Worth a watch.

  • jergy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
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    1 year ago

    Thanks for posting this here. It’s an interesting piece.

    I watched parts of it but not all of it.

    Of course, as a GME investor I am biased, but I have some issues with this video.

    First, who is this guy and what makes him so qualified to weigh in on what is, from our perspective, a highly complex situation that we have been studying and experiencing first hand for 2 and a half years now?
    Literally thousands of hours of research has been done by the community of GameStop investors, nearly 200 thousand individuals have DRS’d their shares.
    How does this person have more knowledge and expertise than the entire hive mind of people that have been working to figure out these situations for 2 and a half years? What makes him able to speak so matter-of-factually with such confidence that he alone is right and we together are wrong?


    around 7 minutes into the video, provided is a helpful glossary of terms used by memestockers.

    I unfortunately am unable to upload images at this time so I will just provide the text from that image here:

    MEMESTOCK VOCABULARY

    • Ape – memestock investor
    • Jimmy – GME, GameStop
    • Bobby – BBBY, Bed Bath & Beyond
    • Popcorn – AMC Theatres
    • Towel – Bed Bath & Beyond
    • DD – due diligence, theorycrafting
    • SS – Superstonk (subreddit)
    • Shorts – entities with a net short position
    • SHF – short hedge funds
    • Kenny – Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel Securities
    • Ladder Attacks – downward price movement
    • Crime – downward price movement
    • Cellar Boxing – lack of upward price movement
    • Shill – critics
    • Shilling – negative sentiment
    • WSB – WallStreetBets (subreddit)
    • Tendies – chicken tenders, wealth
    • Regard – coded ableist slur

    I found this list to be quite revealing of the author as to what message he is really trying to send in this video. Some of these definitions are accurate, and some are plainly not.

    I try and think about this in terms of: this video is probably not intended for us existing investors. I can’t know what the intentions were in the creation of this video, but from this example and others, I get the impression that this video is deliberately biased to paint GME investors and others as seriously irrational individuals without a shred of legitimacy. The way I see it, the entire video feels designed to discredit the things that GME investors and others are talking about.

    For example, “ladder attacks” and “crime” are just code words that memestock investors use when the price goes down. In reality, there are no such thing as ladder attacks, there is never crime involved, and the price is simply going down. Those words have no other possible relevant contextual meaning, and anyone who believes otherwise is a delusional cultist.

    Cellar boxing is simply a lack of upward price movement. If you are a person who happens to encounter one of these delusional morons, and they mention the idea of “cellar boxing” to you, just know that this is one of those meaningless code words that those people use to mean that the price isn’t going up. Cellar boxing as an idea or theory otherwise is something without meaning. The important thing to remember is that these people are delusional cultists, and so if they start saying these weird words like “cellar boxing” that this is just a symptom of their grand collective delusion. There is no actual valid meaning behind the term cellar boxing. Don’t give it another thought.


    Throughout the video, the creator basically takes all of the thoughts and ideas that GME investors tend to talk about and believe to be generally true, and then deliberately derides those ideas by glossing over important details and constructing strawman arguments that make GME investors to look as insane as possible. I mean, when there are thousands of comments in these forums every day, it would be pretty easy to pick and choose the ones that appear the worst and use those as a false representation for the entire thing.

    • The video mocks GME investors for saying that short selling is a bad thing in general.
    • the video seems to discuss our thoughts on DRS but again generally derides the whole idea as nonsensical thinking by a bunch of delusional cultists that are painfully uninformed
    • the video in general casts much doubt about the idea of naked short selling. 44:22 "Naked short sales are kinda tricky to talk about because the well of discussion is so poisoned by these conspiracy theorists. A naked short sale is when you generate a short sale without actually borrowing a share first. It is a real thing, it is illegal and has been for a while, people have gone to jail for doing it, it was a historical problem, but not for the reasons Apes and their ilk claim. The problem is compounded by the fact that a number of legitimate market mechanics resemble naked short selling if you squint. So there’s the real thing off over in the corner that people go to jail for doing because, like, there’s evidence of their crimes, and then there’s a fantasy version espoused by cranks where shadowy figures destroy companies for profit without leaving any evidence. The infuriating thing is that it really kinda doesn’t even matter because most Apes don’t bother to distinguish between regular short sales and naked short sales. Apes start from “short sellers are the bad guys,” and rail against anything that enables short selling, like stock lending which is obviously important to short selling because you can’t borrow a share unless someone’s lending them. Apes only rope in a crank version of naked shorts when they eventually need to explain why there’s no evidence of the short position that would need to exist in order for the short squeeze to still be on the table. "

