Playing Robinhood: Jamming Wall Street with Dumb Money in the Great Short Squeeze

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay analyzes the rhetorics of social and economic protest surrounding the 2021 short squeeze where swarms of gamers-made-investors used the popular trading app Robinhood to create artificial demands for shorted stocks such as GameStop and AMC. Fueled by populist rhetoric on subreddit forum, r/WallStreetBets, the movement created a short-lived bubble that cost hedge funds billions. I argue that investors were subjectivized by market-based agencies through anger and nostalgia during a COVID-19 period when many were feeling powerless. Through market jamming, investors temporarily used the market, and its neoliberal rationalities, against itself and created new spaces for agency. While market jamming comes with real financial risks, such as a rhetorical panic, it also shows how investors can use détournement in the marketplace.