Serious Tech News #7: GameStop! In The Naaame of Looooove

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Last week, people on Reddit are making literally millions of dollars on the internet, and here I am writing a free newsletter so people would like me. So I would say we’re both happy.

In case you’ve been out on a silent retreat like Jared Leto when the pandemic started, here’s a quick brief on what’s happening:

A group of online message board frequenters who call each other retards (an anagram of ‘traders’) teamed up to take down Wall Street and their weapon of choice is an obsolete video game retail franchise. In the process, they managed to make millions, angering a 77-year-old old hedge fund billionaire, and literally united America.

It all started on r/wallstreetbets, a subreddit where (retail) investors treat the stock market like Las Vegas by betting huge amount of cash on high risk, borderline idiotic investments while insulting each other.

So it’s just like real-life Wall Street.

A Redditor with the username DeepFuckingValue found out that a multi-billion dollar hedge fund Melvin Capital has shorted GameStop’s ($GME) stocks, meaning they bet the stock price will go down and the company will bite the dust. However, if the stock goes up, Melvin have to “cover”, meaning they need to buy the stocks shorted at a high price.

Noticing this rare opportunity, Redditors started rallying one another to buy GameStop stocks, raising the price and at the same time sapping Melvin Capital’s fund. As I’m writing this free newsletter, GameStop stock has soared almost 2000% in the last month, and the New York-based hedge fund has lost 7.25 billion dollars, which is 53% of their fund.

Last Thursday, as Melvin Capital is covering their losses, Robinhood and other stock trading platforms halted users from buying $GME stocks along with other “meme stocks” being hyped up on Reddit such as AMC Theatre ($AMC), and obsolete mobile phone companies like Blackberry ($BB) and Nokia ($NOK).

On a related note, our sources reported that executives at Sony Ericsson, Siemens, and Motorola are frantically inquiring their millennial employees about how to get the company classified as “meme stocks.”

The unexpected decision to halt trade — colloquially known as a ‘dick move’ — enraged the r/wallstreetbets community, accusing the instant trading platform Robinhood of manipulating the market and siding with the “elites”, which is ironic considering their name and reputation. It’s like if Whole Foods start selling Spam on their top shelves, or DJ Khaled rapping about being poor.

Sharp criticisms also came from influential people such as Elon Musk, newest Silicon Valley darling Chamath Palihapitiya, AOC, Jon Stewart, the Zodiac Killer, two of the Sharks from Shark Tank, and the most important of all, Ja Rule.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev tried to calm the storm by stating that they halted trading not because they wanted to manipulate the market, but because they’re running out of money. However, it’s too little too late.

The subreddit —now with more than 7 million members strong — declared a full-blown war against hedge funds, CNBC, and Jimmy Kimmel. Observers on social media commented that this is the Occupy Wall Street movement, but with protesters sitting on overpriced gaming chairs instead of dirty tents.

As I’m writing this, Redditors and other retail investors are currently charging together to force a “short squeeze”, with the hope of forcing the stock price to rocket so that everyone gets their payday.

Which side would win this battle? It’s too heavy of a question for this light newsletter. However, we believe that this Black Swan event is probably a once in a decade, if not a lifetime.

We hope you’re enjoying the ride.

Deloitte: The Real Vaccine Was The Money We Made Along The Way

Another day, another wow-the-government-doesn’t-really-understand-how-technology-works moment.

A $44 million vaccine management website commissioned to Deloitte consulting firm by the federal government, is reported to be vastly underwhelming and full of bugs, to the point that clinic administrators had no choice but to use pen and paper.

When Serious Tech News reached out to Deloitte representatives for further comments, we are told that the consultants responsible for this project were busy playing beer pong using a 1926 Kavalan Whisky that costs $75,000.

The whole affair was perceived as frivolous management of taxpayers’ money. As a comparison, the British government was able to utilize the same amount of capital to hold a Royal Wedding, and a podcast.

Twitter Goes Loooooooooooooong

Twitter announced that they have acquired Revue, a newsletter publishing company based in the Netherlands. This acquisition marks the social media platform's significant advance into longer-form content because obnoxious tweetstorms about tech people hating journalists and moving to Miami just don’t cut it anymore.

With Revue acquisition, you’d finally be able to receive groundbreaking Twitter threads such as "Taylor Swift as Different Programming Textbooks”, “Weirdest Things You’ve Ever Found In A Boy’s Bathroom”, or the legendary “My Brother-in-law Accidentally Ordered A Truck of Rice” right on your inbox, only at $9.99/month. #creatoreconomy.

Our sources also reported that Twitter CEO and yoga enthusiast Jack Dorsey is looking into acquiring The Daily Mail’s website comment section due to the alignment in discourse quality with Twitter's political debate.

Living In The Cloud

We are all familiar with this quote about teaching: “Give a man a lecture and you teach him for a day. Record a lecture on the internet and you teach him for a lifetime.”

Aaron Insuini, a Concordia university student was appalled when he found out that the professor which online lectures he has been taking, has passed in 2019. The student found out about his passing when he was looking up the professor’s email to ask some questions, and found an obituary instead.

We’ve heard about baby boomers who decided to not retire, but keeping your occupation past your lifespan is practically unheard of. J

Our sources also reported that this small news sparked an idea for a small stealth startup in Silicon Valley: bringing back dead icons to life via hologram and start an online masterclass.

The initial lecturers rumored for the pilot cohort is Tupac Shakur with his class “Gangster Life 101: I Have Some Ideas About Who Shot Me”, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud with his theory on “Why I Love My Mother and You Should Too”, and Abraham Lincoln with his 4 parts speech “Goddammit America, What Have You Done?”

If time and funds allow, it’s said that the startup would also explore the most challenging project: bringing Lindsay Lohan’s career back to life. Not Lindsay, only her career.

All jokes aside, we want to give the late François-Marc Gagnon the recognition he deserved. Teachers are underappreciated.

Thanks for reading! If you like it, it’d be awesome if you can share it with your family, Twitter friends you barely know, or that one co-worker you chat with most often on Slack DMs.

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As always, better times are coming.