Reddit’s WallStreetBets community, framed by many as heroic for railing against the establishment and bringing Wall Street to its knees by pumping GameStop stock while hedge funds shorted it, are all in on a blatant cash grab and delusional internet infrastructure company created by former President Donald Trump.
Essentially the only topic of conversation on WallStreetBets right now is Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), the holding company that’s taking Donald Trump’s Trump Media and Technology Group public. In the last 48 hours, DWAC stock has gone from $10 a share to $130 per share, resulting in the kind of frenzy we’ve most famously seen associated with GameStop.
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There was never a pretense of moral superiority from WallStreetBets, exactly—making money was always the point. But with GameStop, Redditors at least attempted to make the argument that Gamer Americans were under attack by evil hedge funds that did not understand the cultural importance or future business prospects of GameStop, an institution that many gamers hated until it became a meme stock because of the perceived predatory nature of its game presales business strategy and the pathetic exchange values it paid for used video games.
With DWAC, the argument for investing is basically “check out my gains” and, more simply, MAGA. Top posts on the subreddit include “Presenting Daddy Trump’s Golden Showers: 3k->13k GAINZ,” a meme of a Trump lookalike dancing titled “Daddy trump pls,” a meme of a grim reaper called DWAC killing Facebook, Snapchat, and other big tech companies, and “Trump Train $$$$.” “ALL HAIL DADDY TRUMP,” another post reads.
It’s not surprising that a subreddit full of people out to make a quick buck and making highly risky stock market bets would be captivated by a stock that has 13xed in 40 hours, and WallStreetBets has always been full of shitposters making off-color jokes.
GameStop isn’t the only stock that’s been pumped over the last 10 months; there’s a huge contingent of Palantir investors on the subreddit who cheered the surveillance firm’s latest contract with the Department of Homeland Security or the military. But the general irreverent fun of the subreddit takes on a different tone when the posts there are indistinguishable from those on r/the_donald. The new people’s champion, at least for now, is an authoritarian who led an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, challenged the legitimacy of our elections, and is currently using the Republican Party’s official donor mailing lists to pump his stock. YOLO!
