Wall Street Bets: A Modern Public for Young, High-Risk, High-Reward Investors
Wall Street Bets, a subreddit on the popular forum website Reddit, reminiscent of the depiction of wall street in movies like The Wolf of Wall Street. The subreddit is mainly occupied by younger people who feel like the economy has left them behind, or social pressure or perhaps a combination of both has made them have the idea to throw their money (often their life’s savings) into risky stock plays in order to potentially become rich, because often in their words “what do I have to lose right”. Wall Street Bets is a perfect example of a digital public in an era where most communication is accomplished through the digital world.
Communication in the digital world influences us everyday. It becomes even more influential for those who get pulled into or attracted to social media platforms or digital communities. Wall Street Bets is a community focused on financial investing. For communities that are focused on a single subject, it can influence decisions, behaviors, and even financial outcomes of its members and society.
What are Publics? and the Transformation to Digital Publics
Throughout history, publics were traditionally a forum for politicians or upper class people to discuss issues and communicate platforms (Jurgen Habermas: Structural Transformations of the Public Sphere). Defined — a digital public is an online forum that enables discussions, conversations, and communication across wide audiences. Today, digital publics are spaces that nearly anyone can join and participate in, enabling very diverse views, thoughts, and bolsters democratic discussions.
Online platforms create open and available public spheres. People can easily search and find communities on hundreds and thousands of topics. Because they are so open and accessible, it’s arguable that they are better versions of prior publics because they generally operate more democratically. However, because they are open to such large memberships, sometimes the discussions presented could be misleading, incorrect, or unrelated.
Although Reddit as a platform has enabled publics such as wall street bets to exist, Reddit isn’t the only thing that demonstrates how it operates as a public. For example, there are other sub-communities within wall street bets that are focused on memes, or more entertainment areas. They have also shown their ability to rally around some sort of central idea whether that be a specific stock or an idea and have been able to effectively use cyberspace to collectively organize a key part of digital publics and online movements(Avidad & Sampedro, 2018).
How is Wall Street Bets a Public?
Despite the reputation the subreddit has gained over the years, especially with things like the GameStop short squeeze, the forum has become a sort of digital public for young people to discuss stocks with others who are probably in a similar situation to them young, and broke.
Wall Street bets is a public within Reddit that focuses on Wall Street, the stock exchanges, financial investments, and stocks. Most of the members are younger generations. These members post content, with due diligence in mind researching various companies, providing financial analysis, and discussing stock trends. Wall Street Bets exemplifies the diversity of content varies from a few sentences to several paragraphs and gets very detailed regarding the content. Since it is part of the Reddit platform, a key function enables readers and community members to upvote or downvote content so it generates larger discussions, followings, and drives further communications across the community. The functionalities of Reddit as a platform demonstrate how a specific public like wall street bets operates as a public.
Part of what makes Wall Street best fit the bill is because it creates sub-communities within itself, and can create fractures within discussions. Because the focus of these discussions is on investing and company stocks, these sub-communities diverge and discuss particular investment strategies or particular company stocks. There may be some bridges between, but it does enable both larger community discussions and focused topic discussions.
Membership and Posting in the Digital Public
“Throughout history, publics were traditionally a forum for politicians or upper class people to discuss issues and communicate platforms”
Some of the attitudes of the members within Wall Street bets, such as being risky, starting off with not too much, having a non-serious/more fun approach to stocks, and being generally anti-establishment/institution, creates its own public sphere because these members are not generally mainstream. More importantly, the expression of those attitudes differentiate it from other financial discussion boards and communities. Wall Street bets are focused on high-risk, instant gratification, and in many cases throwing life savings into single risky bets. This is substantially different from other communities that are much more mainstream and back away from riskier financial decisions and behaviors. The members of wall street bets often post their gains and losses from these risky financial decisions, as shown in the posts below.
In the Headlines
As for visibility, recently wall street bets made headlines with the Game Stop short squeeze. In which many members of the subreddit realized that GameStop stock was being over-shorted by large hedge funds. Because of wall Street’s unique anti-establishment, jokey, and risky attitude, GameStop seemed like a perfect fit for them. The members of wall street bets started investing in the stock posting memes, financial gains, and new information along the way. The movement they created got so large that people started buying it causing the hedge funds to close their short positions. Which inevitably led to them ending up as the topic and headline on many finance shows and news sites such as this article by Vox or this one by the Wall Street Journal. Movements like this are not new to reddit, the Occupy wall street movement also used Reddit in a similar way to Wall Street Bets, posting memes, and organizing a movement(Milner, 2013).
In addition, to the GameStop fiasco, which is no doubt received the most attention, they have also been able to rally around other risky investments such as tesla, or using large amounts of margin or stock options to increase their reward as well ask their risk in the stocks people on the subreddit decide to play.
Wall Street Bets chaotic, yet entertaining, dynamic has allowed it to grow and be known on websites outside of Reddit. On websites like YouTube, videos going through popular posts on the subreddit or videos telling stories about certain events in the history of Wall Street Bets have garnered a lot of views, such as the video “The Absolute Chaos of r/Wallstreetbets” by Big Boss. In return, the subreddit itself likely added to its following from these videos as many of the viewers who watch these videos tend to be younger, and are attracted to the funny, high-risk nature of Wall Street Bets.
In conclusion, publics have been a part of our history and a key forum to communicate ideas and discuss various topics. Wall Street bets is a good example of a digital public presenting the shift from face-to-face discussions to a digital online forum for people to share ideas, discuss issues, and learn from each other.
Milner, Ryan M. “Pop polyvocality: internet memes, public participation, and the occupy wall street movement.” International journal of communication [Online], 2013, p. 2357+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A352494259/GLS?u=viva_cnu&sid=GLS&xid=f789e538. Accessed 1 Mar. 2021.
Sampedro, Victor, and Mayra Martinez Avidad. “The Digital Public Sphere: An Alternative and Counterhegemonic Space? The Case of Spain.” International journal of communication [Online], 2018, p. 23+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A534025942/GLS?u=viva_cnu&sid=GLS&xid=10745ae5. Accessed 15 Feb. 2021.
