This week, a group of Reddit users spearheaded a campaign to purchase stock options in video-game retailer GameStop, driving up the stock price and leading to financial repercussions. The Onion takes a step-by-step look at what happened.
STEP 1: Some really worthwhile human being creates way to profit off failing companies by short-selling stocks.
STEP 2: GameStop somehow manages to lose business at time when people can literally do nothing but play video games.
STEP 3: Hedge fund manager calls estranged 19-year-old son to ask him to explain Reddit.
STEP 4: Holy shit, that guy made $80,000?
STEP 5: Finance experts dismiss GameStop’s $22.2 billion market valuation as not based on any sound company plan to cause mass misery and squalor.
STEP 6: Nation relieved to be able to focus on different systemic crisis for a bit.
STEP 7: GameStop employees assured stock spike won’t improve their working conditions whatsoever.
STEP 8: People who exploit the poor for a living complain about something being unfair.
STEP 9: Economy verges on collapse after Redditors’ profits go toward medical bills and student loans rather than much-needed yacht repairs.
STEP 10: Wall Street wins.
