What GameStop’s surge says about online mobs and ‘upsetting the power dynamics’
Updated Jan 31, 2021;
It’s a fable for our times: Small-time investors band together to take down greedy Wall Street hedge funds using the stock of a troubled video-game store.
But the revolt of online stock-traders suggests much more. The internet is shifting society’s balance of power in unanticipated ways. And the same tools that empower the little guy allowing people to organize quickly and seemingly out of nowhere, troll powerful institutions and unleash chaos can also give rise to extremist mobs waging harassment campaigns or the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.