adventures of hank the angry drunken dwarf and the robinhoods of r/wallstreetbets
In 1998, a large company decided it was a good idea to give people the power to vote for the most beautiful person in the world, but the people had other ideas. In 2021, a large company placed bets on the downfall of certain small companies and their stocks, but the people had other ideas. 23 years apart, these two events have two things is common — the concept of social media and the will to take down giant corporations as a giant middle finger to Gutenberg economics.
When People magazine conducted an online poll to let people vote for their choice on a list of the most beautiful people in the world, they introduced a ‘submit your own suggestion’ essentially creating the earliest version of participatory culture of social media.
Chat rooms and online communities exploded with ideas of what they should do to ‘take down’ a corporation like People’s Magazine’s initiative in an effort to give power to the people, they voted for Hank, the angry drunken dwarf. They rallied online communities to support this movement and Hank beat Leonardo DiCaprio is the polls. This idea of people have the power — and a representation of digital age democratization was widely received by many as a joke, but acted upon because there was motivation to unite as a community and participate in this new social culture. Clay Shirky, in his book Cognitive Surplus states, “If you give people a way to act on their desire for autonomy and competence or generosity and sharing, they might take you up on it.” This makes total sense, not only for 1998, but also for 2021.
A similar event took place last week — this is a story of how a bunch of redditors shook the American economy and broke the stock market. The impact of the covid-19 pandemic was very real for many business — especially those with physical stores. Seeing this, a few hedge funds began shorting the stocks of companies like GameStop, AMC, and Nokia — essentially betting on their downfall. This was an opportunity to troll to the hedge funds and giant corporations that the people are taking back the power.
On the week of January 25, 2020 — redditors from a subreddit called r/wallstreetbets encouraged everyone in their community to buy the stocks of GameStop on a stock buying app called Robinhood to essentially mass manipulate the market and inflate the price of the stocks that hedge funds shorted on. This led to those companies taking total losses of around $70 billion.
The key ingredient in these two events were opportunity and motivation. In both cases, there was an opportunity to participate with the help of social media, and there was a motivation to become a part of the community. Social media is replacing the social communities of the past and establishing online places of conversation.
