The December 2023 State of the GME Social Media Ecosystem - Lemmy.World

Hello everyone, The purpose of this post is to provide a general overview of where GME investors are in terms of social media, as of December 2023. In terms of social media it is hard to accurately describe the current situation without also including some parts relevant to BBBYQ investors, there is some overlap. This post is in some ways a followup to this post [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/4179] I made in June 2023 shortly after this Lemmy instance was born. - - - - TLDR of this post: The Energy of the community of investors cannot be contained. It does not belong to anyone or any platform. When attempts are made by some entity (e.g. Reddit) to hold on to that Energy for themselves, it slips away and finds itself somewhere else. - - - - Brief overview of some relevant events pertaining to Reddit: - pre January 2021 - the social media situation relevant to GME investors in the original “normal state”. There did not exist much of a GME investor community at all. The part that did exist was in r/wallstreetbets. There was undeniably a powerful Energy and momentum surrounding the GME situation. This situation, this Energy, caused an enormous spike in growth of r/wallstreetbets [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/pictrs/image/e4ef5ca3-4929-4e2e-9ef7-f27180e5f295.png] source [https://subredditstats.com/r/wallstreetbets] - after January 2021 - several different subreddits popped up for GME investors. r/superstonk emerged as the preeminent GME investor subreddit and community on the internet, and largely remained that way until early 2023. During that period of time, Superstonk was home of “the Energy”. The Energy had/has a spirit of its own, and is always changing and adapting and moving around. [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/pictrs/image/dce18456-0b99-448d-bf01-c7a76a970259.png] source [https://subredditstats.com/r/superstonk] - eventually, for reasons, the r/DRSyourGME subreddit was created. Compared with superstonk this was a very small subreddit. It harbored some small amount of the original genuine Energy. In April 2023, a DD was posted to r/DRSyourGME, commonly referred to the Heatlamp DD or Heatlamp theory, also referred to as the DSPP Revelations. The information in that post was being actively censored in superstonk, for some reason. People tried to post it in superstonk, and it became a great big uncomfortable and embarrassing episode of censorship. Because of the efforts to censor and contain it, there was an explosion of growth in r/DRSyourGME. [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/pictrs/image/9161fdaf-d33a-4b71-9a85-f5b3083f6785.png] source [https://subredditstats.com/r/drsyourgme] - not too long later (June), Reddit permanently banned that subreddit. - around this time, a different subreddit, r/theppshow, which was primarily about the topic of the Bed Bath & Beyond bankruptcy [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/475859], was growing. There was already the r/BBBY subreddit, but the BBBY subreddit lacked most of the essence of The Energy. r/theppshow carried that essence, it had some of The Energy. Simply, there was enthusiasm and excitement there, for whatever reason. One big contributing factor might have been the novelty and value of the new medium that was the live show on YouTube. This new medium, which wasn’t really well utilized up to this point by GME or BBBYQ investors, invigorated discussion, and it gave people a platform to socialize over their common interests in the subject matter. Eventually, Pulte started giving attention to that subreddit, and in late July came on to the show [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/36558]. This attention from Pulte helped fuel further growth into that subreddit and community. What eventually started happening was that this subreddit started to become the new home of “The Energy”. Reminiscent, perhaps, the same way that it happened to the r/DRSyourGME subreddit. Conversations that were controlled and contained and censored in superstonk, the predominant subreddit of the “GME Energy”, suddenly were free and open and fun again. Even though it was predominantly a subreddit devoted to the BBBYQ bankruptcy situation, many curious GME shareholders wanted to participate in that conversation. Many of the BBBYQ shareholders are also GME shareholders, many of them originally from GME. [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/pictrs/image/3ddf0bcd-a932-4159-b119-4fd5433411ae.png] source [https://subredditstats.com/r/theppshow] - But it wasn’t to last. In late November 2023, Reddit banned r/theppshow [https://www.reddit.com/r/BBBY/comments/180posy/theppshow_subreddit_was_taken_down_heres_where_we/]. Some people, familiar with the banning of r/DRSyourGME, saw this coming months in advance. - - - - To summarize that series of events: There once was a great Energy, a great GME Energy. Reddit was the original birthplace of this Energy, and to this day is still home to a large amount of it. But, over these last few years, what we have witnessed on Reddit have been numerous cases of censorship and attempted information containment. Some people, or entities, or agendas, it seems, have an interest in trying to control The Energy, to treat it as if it belongs to them. But it doesn’t. The Energy belongs to nobody, and it cannot be contained. The harder that anyone tries to contain or control or capture the Energy for themselves, the faster it will slip from their hands [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/494287]. The Energy comes from all of us, it is the sum total of the attention, time, energy, money, and excitement, that comes from each and every individual person that is contributing to it. Because of attempts made, by Reddit, to be the sole keepers of The Energy, it slips through their hands and finds a new home in new places. - - - - December 2023 So here we are. Where is this Energy now? While much of it is still found in various places on Reddit, including superstonk, significant amounts of it are found in new places. Here we are, for example, on Lemmy / in the fediverse. The fediverse is a currently small, but promising platform [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/494473], and is but one home for the Energy. In a certain practical sense, the ongoing information sharing, the Energy, has found itself in a new decentralized form. “Decentralized” in the sense that it is not all within the confines of superstonk or Reddit at all, the way it once was in a different time. [https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/pictrs/image/e01d0bd9-e7ac-4861-999b-1b2f6ff7f469.png] - We have this Lemmy instance, and the larger fediverse that it connects to. - We have, for example, the DRSyourGME Public Discord [https://discord.gg/B7YYda6X]. There are also numerous other community discords that may be worthwhile, e.g. the Loopring Discord [https://discord.com/invite/loopring] - There are numerous subreddits of various sizes that have worthwhile content. - Recently, to my surprise, partially coinciding with the banning of r/theppshow subreddit, but also occurring on its own, X (formerly Twitter) is emerging as a new and relevant location for GME investors (and BBBYQ investors) due to the existence of X Spaces [https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/spaces]. X Spaces have emerged as a relevant social location, providing a supply to an evidently existing demand for such interaction. On any given day, there might be 500 or a thousand people listening to a live conversation about GME or BBBYQ or other related topics of conversation. On December 6, for example, GME earnings date, nearly 10 thousand people [https://twitter.com/Badmojo6969/status/1732501802208084073] tuned in to hear the live discussion hosted on X by community participants. Compared with where we were 1 year ago, the existence of all of these worthwhile areas that are not superstonk is giving a new form and new life to the way that The Energy manifests itself, and the truth of our situation now has new avenues for being discussed, a new home where it can be free and co-mingle with other information. It is impossible to know for sure how things will continue to evolve, but I tend to believe that the greater degree of decentralization of information, the greater the freedom of truth that will exist.