this country when literally everything around you is broken

03:49and crumbling?

03:50And I hope that it inspired them to educate themselves about the world that we live in.