    I find it interesting how the creator addresses the problems that we talk about, mentions that illegal naked short selling is real because it happens when there is evidence of it, but then proceeds to assert that we are therefore delusional for continuing to believe that it could be happening, because we lack the evidence.

    I mean, isn’t this basically one of the main disputes of this entire thing? GME investors allege that certain parties are guilty of perpetrating certain crimes, but that those perpetrators haven’t gotten in trouble yet because they have so far succeeded at hiding the evidence of their crimes. Why does somebody have to necessarily be a delusional cultist to believe in the idea that crime really is being committed? Crime exists everywhere in all parts of the world, but somehow it is just simply inconceivable that any financial crime has ever been committed with respect to GME / GameStop? Why does this video go to such great lengths to discredit that entire notion without ever addressing the reasons why it could possibly be true?


    I also find it interesting that the creator of the video apparently seems to be well informed about the intricacies of the history of everything that has happened, for example when heat lamp DD was published and that it was censored on superstonk, and yet deliberately misrepresents the series of events that actually happened. I mean for one thing, why give any attention to “heat lamp” at all? It is approached in the same way that for example “cellar boxing” or naked short selling is approached: these are ideas that these delusional cultists talk about, and here is a glossed over explanation as to why this makes those people delusional cultists please do not ever listen to those delusional cultists.

    “The author’s prior attempts at sharing this ‘thesis’ had been met with criticism and mockery, resulting in mods putting the threads in the trash.”

    Really? that’s how it happened? The DD was nonsense garbage, it was met with criticism and mockery, and the mods therefore (rightfully and justifiably!) put this garbage in the trash?

    This is funny to me because I wrote a post about that series of events that tells a much different version of events. I find it very interesting that this video, seemingly so well-informed about everything that has happened in this saga, simply glossed over the entire significance of the deliberate censorship that was happening, and in stead states that what actually happened was that the mods were sensibly just getting rid of a garbage post without merit. And that, therefore, all of the reactionary outrage at those mods is simply more evidence of delusional irrationality by a group of insane cultists.


    Also interesting, the creator of this video also put out a similar type of takedown video on January 21, 2022, titled: The Problem with NFTs. This was curiously around the same time that GameStop was ramping up their efforts with respect to the NFT marketplace and the chrome Ethereum wallet. The video addresses the idea of “play to earn”, again something that had been theorized to be integral to a new web3 business model that GameStop could create, and derides it as something resembling the worst of crypto scams. This video does not mention GameStop at all, so at that time of the release, this video just very conveniently does a take down of an idea that GameStop is building new initiatives on, without any apparent awareness of GameStop at all. Now, a year and a half later, this author creates a new video which is a take down of the entire notion that investing in GME is something that could be legitimate.

    • jergy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
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      1 year ago

      TLDR:

      Again, I recognize my own bias here, but I cannot shake the suspicion that the creator of this video is for some reason deliberately antagonistic towards GME investors for reasons other than that he believes we are members of a delusional financial death cult. From the parts that I’ve watched, it feels like the video was crafted by the same forces that oppose us in traditional financial media such as CNBC. it is a video that paints a picture that conveniently makes GME investors look as insane as possible, completely glosses over relevant details, misrepresents the view of GME investors, and provides a smoke screen for any financial incumbents that really have committed any crimes related to this saga.

