This Is Financial Advice [Folding Ideas]

Thanks for posting this here. It's an interesting piece.

I watched parts of it but not all of it.

Of course, as a GME investor I am biased, but I have some issues with this video.

First, who is this guy and what makes him so qualified to weigh in on what is, from our perspective, a highly complex situation that we have been studying and experiencing first hand for 2 and a half years now?
Literally thousands of hours of research has been done by the community of GameStop investors, nearly 200 thousand individuals have DRS'd their shares.
How does this person have more knowledge and expertise than the entire hive mind of people that have been working to figure out these situations for 2 and a half years? What makes him able to speak so matter-of-factually with such confidence that he alone is right and we together are wrong?

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around 7 minutes into the video, provided is a helpful glossary of terms used by memestockers.

I unfortunately am unable to upload images at this time so I will just provide the text from that image here:

MEMESTOCK VOCABULARY

• Ape -- memestock investor
• Jimmy -- GME, GameStop
• Bobby -- BBBY, Bed Bath & Beyond
• Popcorn -- AMC Theatres
• Towel -- Bed Bath & Beyond
• DD -- due diligence, theorycrafting
• SS -- Superstonk (subreddit)
• Shorts -- entities with a net short position
• SHF -- short hedge funds
• Kenny -- Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel Securities
• Ladder Attacks -- downward price movement
• Crime -- downward price movement
• Cellar Boxing -- lack of upward price movement
• Shill -- critics
• Shilling -- negative sentiment
• WSB -- WallStreetBets (subreddit)
• Tendies -- chicken tenders, wealth
• Regard -- coded ableist slur

I found this list to be quite revealing of the author as to what message he is really trying to send in this video. Some of these definitions are accurate, and some are plainly not.

I try and think about this in terms of: this video is probably not intended for us existing investors. I can't know what the intentions were in the creation of this video, but from this example and others, I get the impression that this video is deliberately biased to paint GME investors and others as seriously irrational individuals without a shred of legitimacy. The way I see it, the entire video feels designed to discredit the things that GME investors and others are talking about.

For example, "ladder attacks" and "crime" are just code words that memestock investors use when the price goes down. In reality, there are no such thing as ladder attacks, there is never crime involved, and the price is simply going down. Those words have no other possible relevant contextual meaning, and anyone who believes otherwise is a delusional cultist.

Cellar boxing is simply a lack of upward price movement. If you are a person who happens to encounter one of these delusional morons, and they mention the idea of "cellar boxing" to you, just know that this is one of those meaningless code words that those people use to mean that the price isn't going up. Cellar boxing as an idea or theory otherwise is something without meaning. The important thing to remember is that these people are delusional cultists, and so if they start saying these weird words like "cellar boxing" that this is just a symptom of their grand collective delusion. There is no actual valid meaning behind the term cellar boxing. Don't give it another thought.

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Throughout the video, the creator basically takes all of the thoughts and ideas that GME investors tend to talk about and believe to be generally true, and then deliberately derides those ideas by glossing over important details and constructing strawman arguments that make GME investors to look as insane as possible. I mean, when there are thousands of comments in these forums every day, it would be pretty easy to pick and choose the ones that appear the worst and use those as a false representation for the entire thing.

• The video mocks GME investors for saying that short selling is a bad thing in general.
• the video seems to discuss our thoughts on DRS but again generally derides the whole idea as nonsensical thinking by a bunch of delusional cultists that are painfully uninformed
• the video in general casts much doubt about the idea of naked short selling. 44:22 "Naked short sales are kinda tricky to talk about because the well of discussion is so poisoned by these conspiracy theorists. A naked short sale is when you generate a short sale without actually borrowing a share first. It is a real thing, it is illegal and has been for a while, people have gone to jail for doing it, it was a historical problem, but not for the reasons Apes and their ilk claim. The problem is compounded by the fact that a number of legitimate market mechanics resemble naked short selling if you squint. So there’s the real thing off over in the corner that people go to jail for doing because, like, there’s evidence of their crimes, and then there’s a fantasy version espoused by cranks where shadowy figures destroy companies for profit without leaving any evidence. The infuriating thing is that it really kinda doesn’t even matter because most Apes don’t bother to distinguish between regular short sales and naked short sales. Apes start from “short sellers are the bad guys,” and rail against anything that enables short selling, like stock lending which is obviously important to short selling because you can’t borrow a share unless someone’s lending them. Apes only rope in a crank version of naked shorts when they eventually need to explain why there’s no evidence of the short position that would need to exist in order for the short squeeze to still be on the table. "

I find it interesting how the creator addresses the problems that we talk about, mentions that illegal naked short selling is real because it happens when there is evidence of it, but then proceeds to assert that we are therefore delusional for continuing to believe that it could be happening, because we lack the evidence.

I mean, isn't this basically one of the main disputes of this entire thing? GME investors allege that certain parties are guilty of perpetrating certain crimes, but that those perpetrators haven't gotten in trouble yet because they have so far succeeded at hiding the evidence of their crimes. Why does somebody have to necessarily be a delusional cultist to believe in the idea that crime really is being committed? Crime exists everywhere in all parts of the world, but somehow it is just simply inconceivable that any financial crime has ever been committed with respect to GME / GameStop? Why does this video go to such great lengths to discredit that entire notion without ever addressing the reasons why it could possibly be true?

