Game of Stonks
Hello!
I feel like this tweet captures something of the tumultuous, lava-like river of surreal disruption that we’ve all been navigating as best we can.
Each week, it seems there some new “wait, what?” moment.
Some new set of facts to wrap our heads around.
Some new collision of long-simmering trends, resulting in a novel flareup of the chaotic, the terrifying, or the theatrically absurd.
These are often emergent properties from the complex political, social, technological, economic, and ecological systems that rumble like molten, intersecting plates beneath our feet.
And as each newsweek cools off, we find ourselves staring at a changed landscape, strangers in a strange land that is somehow, impossibly, of our own joint creation.
So sometimes, I think, you really do have to laugh.
Imagine, if you can, losing billions of dollars, at least in part, to a group of self-described idiots (I take license to depart from their actual vocabulary) and shitposters.
Imagine being this out of touch (and ready the world’s tiniest violin).
Anyway, I think we should take our laughs when we can, and there’s definitely some good ones to be had here at another surreal collision of the Internet with offline reality. Gamestonks!!
Before we go further, here’s a helpful dive into some of the goings on with Gamestonk, (a term I insist on using both seriously and unseriously) brokers, settlement firms, etc.
As we turn the page on January (*shudders*), we should also remember that it’s ok to not be okay.
There’s been a common theme in a few of my conversations over the last week. I know a lot of people right now are feeling … off.
Tired. Anxious. Weary.
And let me tell you — SAME.
And look — it’s a lot!
It’s winter, which — let’s be honest — is kind of garbage at the best of times, AND there’s a bloody global pandemic with spooky new variants circulating, and it’s pretttttty easy to feel like everything is going wrong and the world is spinning chaotically out of control while we try our best to hold on and get through day by day, week by week.
Those fire alarms ringing in your mind, or in your body, they’re not wrong — the fire is all around us. And this is …. not fine.
Things are kind of messed up, actually.
The attack on the Capitol? That was less than 4 weeks ago. The inauguration? That was less than two weeks ago!
Life really IS coming at us fast.
So allow yourself that reality. Look at it and acknowledge it.
We’re in a heckin whirlwind, fren. It’s okay to not be okay.
As for #Gamestonks, we should think carefully about what happens next.
Last March, I tweeted this:
Stories matter, so it’s worth considering — what story is being written here? How will it fold into existing narratives? And what will the implications be for the broader political-economic landscape?
Watching the #gamestonks news unfold, I’ve been thinking a lot about the 2008 global financial crisis.
That was a defining moment for many people — creating a lost generation, accelerating the destruction of the middle class, and raising the barriers to entry for those who still hoped to join it.
And think about the political fallout.
Occupy Wall Street was a rousing call for substantive change to address the injustices of an economic system that has allowed so much wealth to accrue in the hands of so few, while denying basic stability, healthcare, education, and opportunity to so many.
Not to mention degrading the biosphere.
But instead of acknowledging that normal wasn’t working, many leaders rushed to restore it.
Instead of enacting substantive systemic change, governments around the world largely worked to shut the movement down, no doubt terrified of the threat to the status quo and political establishment that Occupy represented.
Concessionary and conservative responses to the 2008 crisis saw the same institutions that had caused it bailed out on the backs of those who had suffered the most, and paved the way for an unequal recovery that would continue concentrating more wealth in fewer hands.
In contrast to the bottom-up call for a just, resilient economy that Occupy represented, we also got the Koch & Tobacco-funded Tea Party, the acceleration of the Republican Party’s long, self-imposed decline, and the globalization of “anti-globalist” authoritarian nationalism.
The 2008 financial crisis and the conservative policy response left a lot of people feeling that the system was stacked against them, and they were rightly, righteously pissed.
But by failing to sufficiently respond to inequality, injustice, and the anger they provoked, the leaders who tried to steamroll calls for systemic change simply paved a freeway to further cynicism, conspiracy theories, and Trump.
When people feel that they have no stake in the system, some of them will take their satisfaction in spreading filth in its hallowed halls and trying to burn it all down.
This desire — to tear down, to humiliate, to punish — can be incredibly destructive and dangerous, especially when the mob’s grievances mix with racism and delusion and are inevitably directed towards easier targets, closer at hand than distant billionaires, more tangible than abstract systems, and made of flesh, not marbled stone.
And so I worry.
I worry that #Gamestonks (*nods, smiling nervously at the absurdity*) will increase anti-establishment sentiment for a lot of folks, win or lose.
Wall Street Bets was already channeling anger, resentment, cynicism, and a sense of exclusion.
Some posters shared stories about how they watched their parents lose everything in the 2008 crisis because of hedge fund malfeasance.
Others wrote about how, after running up $GME and taking profit from short-selling hedge funds, they were finally able to pay off their student loans, accrued in preparation for an economy that no longer exists.
Staring at this from the sidelines, it’s hard not to feel sympathetic.