      To me this video feels like a well-crafted precision missile aimed directly at all of the rhetorical places that matter the most to those parties that oppose the success of GameStop. The video is too well informed and simultaneously biased and inaccurate to have been something created out of genuine curiosity and fairness.

      • Winged_Hussar@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        it is a video that paints a picture that conveniently makes GME investors look as insane as possible, completely glosses over relevant details, misrepresents the view of GME investors, and provides a smoke screen for any financial incumbents that really have committed any crimes related to this saga.

        Exactly, I just like the stock.

    • glimse@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Thanks for the reply. I would encourage you to watch the video in it’s entirety because it answers some of the questions you had. There’s a particularly relevant section about the crowd research you mentioned.

      Forgive me if this isn’t the case but it seems like you stopped watching right after that slide because he goes into how the phrases on the list aren’t accurate.

      Dan Olson is a documentary filmmaker, not some anti-gamestop crusader. It’s his job to study and report on complex topics.

      The takeaway question is…who will be paying when everyone cashes out? Where’s that money coming from?

      • jergy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
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        1 year ago

        I skimmed through the video and stopped to watch the parts that felt important to understanding the narrative being made.

        Sure. The creator “goes into how the phrases on the list aren’t accurate,” and presumably, the conclusion is that GME investors are therefore clueless and talking pure nonsense. It is true I did not watch all of the video but I did CTRL+F through the YouTube transcript and could not find a single mention of the word “cellar” as in cellar boxing.

        So, regardless of what all is said in the video, “cellar boxing” is falsely presented as a notion that simply means that when it is mentioned by Apes, Apes are saying that the price is going down, that there is a “lack of upward price movement” and that this is what cellar boxing means. This is of course completely inaccurate but is not expanded upon at all. The casual viewer might be left with the impression that this is all that the term cellar boxing is and that any alternative description provided by these delusional cultists is therefore nonsensical, because these people are not rational thinkers.

        Sure, Dan Olson is a documentary film maker, no dispute there.

        Has any documentary film maker ever made a documentary before that had an agenda? Has there ever been a documentary that deliberately reports false information as truth? Is it possible that Dan Olson has deliberately or inadvertently stated incorrect information in this documentary as truth?

        Is it possible that an “independent” documentary filmmaker could be approached by somebody with bags full of cash and asked to please create a documentary about this specific subject and be sure to include statements X, Y, and Z?

        I’m not saying that Dan Olson has accepted money to create a hit piece, because I don’t have the evidence to conclude that. What I am saying is that it cannot be denied that this is a possibility. Have wall street incumbents ever paid a media channel anywhere to spread positive or negative sentiment about a certain subject that would conveniently be beneficial to their position?

        As for your takeaway question: if the delusional GME cultists are to be believed, the money comes from short hedge funds who have bet against the company by short selling and naked short selling the stock, who carry these open short positions that were never closed. This is part of the understanding of the cellar boxing theory, a theory which is conveniently disregarded in this video.

        • glimse@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          I think it’d be unfair for both of us to discuss this further without having both seen the film in its entirety. I don’t have a horse in this race either way

          • AnimorphFan1996@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
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            1 year ago

            I think it’d be unfair for both of us to discuss this further without having both seen the film in its entirety.

            You posted a video, but you haven’t seen it, and you don’t want to discuss it.

                • glimse@lemmy.worldOP
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                  1 year ago

                  It would have been a waste if we discussed anything at all but nobody was willing to watch the video.

                  I did love the “how can this guy be right when we all did our research and came to the same conclusion” - a specific argument explained in the video lol

                  Remember when reddit came to the conclusion on who the Boston bomber was? How could they have been wrong if so many people agreed???

                  • Mandarbmax@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Ya they just watched a bit of the video, imagined what might be in the rest of it, and started arguing against this strawman they created. Almost completely disconnected from reality. In retrospect I shouldn’t be surprised that people who are still gme culting two and a half years later are disconnected from reality but it is disappointing.

                    Either way good on you, dude. You tried to help them.