{"id":141471,"date":"2021-02-17T11:58:51","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T16:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=141471"},"modified":"2021-02-17T12:28:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T17:28:46","slug":"how-the-legacy-media-tried-to-vilify-reddits-wall-street-bets-during-the-gamestop-fiasco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-the-legacy-media-tried-to-vilify-reddits-wall-street-bets-during-the-gamestop-fiasco\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Legacy Media Tried To Vilify Reddit\u2019s \u2018Wall Street Bets\u2019 During The GameStop Fiasco"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-the-legacy-media-tried-to-vilify-reddits-wall-street-bets-during-the-gamestop-fiasco%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=141471&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/GettyImages-1231053941-1200x800-1.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\">By now, most are familiar with the astronomical rise of GameStop (GME) shares in recent weeks, spurred on primarily by retail investors on Reddit\u2019s sub-forum, r\/WallStreetBets. A calamitous drop in price followed shortly after the historic run as <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/technology\/536272-robinhood-restricts-trading-on-companies-targeted-by-reddit-users?rl=1\"><span class=\"s1\">various brokerages<\/span><\/a> seemingly caved to the demands of hedge funds that stood to lose billions after heavily shorting GME.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The real story, however, may just be how many in the legacy media chose to vilify this grassroots movement of individual investors who had banded together to rally behind a stock they believed in. The likes of Time, CNBC, and The New York Times all seemed to give brazen support to Wall Street and hedge funds while actively maligning these retail investors by casting their financial gains as some abhorrent or immoral venture.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>Time tried to frame it as an \u201calt-right movement\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/5933931\/gamestop-stock-market-reddit-money\/\">Time<\/a><\/span> decided to heed the insights of James Cohen, an apparent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jamesncohen.com\/about\"><span class=\"s1\">specialist in memes<\/span><\/a>, who cast the surge in GameStop shares as some anarchical movement. Cohen insisted that it had \u201cnothing to do with actual money\u201d and was \u2014 instead \u2014 \u201ca nihilistic approach to disenfranchisement\u201d akin to \u201cthe Joker.\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Taking it a step further toward the absurd, Time sought out the progressive wisdom of Ryan Broderick \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/influence.co\/nofilter\/ryan-broderick-garbage-day-newsletter\"><span class=\"s1\">a former writer for BuzzFeed<\/span><\/a> \u2014 to reduce Wall Street Bets into some vicious, regressive horde. Though Broderick cautioned that he didn\u2019t \u201cwant to go so far as to say that there\u2019s like a fascist or authoritarian bent here,\u201d he did state that the subreddit employed \u201cthe memes of the far right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">From these so-called experts, Time deduced that the GameStop rally was really just a manifestation of the \u201calt-right\u201d:<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cNo matter where you divine the source of WallStreetBets\u2019 anger, it\u2019s difficult not to see remnants of other, often far right, meme movements. The reveling in chaos, the delight in upsetting a system, the pride in being inscrutable to mainstream media, it all reflects many of the <a href=\"https:\/\/mashable.com\/2017\/05\/05\/alt-right-memes-france-world\/\"><span class=\"s1\">alt-right meme campaigns<\/span><\/a> that were used in 2016 to tout Donald Trump\u2019s candidacy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Frankly, what\u2019s most outlandish is the subtext behind Time\u2019s farfetched summary and analysis. Never mind their erroneous conclusion, apparently any association with Trump and conservatism automatically precludes some kind of arcane and malevolent intent that must be thwarted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>CNBC also echoed the \u201calt-right\u201d narrative while inadvertently validating the GameStop movement<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">While attempting to explain the surge in GME shares, Eamon Javers of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2021\/01\/28\/gamestop-republicans-warn-of-trump-style-populist-revolution.html\"><span class=\"s1\">CNBC<\/span><\/a> offered some positive insight on the situation almost by way of irony or accident.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span> He argued that a variety of factors were involved, including a \u201chealthy dose of skepticism of the media, and a belief in fake news.\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Javers continued: \u201cThere are scores of similarities between former President&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/donald-trump\/\"><span class=\"s2\">Donald Trump<\/span><\/a>\u2019s \u2018Make America Great Again\u2019 movement and the GameStop surge. There is a sense of fighting back against disrespect of the elites, belief that systemic rules have been written to benefit insiders at the expense of regular people, and new internet technologies that widely distribute power that was once held exclusively by a small group.