My own work has sought to understand how various myths and imaginaries of the future become embedded in narratives of platforms and investments in data analytics. Such myths are not unique to the GME short squeeze but are interwoven across a larger pattern of platform financialization. Others have described WallStreetBets as the “power of the swarm”: a meme-powered internet tribe of altruistic investors fighting against perceived injustices of the stock market establishment hedge funds that deliberately short stocks for their own selfish gain. Baffled Wall Street analysts have described this as “armies of average Joes” taking on Wall Street, a clear instance of the belief that the GME short squeeze is not about money, but politics. The journalist Glenn Greenwald coined this the “Reddit Revolution”. American Financier Anthony Scaramucci, for example, likens this event to witnessing the “French Revolution in Finance”. Often, we see stories that use evocative language, myth, and metaphor to suggest that the events of GME are merely the start of something bigger, even “a new era” of retail trading. Media have been quick to publish stories that hinge on this myth to suggest we are witnessing a transformation in the structural foundations of finance capitalism that will empower everyday traders and reshape the investment landscape. Here we see how apparent technological distinctions are coded into a teleology of class conflict whereby collectives of anonymous or pseudonymous individuals can mobilize on digital platforms to circumvent and even challenge the authorities of institutional experts. The suggestion is that, like the myth of David and Goliath, the underdogs will prevail over the power brokers of Wall Street. These contradictory forces are locked in a struggle for control over the way financial markets are priced. This view is based on a structuralist interpretation that decentralized, networked collectives such as WallStreetBets are fundamentally different to centralized institutions of finance. Commentators argue that the squeeze represents a transformative politic in financial markets where a new and seemingly weaker force of retail traders will come to beat hedge fund giants. One myth that has arguably emerged in the GameStop squeeze is that of “David and Goliath”. As Roland Barthes (1975) argues in Mythologies, myth is a type of language-a mode of pure signification that can make a difference in shaping how people understand the world, and, in this case, take financial risks. These are myths not because they are necessarily false over exaggerations but because they are alive and can shape how we come to understand and value emerging technologies. However, with GameStop, analysts have capitalized on various myths of digital media to predict a transformation in the structure and norms of investing. The history of Silicon Valley investment has been defined by booms, busts, and bubbles such as the famous Dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and finance capitalism itself has been marked by numerous crises such as the subprime mortgage crisis, itself due in part to investors shorting the housing market. Many questions are emerging from this squeeze, and media have been speculating about what role digital platforms such as Reddit and Robinhood might come to play in the future of stock trading. How we come to understand trading within and through digital platforms may ultimately shape how people choose to invest and take risks with their money. I find this story illustrative of larger theoretical critiques of platforms, big data, and digital assets that have been the focus of my research for the past several years. While theories explaining why the GME short squeeze happened are mixed (fun, profit, and vengeance have become three main explanations), over at WallStreetBets a meme-driven ethos of resistance against hedge funds, finance capitalism, and the temptation to cash out has concretized into a singular message: “hold the line”. One Wall Street hedge fund, Melvin Capital, is reported to have lost some 53% of their fund in January and needed a $2 billion bailout from Citadel. Within two weeks GME stocks jumped some 500% due to the rapid mobilization of retail traders using mobile trading apps such as Robinhood. The story goes that in late January of 2021 a subreddit called WallStreetBets mobilized its users to invest heavily in GameStop (GME) stocks in an effort to “squeeze” an attempt by elite hedge funds to “short” the value of the stock. The “short squeeze” of GameStop stock has given rise to predictions that we are on the verge of witnessing a revolution in finance capitalism thanks to the power of social networks, mobile platforms, and investing apps.
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