I am an ape.
I don’t mean that in the Darwinian sense, I mean it in the Reddit sense. I am one of those people who looked at the data presented on $GME and $AMC, and bought in. The short version is that hedge funds shorted some stocks. They shorted more shares than there actually are to short. This means they will need to pay a lot of money to fix the problem. If you want more information go to Reddit.
I hold shares in both companies now, but that is not what this post is about. What has become glaringly obvious to me through this journey of the past six months is that the revolution will not be televised.
There was a time when journalism meant investigating. Looking at the facts, asking tough questions and digging for the truth. But now a days it’s simply regurgetating whatever is pushed infront of them. And those narratives come from wealthy owners like hedgefunds and investment firms. Just take a look at this video below. It is like out of some dystopian futuristic movie.
Part of this is our own fault. News survives on viewership. Investigating is expensive. Promoting sensational news, regardless of it’s veracity, leads to more views. Which in turn is more revenue. If you don’t like the Kardashians, stop watching them. Stop letting media make stupid people famous.
Even our beloved CBC is guilty of it. They have people who’s job it is to pull stories off of the wire like the Associated press and will either post it verbatim, or rewrite it. Look at this top story from CBC’s home page. How is this important to Canadians? Did it happen in Canada? No. Will it affect Canadian cycling law or policies? No. Does it affect Canadians at all? No.
But it makes for good clickbait.
In this particular example, I don’t care. It’s pretty innocuous. Something happened and they’re reporting it. If it leads to clicks and views, fine. Where I start getting pissed off is when the media starts either promoting mistruths or flat out lying.
A friend once told me, “There isn’t two sides to every story, sometimes there is just one.” It’s the media’s responsibility to determine which story is valid.
“If someone says it’s raining, and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true.”
-Sally Claire
One of the failures of modern media is that they feel obligated to report all sides of the story regardless of how completely vapid and stupid it is. For example, anything that comes out of this woman’s mouth.
The problem with reporting both sides of the story gives the impression that both are equally valid, especially when they are not. Intelligent design vs. evolution for example. But I am beginning to get off topic.
Media, all media has a bias. It has to. A human is writing it and we have consious and unconsious biases which is why you should never get your news from one source. You need to get information from a variety of places and sources to help cancel out or at least expose those prejudices. However, some biases are intentional. For instance, when hedge funds begin to purchase media complanies this happens:
All of these stories telling investors to dump $AMC and $GME. To stay away from them and look at these other stocks. But you have to ask yourself, who owns the other stocks? Are these other posts just pump and dumps? They want you to ignore the gains of these “meme stocks” since January and invest in what they want you to invest in.
They are even lying about what Reddit is doing in an attempt to get people to dump their shares. I am on reddit all the time, in the investing subreddits and workhorse has never crossed my path.
If the research on $GME and $AMC is true, and if retail investors hold onto their shares, this could be the largest transfer of wealth in history. It will be a once in a lifetime opportunity because rules will be put in place that prevent this from happening again. And most people won’t hear about it until after it’s over.
The revolution will not be televised. It will be live.