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">If such a comparison is warranted, it actually validates r\/WallStreetBets and the GameStop movement. Americans are fed up with elitism and rightly so, especially when championed to exhaustion by so many in the legacy media. That the same media would attempt to paint the movement as the comeuppance of the ignorant rabble and defend the hedge funds all but proves Javer\u2019s point even further, though he clearly intended otherwise in the piece.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>The New York Times had the audacity to claim \u201cgreed and boredom\u201d was behind the movement<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">At the peak of the GME\u2019s share price, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/01\/27\/business\/gamestop-wall-street-bets.html\"><span class=\"s1\">The New York Times<\/span><\/a> ran a piece written with an odd mix of condescension and conceit toward mainly average, hard-working Americans by the authors\u2019 very own admission.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The piece even opened with a detailed description of the retail investors who were taking part in the GME surge: <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cA real estate salesman in Valparaiso, Ind. A former line cook from the Bronx. An evangelical pastor and his wife in Huntington Beach, Calif. A high school student in the Milwaukee suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The nexus of the movement \u2014 r\/WallStreetBets \u2014 was written off as a \u201cjuvenile, foul-mouthed Reddit page\u201d and emphasized that the bigwigs on Wall Street referred to such individual investors as \u201cdumb money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The authors then argued that such individuals were simply \u201cpropelled by a mix of greed and boredom\u201d and not a sincere desire to better their lives through a meaningful attempt at financial gain.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">It should also come as no surprise that this particular piece against r\/WallStreetBets was co-authored by none other than Taylor Lorenz, who has been described as an <a href=\"https:\/\/greenwald.substack.com\/p\/the-journalistic-tattletale-and-censorship\"><span class=\"s1\">expert at smear campaigns and cancel culture<\/span><\/a>. Glenn Greenwald refers to the work of Lorenz and the cabal of \u201c<span class=\"s3\"><em>NYT\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>tech reporters\u201d as \u201cmainstream corporate journalism\u201d who abuse their influence to \u201cdemand censorship of spaces they cannot control.\u201d It seems that r\/WallStreetBets is such a space.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>The Washington Post accused r\/WallStreetBets of sexism in a bizarre piece<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In an odd but entirely expected attempt to twist the story into something about gender and race, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelily.com\/women-are-missing-from-the-gamestop-news-experts-blame-this-fratty-subreddit\/\"><span class=\"s1\">The Lily<\/span><\/a> \u2014 a product of The Washington Post \u2014 published a piece denouncing r\/WallStreetBets as a \u201cboy\u2019s club\u201d that dared to have an \u201cavatar of a white man in a suit, with slicked-back hair and sunglasses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">That the culture of the subreddit eludes new users and has somewhat of a learning curve was seen as a sure sign of something insidious.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">A woman interviewed for the piece complained that the \u201cjokes are often told with a \u2018wink, wink, nod, nod\u2019\u2019 and that \u201c[i]t\u2019s never entirely clear whether commenters are serious.\u201d Her frustration forced her to conclude that r\/WallStreetBets is \u201cnot a fun place to be if you are not a white man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Of course, the article conveniently disregards the various subreddits centered around feminism, transgenderism, and a whole host of other progressive \u201cisms\u201d that are equally difficult to navigate for new users, if not more so, given that participation on such subreddits is wholly contingent upon being \u201cone of them.\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">More importantly, the larger context seems to suggest that the goal of legacy media outlets like the Washington Post was to slander r\/WallStreetBets and other retail investors in GameStop as sexist, privileged villains.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>The GME rally exposed much of the media as nothing more than corporate shills<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The media\u2019s apparent efforts to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9ToOGrUQ7ME&amp;ab_channel=TheHill\"><span class=\"s1\">protect the hedge funds<\/span><\/a> against r\/WallStreetBets proved far more absurd than the voluminous rise in GME shares. Various commentators scrambled to explain what was occurring while simultaneously trying to salvage Wall Street by demonizing the many retail investors who had banded together.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Alex Shepard of <a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/161126\/gamestop-rally-cnbc-reddit-stocks\"><span class=\"s1\">The New Republic<\/span><\/a> insisted that \u201c[n]etworks like CNBC and Fox Business are in league with the hedge funds they supposedly cover\u201d and that the situation discloses \u201cnot just\u2026how the stock market works, but also\u2026how financial media works.