Most Americans learned about the power of that army nearly a decade later, when it led a financial rebellion against Wall Street bigwigs by bulk-buying shares of GameStop. Fueled by a steadfast belief in the company’s promise, the Reddit legion managed to send GameStop soaring, so much so that Robinhood was forced to restrict trading on the stock. In the end, hedge funds like Melvin Capital abandoned their short positions while leaving scores of average joes significantly better off.
I just felt like a lot of the media coverage was all about Wall Street versus WallStreetBets—when, really, there was just as much, if not more, conflict happening within the subreddit about what type of speech was allowed, what type of financial products were allowed to be talked about, etc. Do you think you could talk a little bit more about why you focused so much on the internal fractus? What I wanted to capture was how these new, decentralized online communities work.