Been following this WallStreetBets/GameStop story for some time, and I keep coming back to one central tenet.
And I'm not going to be exactly comfortable in stating how this tenet works -- there will probably be triggering for some people who may not care for the type I person I was in my teens and 20s.
But, the TL;DR for a lot of people: GameStop is a dying brand of brick-and-mortar game stores, largely based on the concept that they acquire your used materials for pennies on the dollar in trade (if that!) to resell to other gamers.
The problem is: The digital market and the desire to take out this market on the part of video game manufacturers has rendered even this an undesirable market -- and THEN you add that GameStop is a bunch of crooked fucks.
So, smart money (at least until about 2-3 weeks ago) was to short the stock to zero. I've even been listening to YouTube posts from at least one former GameStop employee, chronicling the death of the company by a million cuts.
The problem being: They at least were able to stay around for the ill-fated launches of the PlayStation 5 and the XBox Series S. Oof, those are debacles in themselves which could merit their own posts somewhere down the line.
But, then, what happened was a bunch of individuals began to get together on the WallStreetBets subreddit and decided "We're gonna take down a hedge fund, perhaps more, and make effectively unlimited money on their corpse."
As such, and as this movement gained traction (almost a new Occupy Wall Street), the stock price literally went up at least an order of magnitude in the process of a short period of time.
This was designed to bankrupt major market-player hedge funds. How it was meant to do that was the concept of "shorting" a stock. Since GameStop was seen as a dying brand (and as well it should be!!), market analysts and major hedge funds tried to make money by literally selling stock they didn't have -- shorting the stock and getting money, believing the stock price, in a certain period of time (when they would have to buy the stock back) would be effectively zero, making all that money.
But, if the stock price was 5-10-more times the regular price when "Margin Call" (the time they had to buy the stock comes back)... It could kill the hedge funds. One company who chronicles this states that over $70 billion has been lost to this movement by the hedge funds.
I'm all but going to tell you what is going to happen next, and then the tenet that I will demonstrate from outside the market is going to tell you why. The Tweet I am producing is, at the moment, a parody. I do not believe this will be the case much longer.
This is going to happen.
Why? Because of a central tenet of American society:
YOU DO NOT FUCK WITH BIG MONEY.
I'm going to give you several examples from my own life, and then show how this extrapolates into sports and other things:
1) My first college. I was a "mad hugger", if you will, back in the day. I was about into the Richard Dawson school of affection, but with hugging, not kissing. The problem is, most people did not want me around -- in any capacity. And my "mad hugger"-ness not only exacerbated it, and not only was a criminal offense in Wisconsin (sexual assault in the fourth degree with assumed sexual depravity, my own feelings on the subject be damned), but, by two years on, I could sexually harass every woman in the room I was in -- simply by walking into the room.
The concept of "hostile 'work' environment" should have resulted in my removal from that school within six or so months. So why was it over two years until I was removed?
I don't know how many families did it, and I don't know if they ended up getting monetary settlements from the University (my guess is they did, but I do not know the story that far), but families were lining up the same lawsuits that Florida State University got for Jameis Winston. "Failure to protect" under Title IX. In essence, I was viewed as a serial rapist -- and, if one finally came forward, 50 would follow. (None did, because I wasn't, but the law doesn't care about that, at least to the respect of harassment and the like.)
I compromised that first college's money -- not quite to the extent of where I should've gotten 20 or so in the state pen, and probably life after that in the state or federal mental-health system in-patient -- but I fucked with that college's money.
2) My second college. This continued into the second college, and it eventually involved the dance team/pompon squad/kickline of said second college. It was seeing them on the local coverage of the men's basketball team on the local station (they did about 3-4 home games a year) which motivated me to choose that school over the other state colleges.
So now I'm not only screwing with their situation (and probably creating the same lawsuit potential), I'm also screwing with the coverage of the basketball team. In fact, the next season after I was banned from attending any further sporting events involving the squad (and all games at that arena, squad or not), the local station's coverage of the team was changed. Halftime, now, was no longer the dance team and a fluff piece on the campus. The fluff piece was preceded by a pre-taped show with the historic coach of the team, Ken Anderson.
So why was I allowed to continue at the school and graduate two and a half years later? I hadn't fucked with big money "enough", and the fact I did abide by the ban and the resulting "restraining orders" helped matters.
