One of the craziest stories of the new year is the battle between the amateur investors on Reddit vs the giant hedge fund managers over the stock market price of GameStop.

It’s an odd investment for sure, as GameStop is becoming increasingly obsolete and less profitable, in the age of online gaming, where you can just download a game from the store on the console, and get the game from there, as opposed to going to your car, driving there, picking up a game, drive back, and play with a hard copy instead.

On top of that, things such as the Xbox Game Pass now exist, which is a monthly plan based system that gives you access to hundreds of titles. So why is everybody loading up on GameStop stock? It isn’t because people think the company will turn around, but because GameStop is the most shorted stock on the market.

A shorted stock is when someone borrows a stock at a low price, sells it quickly, and takes home the difference. It’s a quick way to make a little money. Redditors noticed this technique was being used by giant hedge fund managers, and decided to mess with the hedge fund managers, and made a ton of money themselves. For around a week, the GameStop stock price rose to monumental heights, going as far up as 480 dollars per share. A man in Missouri capitalized on this craze, and sold his stocks near the peak, and became a millionaire on paper, after only making 35,000 dollars a year at his job. Different apps that are used to participate in the stock market had a controversial response.

A brokerage app, RobinHood, responded to the flux of investors in GameStop by shutting down the ability to buy in numerous shorted stocks, including GameStop, AMC, Nokia, and more.

RobinHood released a statement saying, “We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary. In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only.”

This angered the Redditors and many other people, as they believed they were being shorted (no pun intended) by Wall Street to lower the value of the stock, ensuring people got less money from this gambit. It worked for a while too, as the stock had a significant dip on the Thursday of that week, but was able to rebound back the following day.

Mr. Wilson, a financial algebra teacher on campus gave his answer on the morality of the redditors saying, “No. Two wrongs don’t make a right. What they did was use their influence to falsely drive up a stock price and that action needs to be regulated. But it’s tricky. I believe what the hedge fund billionaires have done over the decades of manipulating the markets using their influence to drive stocks to rock bottom to turn a profit is equally unethical as what the redditors did. This needs to be regulated period. But will they regulate something they do themselves? And RobinHood quickly turned on their investors stopping purchasing GameStop stock to protect these illegal hedge fund managers. Then to have thousands of low reviews on RobinHood removed by google with their justification protecting mob-like cancel culture, which they themselves are guilty of committing. They simply got played at their own game and are sore losers. Follow the money.”

When asked about the potential long term effects of this incident on the stock market’s credibility, Wilson replied, “I think this an age of seeing people for who they are and that a double standard of ethics is at stake. Take for example the strict stay at home orders from the Governor of California, who seems to have a hard time following them himself. I understand that it is in our nature to view our own actions as being less of an infraction of conscience than others, even though the actions are entirely the same. The difference is that people in high positions have the influencing power to crush the common people via the medium of the media. Many are losing confidence in all our institutions, including the stock market, and we will see how it plays out for our future.”

Regardless of anyone’s feelings on the topic, a conversation was started about the ethics of large brokerages interfering in the market and shutting down trading for the GameStop stock. It seemed to be a bipartisan agreement that RobinHood was wrong to shut down trading, with both conservative Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, and progressive firebrand, and representative from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, agreeing that RobinHood should be investigated for their actions regarding the stock.

In conclusion, regardless of anyone’s feelings on the topic, it started a conversation about the morality of Wall Street and the legitimacy of the stock market as a whole, and will be talked about for years after the controversy has ended.