GameStop: How a fight between Reddit users and Wall Street bankers saw video game company’s stock increase tenfold

I've been closely watching this whole thing unfolds for nearly three days now and it's captivating to say the least.

The whole Gamestop thing in Animal Crossing terms:

The news that keeps on giving:

Netflix and a famed film author already optioned movies about GameStop, Reddit and Wall Street

Source: The Verge

Netflix has Noah Centineo, MGM has an unwritten book

It looks like we’ll be spoiled for choice when it comes to movies about the WallStreetBets / GameStop saga: Deadline is reporting that both MGM and Netflix have plans to make one, before the dust has even settled (via Kotaku and Polygon). If you weren't paying attention to the stock-spikes, short squeezes, and diamond hands that were going on last week, we have an explainer that should get you caught up on the big picture.

MGM’s version of the movie is set to based as a book that hasn’t yet been written. The author of that book is Ben Mezrich, who wrote The Accidental Billionaires, which was the basis for David Fincher’s 2010 movie The Social Network. Mezrich was apparently inspired by Fincher’s title, as he’s calling his new book The Antisocial Network.

Netflix is trying to get Mark Boal, the screenwriter and a producer on The Hurt Locker and Detroit, to write its adaptation. (Does this mean we could see Kathryn Bigelow directing? Please say yes.) The company is also planning on having To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before star Noah Centineo play a major role. Who he’ll be depicting is anyone’s guess, because the story literally isn’t done unfolding in real life yet.

I can imagine it’s hard to be a movie producer tasked with turning the WallStreetBets story into a movie, because on one hand you want to get it done ASAP so the movie is still topical, but on the other you have to wait until the story is done before you can really start working on it. Even now we’re seeing new developments as WallStreetBets starts to target SPACs (shell companies meant to help private companies easily go public) and silver commodities. It would be a tragedy if a movie didn’t include a scene of a Redditor having to take delivery of 300 bars of silver.

There’s also the question of how big a role trading platform Robinhood will play in the movies. The platform created a firestorm of controversy and user anger when it halted the buying of WallStreetBets’s favorite stocks last week, but Forbes reports that the app is still getting a million downloads a day. It’s something that would be hard to put into a movie, but is obviously a big part of the story.

Neither movie has a release date yet (again, because it’s hard to tell when this whole thing will be over), or much talent attached to speak of, but I’m excited to see how they turn out. Hopefully one of these adaptations could be like The Big Short, staring Michael Cera as u/DeepFuckingValue, and, if I’m really dreaming here, maybe they’ll both be released the same week like Netflix and Hulu’s competing Fyre Festival documentaries. Such weirdness would only be fitting for the absolute roller coaster that the GameStop stock ride has been, and will likely continue to be.

Reddit banned a group of WallStreetBets moderators after they staged an attempted coup

Source: Insider

WallStreetsBets, a forum on Reddit that recently made headlines for boosting unlikely stock picks like Gamestop, has exploded in popularity over the past two weeks. This week, it experienced a virtual coup among moderators of the subreddit that resulted in multiple waves of bans from WallStreetBets and Reddit itself.

On Thursday morning, a moderator who goes by zjz, claimed that the group of moderators who oversee WallStreetBets had split over a potential movie deal following the subreddit's viral fame, creating a power struggle between two groups. Moderators oversee control of individual subreddits like WallStreetBets and make sure the sub is following Reddit's rules by removing spam and posts that break the community guidelines.

Writing in a post titled "/r/wallstreetbets will die soon unless the admins save us," the longtime moderator "begged for help" after he said he was being "taken hostage by the top moderators." According to zjz, moderators who hadn't been active on the WallStreetBets recently came back and took over, creating press email addresses and "scrambling to get paid from some movie deal." The post was quickly removed from the sub, alongside many comments criticizing the new moderators.

According to a report from the New York Times, moderators of WallStreetBets had been discussing "landing a movie deal" and figuring out what their "cut" is in a conversation on Discord, a chat app. These mods had booted out anyone in their inner circle who questioned the deal and wanted the sub to remain fairly true to its original message of buying stocks with a "YOLO" mentality, such as zjz. The ousted moderators were not only against the movie deal, they also believed that the sudden influx of new users could lead to a sudden shift in subreddit culture, changing what made WSB initially unique.

"This was our clubhouse with all our friends where we let loose and were honest about being in it for the money, but not being in it to sell each other anything," zjz told the NY Times over email.

R/WallStreetBetsTest, a sub created nine months ago by zjz, has become the new hub for these ousted mods and the place to discuss the drama that transpired.

Shortly after zjz's removal, fellow mod jamsi announced that they had been removed as well. Claiming to have over 14 years of experience as a moderator on the platform, they offered their assistance to help deal with the volume of traffic and posts only a week ago. In that seven-day period, they claim to have moderated "an average of 1,500 posts and comments per day."

"I was confused, annoyed and sad trying to understand what had happened," jamsi wrote.

Over the next day, other WallStreetBet moderators like notmikjaash and bawse1 left their duties or were kicked out by the current administration. A petition was posted, asking Reddit administrators to step in and reinstate the old team that has pulled in nearly 9,000 upvotes.

On Thursday evening, the WallStreetBets moderators who attempted the coup were removed by Reddit for breaking the platform's guidelines. At Reddit, a hands-off approach is usually saved for moderators, with the company rarely stepping in and forcefully clearing away those in charge of their subreddits. During all of this, WallStreetBetsTest went private, going public again early on Friday morning.

Reddit's "Moderator Guidelines for Healthy Communities" require a "stable and active team of moderators" and "association to a brand" and it's unclear if the new wave of mods were able to adhere to these rules.

In total, six moderators had turned over by Friday, including turdled who had personally banned jamsi. Seven of WallStreetBet's older moderators were reinstated so that the sub could go back to some level of normalcy.

"Matters are now returning to normalcy and the original mods are taking back control," jamsi wrote in a post on WallStreetBetsTest. "This is a good first step in healing for this community that we care so much about."

Mod upheaval on WallStreetBets has happened before. In April of 2020, founder of the sub Jaime Rogozinski was forcefully removed as a moderator from the sub after he pushed a "Wall Street Bet Championship" event where he may have had a stake in its sponsorship and success. Rogozinski recently sold the rights to his life story to entertainment company RatPac Entertainment according to the Wall Street Journal.

Quote from rainbowblink224

Oh no. I heard that WSJ was making it to where they were messing up the stocks and messing with people's trades because they are so big...

I can't find a Reddit comment by a person working on the stock exchange but what he said was this whole thing was just a small blip that caught the mainstream's fancy because the story was painted as a David vs. Goliath between retail traders vs. the big money hedge funds. Trading for the most part wasn't really affected he said.

Anyway, no one was expecting it to keep rising indefinitely, it'll still fall to it actual value, pulled down by its fundamentals as experts would say.

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