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Shepard detailed the ensuing media chaos in full:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201cThis was an argument you heard again and again from the titans of financial media as this chaotic, Reddit-driven assault on Wall Street\u2019s sense and sensibilities progressed over the course of the week: What was happening with GameStop was fundamentally wrong. The free market, after all, had decided that the value of the flailing video game retail empire was <span class=\"s1\">around $18 a share<\/span>; now it had multiplied twentyfold because a bunch of bored gamers with stimulus checks and time on their hands were in it for the lols. CNBC\u2019s Carl Quintanilla took to Twitter to question the merits of fiscal stimulus itself, <span class=\"s1\">writing<\/span>, \u2018How does [Federal Reserve Chair Jerome] Powell endorse trillions in fiscal stimulus on a day like this,\u2019 with an image of the booming stock prices of GameStop, the currently shuttered movie theater chain AMC, and other companies being boosted by the subreddit r\/WallStreetBets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Suddenly, free market advocates in the media were abandoning their philosophical positions in droves. Shepard noted that the likes of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SquawkCNBC\/status\/1354408089970221056\"><span class=\"s1\">Joe Kernan of CNBC<\/span><\/a> began arguing for more market regulation when they\u2019d staunchly been against such measures in the past.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Writing for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/gamestop-and-the-truth-wars\"><span class=\"s1\">City Journal<\/span><\/a>, Bruno Ma\u00e7\u0101es put forth a similar argument as Shepard, stating that many in the financial media \u201crushed to condemn a group of investors for the sin of not caring about the inherent value of a company \u2014 as if the world hadn\u2019t long ago forgotten what those words mean.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Ma\u00e7\u0101es also pointed out the many economic oddities occurring all across the financial and political world, particularly in light of the pandemic and the strain the collective response has put on so many Americans. That strain, in part, compelled the push behind GME, much to the dismay of the financial world:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201c[T]he U.S. stock market ended 2020 at all-time highs, even as the country entered a massive economic recession\u2026Just as Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon had rushed to ban versions of the world they saw as dubious only a few weeks ago, financial institutions ranging from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the online trading platform Robinhood were now being called upon to restore order and truth. A trader at a large broker in New York, who amusingly requested anonymity, told the <em>Financial Times<\/em> that we used to live in a world where everyone watched Jim Cramer; now, he said, we live \u2018in a world where it is coming from a lot of social media platforms. In many ways, it is a lot more democratized, but it is more difficult to understand how much of it is real.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">It\u2019s this very democratizing of the markets that so many in the financial media feel compelled to thwart. Sadly, in large part, they succeeded when <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/technology\/536272-robinhood-restricts-trading-on-companies-targeted-by-reddit-users\"><span class=\"s1\">brokerages halted the trading of GME<\/span><\/a> and other stocks heavily touted by r\/WallStreetBets and elsewhere.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Dan Dixon of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/jan\/28\/anarchy-in-jokes-and-trolling-the-gamestop-fiasco-is-4chan-think-in-action\"><span class=\"s1\">The Guardian<\/span><\/a> offered a bit more of a neutral take, arguing that much of the mainstream media is clueless and \u201cstruggles to explain events like this because the events are arranged to be indescribable, irreducible, by those external to it.\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Reddit and r\/WallStreetBets remain largely foreign terrain to the likes of CNBC, Time, and other media outlets. Aside from what seems to be ulterior motives in support of the hedge funds, they can only ascribe chaos and malfeasance to the circumstances surrounding the surge in GME by virtue of their own willful ignorance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">***<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The GameStop rally should have been hailed as a victory for many Americans, especially during the unprecedented financial hardships brought on by the pandemic and the restrictive policies surrounding it. Instead, much of the legacy media chose to castigate and condemn it while also giving shameless support to billion dollar hedge funds.<\/p>\n<p><em>The views expressed in this piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a<\/em>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By now, most are familiar with the astronomical rise of GameStop (GME) shares in recent weeks, spurred on primarily by retail investors on Reddit\u2019s sub-forum, r\/WallStreetBets. A calamitous drop in &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2181415,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/GettyImages-1231053941-1200x800-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"How The Legacy Media Tried To Vilify Reddit\u2019s \u2018Wall Street Bets\u2019 During The GameStop Fiasco","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/GettyImages-1231053941-1200x800-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"How The Legacy Media Tried To Vilify Reddit\u2019s \u2018Wall Street Bets\u2019 During The GameStop Fiasco","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2181415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}