3) I think you can tell where my third and final part is going. Why, then, was I allowed to attend more than 30 Debbie Gibson events, under the cloud of what would've been sufficient suspicion under New York (her then-home state) law to have me arrested, probably even before the first time I ever met Gibson in 1994???
Well, because, at the end, I started fucking with Disney. Probably to the tune of six figures, if not seven. I cost Disney Theatrical Gibson at least two weeks near the end of her run in Beauty and the Beast, and, at 1500-2000 people per show at whatever the ticket price was on Broadway, that's high-six, if not seven, figures.
At that point, it could no longer be ignored. Fact is, if New York had actually found out about the first two parts, they'd have convened the grand jury and I'd have done at least ten years in prison, if not longer -- if not life. I was, by the standard of presumed depravity, HORRIFICALLY undercharged.
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And that's just three examples from my life. I'll give you more from outside it. One from anime, and then sports:
4) The whole Vic Mignogna affair. Still wending it's way through the appellate courts in Texas, at least last I checked, it appears that Mignogna WILL, in fact, be successfully painted as anime's Tim Donaghy -- a lone rogue.
So, then, WHY was he, for so many years, THE indisputable most-popular voice talent, most-sought after convention guest, and probably one of the biggest money players in anime throughout the DVD boom years and beyond?
Because it's clear to anyone (including Kotaku, who did a story about a circulating spreadsheet of sexual assaults, harassments, and complaints around, at, or near conventions, going back years -- just before Mignogna was fired from Sony) that the American anime and anime-convention industries harbored him and other sexual deviants, both within the industry and in the fandom. (Given the above, it also would explain why a person such as myself was even allowed in the door at many of these events when I chose to attend!)
So why was he fired? Sony.
Big Money put their HR Department and their rules to all of this, and that was the end of it.
5) Donaghy himself. No one, with a straight face, can conclude anything other than that the general public sentiment was that the NBA was rigged, even at that time. However, it's one thing for the public to have that -- it's another to actually have it proven without question.
Donaghy proved it -- and he was basically turned into the "lone rogue" because the entire future of the NBA became endangered (and a lot of Big Money fucked with!) because the truth was finally being known.
6) It can sometimes come down to simply merchandising comparisons and the like. One of the main reasons I believe Pittsburgh defeated Arizona in Super Bowl XLIII. Consider the comparative sizes of money for Steeler Super Bowl apparel and Cardinal Super Bowl apparel.
(One of the reasons I felt the league was going to put the Packers over on Sunday. Now, they can pretty much forget a large-scale Super Bowl Champion apparel operation, no matter WHO wins.)
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I could go on.
But there is a central thread: YOU DO NOT FUCK WITH BIG MONEY.
George Carlin was right. It is a Big Club, and you are not in it.
I will add (from even experiences up to the present day) that the law only exists to remove undesirables from the desired. It is not equal, was never meant to be, and many people won't even get enforcement of the law under any circumstances.
Why? Because there is a large-scale system to retain the status quo.
How large? I cannot confirm the veracity of what I'm about to tell you. I am only to posit a theory which has run through the conspiracy circles in the last month (it is largely believed by the QAnon crew that this is the main reason Chief Justice Roberts is "compromised" and that neither him, the Supreme Court, or Vice-President Pence stepped in to "rightfully" re-install Trump...).
Do I believe it is true? I will put it at "better than 50-50".
If my circumstances have not triggered the squick factor, this almost certainly will.
Lin Wood is a lawyer of some conspiracy repute. I would almost bet money he's been disbarred from one or more states.
After the Supreme Court refused to re-install Trump (and concurrent with Mike Pence allowing the Electoral College certification of Biden and Harris to complete) had probably about the scariest conspiracy theory I think I've ever heard. It takes the "Pizzagate" pedophilia to the ultimate level.
Wood alleges that powerful people (under the cover of an international group of those "in control" -- the Illuminati, etc.) take prospective major power players into a room with a camera, a child, and a gun.
I will leave it at that, for some degree of squick-protection.
Wood has been banned from social media for making the case that Chief Justice Roberts HAS had to do this, and that he also believes Mike Pence did as well.
I leave you with this thought: If THAT is what is necessary to be in "The Club" that Carlin talked about, then what kind of apparatus is in place to maintain the status quo -- be it in politics, entertainment, finance, etc. and so forth and on and on and on?
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