There's plenty that can be said about GME and I think we can just wait till the aftermath to discuss this more. It will be interesting
Personally though one thing I have been a little more interested in recently is the behaviour and narratives of people on the WSB subreddit.
Of course one rule you must understand about WSB is that one must not take their words too seriously, people say things they don't mean all the time there, especially since it's in their individual interest to do so. At the same time though, I do believe that there is a genuinely sizable number of people who believe in the narratives that are circulating there.
One narrative that has been catching my eye is about the way evil wall street is colluding to bully the little man. There's a lot wrong with that narrative which I won't go into because it touches on some more complex points regarding GME. What stood out to me though is the way these narratives are being sold and defended.
I remember reading an article about conspiracy theories and how people believe in movements like QAnon. One point that was raised was the idea that people who believe conspiracy theories treat every rebuttal of their theory as evidence that there is indeed a widespread attempt at cover up. The more the media tries to debunk the theory, the more fervently they believe that the media is part of the conspiracy instead. Instead what people who believe in conspiracy theories do is latch on to little pieces of information they discover as evidence that prove their points, even if these little pieces of information may sometimes be random coincidences / correlations, may already have been debunked, or may not even gel into a coherent narrative together.
I actually see this in GME now. Every bad news is treated as evidence that the institution and the media is lying and trying to trick them to lose confidence and sell. Tiny random bits of information are treated as evidence that they are still going strong (even if there are other reasonable interpretations for them), even though they may be headed straight towards a disaster. No one comment has mentioned some obvious major problems ahead for them. One big example is the fact that everyone that is holding is holding on to unrealised gains, and at some point in time the only way to get out is to convert those unrealised gains into actual money by selling.
I suppose it is not helped by the fact that this discussion unfolds in reddit, where the comments seen are the ones that are most popular. Reddit is truly the definition of an echo chamber like no other.
It's interesting because I have to admit the narrative by WSB can be quite compelling. I think this incident helps me empathise more with conspiracy theorists and how they end up believing what they do.
I have no doubt that some good as has been done here as WSB has exposed some underlying issues with the system, but man they are behaving downright like conspiracy theorists right now and there will likely be many people who are burnt by this at the end.
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