I too am saddled with massive amounts of student debt, just one of many millennials who is still paying off loans from before the 2008 crisis and the partial, unequal recovery that followed.
And now we’re here again amid the pandemic, facing another generational setback.
Many of us saw 2008 as a reason to go back to school, doubling down on diplomas.
Another “investment” in education.
The smart move, it seemed at the time.
But it’s clear now that one degree, or two, or more is no longer sufficient to fulfill the promise that was made by a generation of parents and guidance counsellors.
We tried to play by the rules, but the economy we were told to prepare for no longer exists.
Amid ever-faster economic disruption, deregulated tuition has allowed for a lot of bad bets.
Even unemployed, I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m doing better by some measures than many people I know, partly because I went all in with a law degree, but I’m still paying off my pre-2008 loans as well.
And I’m in my mid-30s, still renting an apartment with a leaky sink and peeling floors, with no car, no kids, and little confidence I’ll be able to afford them any time soon.
So as I said, it’s hard not to feel sympathetic and quietly cheer for a story that, on its surface, looks and feels like regular folks finally getting out from under the burden of debt and economic stagnation after years of struggling like crabs in a bucket to haul themselves over the receding edge of the middle class.
Who doesn’t want to turn the tide on the faceless forces of finance and instability that have shaped so much of our lives?
I think lots of people feel this way.
But then the retail brokers restricted buying, precipitating a temporary price drop. Anger ensued — many people thought Big Finance was running a manipulative shell game once again.
Already, far too many are perceiving what is likely attributable to the complexity of the clearing house system as another sign that the entire economy is “rigged” against them, with short sellers, hedge funds, and brokerage firms believed to be conspiring to “change the rules” once the “little guy” was winning.
(Never mind that institutional investors have been active on both sides of the short)
But, sooner or later, the price of the pumped stocks will inevitably tumble back to earth and, as with every stock craze, a legion of greater fools will be once again left holding the bag.
I don’t think they’re going to be too happy about this either — especially those who chased a soaring stock with money they couldn’t afford to lose.
Where will their anger, cynicism, and sense of exclusion take them?
The fact that Ted Cruz is seeking common ground with AOC should give us pause.
In fact, prominent extreme right disinfo-peddlers from Steve Bannon to Jack Posobiec have jumped on the story.
Donald Trump Jr. tweeted this:
Do you see what’s happening?
This is potentially a radicalizing moment for a generation of new retail investors and a larger body of observers who’ve lived through two massive economic crises in 15 years, their hopes for the future crushed against a near-impenetrable wall of entropy.
The important question is, will this moment and the stories we tell to understand it pull their politics to the left or the right?
To greater resilience, or greater decay?
The right certainly has compelling narratives at the ready. They just happen to be increasingly unhinged from reality, steeped in racism and conspiracy theories, and fatally toxic to democracy.
As Don Jr’s tweet shows, election truthers are already folding the Wall Street Bets episode into their self-serving authoritarian mythology.
The image of shadowy financial elites pulling the strings at the expense of everyday, hardworking Reddit investors also provides convenient grist for the neo-Nazi mill. I’ve already seen (and reported) their anti-Semitic memes floating around Twitter.
And it’ll fold easily into Q-Anon’s derivative worldview, another data point in their delusional hunt for the all-controlling, child-eating, blood-drinking “cabal”.
So what’s the takeaway?
Principled people who aren’t “in the crowd with the neo-Nazis” need better stories (please, please read the linked article. It’s really good).
Unlike in 2008, as we stare down our second ‘rona winter, we cannot allow our leaders to walk back from the edge of systemic change that addresses injustice, extreme inequality, and unsustainability in all its forms.
Policymakers and the business community need to get deadly serious about giving more people a better stake in society’s institutions, including financial markets.
And rather than continuously gaslighting people by telling them to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, real leaders need to tell the truth:
The system has been unfair.
Continuing to ignore, deflect, and deny this economic reality — and the systemic change it demands — will only increase the risk of larger systemic crises in our political, economic, and financial systems.
More bubbles. More disinformation.
More Gamestonks. More meltdowns.
More Trumps.
Whew! Ok, that’s it for now. The reading roundup is going to be delayed again, because I wanted to get my thoughts out on #Gamestonks!! first.
However, I will recommend one book that I’ve been chewing through, because it’s excellent.
The Body Keeps the Score is all about how trauma works its way into our brains, minds, bodies, and relationships, and what we can do to undo the damage.
I think we all carry some trauma with us, and we’re all picking up some more now as we live through these overlapping crises together.
As I work through my own fractional share of humanity’s burdens, I’ve been finding nearly every page to be an empowering revelation.
This will be an enduring book recommendation — I believe everyone should read it.
Check it out.
As always, thank you so much for reading this — and please stay tuned for more.
And if you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!
Until next time, stay well and stay safe.
- Aladdin