I've been digging into the communities surrounding meme stocks and, like, it's weird man. Somehow a short squeeze opportunity back in 2020 has mutated into a straight up apocalypse cult trying to trigger the end of the world.

The short version is that there *was* a squeeze, a bunch of Redditors made a tidy profit, a couple hedge funds got bent over the sawhorse, and for outsiders that was basically the entire story, good times and popcorn all around.

But the squeeze generated a lot of bag holders, the profits have to come from somewhere. A lot of that came from the hedge funds, for sure, but after the shorts closed all the cash was coming from fresh recruits FOMOing in on the way back down.

Now all the bag holders are convinced that the actual squeeze, the thing they were trying to do and succeeded at, was just a blip, a "sneeze", and that what's coming is the Mother of All Short-Squeezes (MOASS).

What is MOASS? It's a math trick mixed with basically magic. The idea is that if the signs and portents are correct and the planets are aligned then someone at the NYSE will have to take the stock of video game retailer Game Stop and divide by zero, causing the price to = ∞

Now, if a mediocre mall store was suddenly notionally worth all the money in the known universe the powers that be would probably just be like "nah, it's broken," de-list the stock, and let lawsuits settle the fallout, since otherwise it would technically erase the economy.

Now, dear reader might consider that to be an obvious hole in the MOASS belief, but also dear reader has likely guessed that "erase the economy" has become not a flaw in the Stonk belief system, but a pillar.

The communities surrounding meme stocks GameStop, AMC Theatres, and Bed Bath & Beyond have developed a surprisingly complex belief system about why MOASS hasn't happened, when MOASS will happen, what is needed to trigger MOASS, and what the post-MOASS world will look like.

Where it goes from weird to offensive is that the Apes (as they call themselves) will point to all sorts of real problems, actual inequities in our world, evidence of malfeasance and exploitation, and cap it off with "and that's why you should buy and diamond hands GME"

They have proselytes, they have the early formation of scripture in their "DD" (due diligence in reality, fantasy math in Stonk world), they have mythical heroes, and they have an eschatology which explicitly revolves around an apocalyptic event that ushers in a kingdom of heaven

So, yeah, another weird expression of our current state of anxiety: people YOLO their life savings into a short squeeze orchestrated on Reddit, refuse to sell anywhere near the peak, and invent a neo-religion to explain why.