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I also find it interesting that the creator of the video apparently seems to be well informed about the intricacies of the history of everything that has happened, for example when heat lamp DD was published and that it was censored on superstonk, and yet deliberately misrepresents the series of events that actually happened. I mean for one thing, why give any attention to "heat lamp" at all? It is approached in the same way that for example "cellar boxing" or naked short selling is approached: these are ideas that these delusional cultists talk about, and here is a glossed over explanation as to why this makes those people delusional cultists please do not ever listen to those delusional cultists.

"The author's prior attempts at sharing this 'thesis' had been met with criticism and mockery, resulting in mods putting the threads in the trash."

Really? that's how it happened? The DD was nonsense garbage, it was met with criticism and mockery, and the mods therefore (rightfully and justifiably!) put this garbage in the trash?

This is funny to me because I wrote a post about that series of events that tells a much different version of events. I find it very interesting that this video, seemingly so well-informed about everything that has happened in this saga, simply glossed over the entire significance of the deliberate censorship that was happening, and in stead states that what actually happened was that the mods were sensibly just getting rid of a garbage post without merit. And that, therefore, all of the reactionary outrage at those mods is simply more evidence of delusional irrationality by a group of insane cultists.

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Also interesting, the creator of this video also put out a similar type of takedown video on January 21, 2022, titled: The Problem with NFTs. This was curiously around the same time that GameStop was ramping up their efforts with respect to the NFT marketplace and the chrome Ethereum wallet. The video addresses the idea of "play to earn", again something that had been theorized to be integral to a new web3 business model that GameStop could create, and derides it as something resembling the worst of crypto scams. This video does not mention GameStop at all, so at that time of the release, this video just very conveniently does a take down of an idea that GameStop is building new initiatives on, without any apparent awareness of GameStop at all. Now, a year and a half later, this author creates a new video which is a take down of the entire notion that investing in GME is something that could be legitimate.

I think it is a good video to watch, because it is important to be able to articulate your position in the face of criticism rather than avoiding (or banning) any dissenting views.

If someone was watching the video with limited knowledge of the situation, he would come across as reasonable (although a little condescending)

Of course the question is what separates the Gamestop investment from BBBY and AMC, which both seem reasonably certain not to end well and people on the outside would struggle to see the difference between GME and BBBY/AMC.

Even without bringing up naked shorting etc - The lack of debt, ~1billion dollars in cash/equivalents, and a CEO whose vision aligns with investors, with whom 25% are directly registered, seem to be a huge difference.

It is easy to attack retail investors, who don't belong to the rich/ruling class and see this as both get out of their current situation and stick it to the ruling class (its a big club and we aren't in it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso), but maybe his time could have been better looking at the ruling class rather than household investors ? (2.5 hours is a long video!)

Mirror on Invidious

Worth a watch.

No, it isn't. You know what is worth a watch? Jim Cramer's clip explaining market manipulation and the wikipedia article for "guerrilla communication". That's worth a watch.

Have YouTubers Been Getting Paid to Bash GameStop?

October 16, from superstonk:

A Review of Dan Olson’s “documentary” This is Financial Advice AKA The World Series of Lies || Part 1: The Prologue

TLDR:

• Dan Olson is a YouTuber who makes videos on pop culture, geek culture, and media critiques. His style is very verbose and historically dedicated to "Lore" reviews and discussions.

• In 2014, Dan was involved in a scandal relating to 8chan and child pornography disclosure, followed by another scandal, where Dan opposed Gamergate's harassment of women and minorities in gaming, by characterizing an entire gaming community as misogynistic. In other words, it's not his first time trying to portray a large group of people as misogynistic, in this case without any evidence. This granted him a small supporter community that follows his work to this day. Many of them were shocked by the "wife-changing" pun, ironically also utilized by Olson on his daily chats. Dan's jokes pull at the heartstrings of his core followers, by insisting in gender-based and gender equality puns, while at the same time inventing that "many apes lie to their wifes", based on a joke he read somewhere.

• In January 2021, he had a viral hit with a video criticizing NFTs. In an interview about said viral hit, he stated his new goal of "educating" and becoming a "documentarian". He stated accuracy should not take a backseat to jokes.

• In said 2021 interview, he confirmed his NFT criticism video was intentionally released right on the exact day when the crypto market started crashing (January 2021).

• For his new 2.5 hour video about GME and "Apes", Dan did not provide any sources or interviews, although he does loosely mention a few documents such as the SEC Gamestop report. In contrast, his 2021 NFT video contained more than 20 written sources in the video description.

• Dan Olson has been an active participant on "GME_haters" for multiple months, which is dedicated to criticizing GME investors. This community not only harasses GME shareholders, but actively shorts and financially gains from Gamestop loss in value (evidence on reddit post). This granted him a status within that community, a sort of Martha Stewart of the GME_haters club.

• Dan started researching GME in mid-2022, so he missed the first 2 years of the GME saga.

• Dan has made clear he dislikes GME investors and Ryan Cohen. He ignored industry experts like Dr. Trimbath and Wes Christian.

• Dan released his video the same weekend as the movie "Dumb Money" and the delisting of Bed Bath & Beyond stock - confirmed by his supporters as not a coincidence.

• Evidence (posts) confirm the GME_haters subreddit financially supported Dan's video production.

• In previous videos, Dan defined propaganda as ideologically goal-driven messaging that does not attempt to inform but to inflame emotions and deceive (by cherry-picking or manipulating facts).