The GameStop stock phenomenon took everyone by surprise in 2020 when everyday people stuck it to Wall Street titans by inflating the stock value of the video game store chain.
It shook the world of finance to its core, albeit momentarily, but allowed regular people to hope that it could happen again.
"This story is like a spark and a spark is very easy to extinguish but also, under the right circumstances, it can start a bigger fire," Rebecca Angelo, one of the writers of new Hollywood film, Dumb Money, all about the GameStop episode, told Newsweek.
Angelo and longtime writing partner Lauren Schuker Blum—the pair are former Washington Post reporters—began writing the film as events unfolded.
They also based their screenplay on the Ben Mezrich's 2021 book The Antisocial Network and the film has an eye-watering A-list ensemble cast including Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, and Seth Rogen.
"This is a story of a lot of people discovering the power of the collective, and an institution, the stock market, that they thought was just irreparably broken," Angelo continued, explaining why it could all happen again.
"But once you know your power, it never goes away and a group of people who used to be invisible are visible now and there's no undoing that the cat is out of the bag."
The GameStop saga involved retail stock traders buying up a lot of shares in the company. Retail traders are amateurs buying and selling stock using their own money— Wall Street pros often refer to them as "Dumb Money," hence the name of the movie.
These retail traders got caught up buying stocks in what looked to be a failing brick-and-mortar store, GameStop. They were alerted to its potential thanks to some savvy investors through the power of social media, specifically the Wall Street Bets thread on Reddit.
Shifts to online shopping and the pandemic bringing the world to a halt saw GameStop's value drop and hedge fund managers began to "short" the stock in anticipation of its demise. Shorting refers to the practice of betting the value of a stock will fall by borrowing the shares and selling them at market value in hopes they would eventually buy them back at a lower cost.
But when the "dumb money" people started jumping on the bandwagon to buy into the "meme stock", GameStop shares soared and hedge fund managers were the ones to lose big.
For one of the first times in history, the stock market was ruled by the people and in a very 21st-century way, using emojis, GIFs, and zany videos to create a community that bonded through its newly created online language.
"We realized really quickly that this wasn't a narrow, ultra specific story about the market so much as it was a cultural story," Angelo said.
"It was a story about a lot of people who were isolated and feeling small and literally, forced into lockdowns because of the pandemic, who found meaning in this movement and joined up into something that was bigger than themselves."
At one point there were about 8 million people on Wall Street Bets who taught each other about the stock market and the associated lingo. They eventually created their own shorthand for the language, using emojis.
Questioning whether something like the GameStop saga could happen again has become topical after its stocks surged this week when Ryan Cohen was named its new CEO.
The billionaire and activist investor who made his fortune with online pet store Chewy was one of the first people to recognize GameStop's potential in 2020.
He was named the new CEO on Thursday and will not receive any pay for the role, an announcement which saw GameStop's value surge briefly during the day.
Whether the exact events that happened during the GameStop phenomenon could ever be replicated is highly unlikely, most experts say.
"The short answer is no. While a market event like GameStop could well happen again, it is important to recognize that the clearing and settlement framework worked perfectly in this case and, what is more important, through all the pandemic," wrote Javier Hernani for stock market news publication, The Trade.
Dumb Money's screenwriters agreed that a "perfect storm" created the GameStop saga, but it would be a disservice to ignore the factors that led to it.
"Being on Reddit became a sort of family when people were trapped inside [during the COVID pandemic]," Schuker Blum said of why people became so obsessed with the Wall Street Bets thread, adding the pandemic highlighted the inequalities in the world and amplified people's sense of isolation.
Angelo added that while the COVID pandemic spurred the phenomenon along, it was a brewing storm just waiting to happen.
"All the trends pointed in this direction, of increasing isolation, the wane of institutions that used to be the center of communal life, and pushing more and more people to finding a community online," she said.
"But then the pandemic just poured lighter fluid on that small fire and it exploded."
Schuker Blum added: "People are longing to be part of something bigger than themselves." And while the GameStop saga was a "form of social protest against the haves and have nots," it was also a way to be "part of something bigger than our everyday existence alone, trapped alone at home, and a way to find connection."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more
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