Folding Ideas
9 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2023–2026
2:31:44 · 8.5M views · Oct 1, 2023
Dan Olson's long Folding Ideas video on the GameStop meme stock phenomenon, its online community and the conspiracy thinking around it. It runs over two hours.
Recommended as a thorough, sober critique of meme-stock culture and a good starting point whenever GameStop news appears.
12 comments from Hacker News
The newfound hype around DRS arises as a meme directly out of the Gamestop crankfest/fever-dream. It is harmless, but also meaningless; equities are not any more "yours" because of undertaking the timewaster of DRS and the concept is in current discourse as a shibboleth for membership in weird fin-cult silliness, which is exemplified really well in the parent poster's link to breathy, red-Arial-on-black "Central Bankers" fearmongering. Dan Olson covers it effectively in "This Is Financial Advice", which is a sober and well-researched drubbing of the meme-stock culture from which this nonsense comes. Worth watching in its entirety, both for entertainment value and for its thorough treatment of the subject. this video (If you want to see a real-life BSOD, get one of these people into a corner and ask them how equities are going to survive the "market collapse" they magically-think is right around the corner, regardless of method of registration.)
Dan Olson covers NFTs very solidly in "Decentraland is a dead mall" ( [LINK] ) and "Line Goes Up" ( [LINK] ). Both as well worth watching. Since this is also about GameStop specifically, his "This is financial advice" video addresses the GameStop cult, and to a lesser extent the bizarre cult around GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen, really well: this video Also, cue some apes/NFT investors coming in to ask "why do you care about my money?" and other oft-repeated talking points.
> If that is the case half of the superstonks subreddit would have to be charged. You could make a compelling argument that they should be. Superstonks doesn't just post their positions. They, too, try to manipulate the market by hyping up GME. I would highly recommend "This is Financial Advice" by Dan Olson to anyone not already familiar with the community. this video
I thought I knew how bad it was, and then I saw Folding Idea's video on the post-crash meme stock phase here: this video So, apparently a lot of the people who are still holding onto the stock have engaged in full-on apocalyptic cult insanity. They're under the delusion that the "Mother of All Short Squeezes" hasn't happened yet, and that when it will happen, it will be an absolute financial calamity, as literally all Gamestop stock will be held by "true" holders [1], who can therefore extort any price from the short sellers desperate to buy the stock back to cover the short squeeze, causing the price to hit millions of dollars per share, allowing the true holders comfortable retirement as billionaires. It really is an apocalyptic cult mindset, people seeing themselves as the sufferers who will receive redemption in the imminent apocalypse as their (currently more successful foes) receive absolute punishment at the same time. Although even compared to most apocalyptic prophecies, this one is particularly far-fetched: the means of deliverance is extremely vague, with the closest hint of an idea is essentially that the Big Bad who is currently oppressing them will somehow turn around and reward them handsomely for their perseverance (usually stated with some amount of cognitive dissonance--you get the sense that the adherents don't really believe this, but they need to justify deliverance somehow and there's no better option than this). [1] There's a belief that most of the shares
I'm sure you're already aware of the general consensus around how speculative cryptocurrency and meme stocks are but it's worth repeating that this is a very dubious approach. On GME specifically, this is a good documentary to watch: this video I think it's worth it for you to consider reducing your allocation to these even if you have strong conviction in their long term success. If you do 25% GME/crypto and 75% index funds (or target retirement) then you're still going to be doing extremely well if these assets take off as hoped for but you'll be much better off in the alternative and less surprising scenario where they don't