In recent days I’ve been consuming a daily diet of the GameStop stock news. While it seems that it emerged overnight, it’s actually a movement that has been building for awhile. As many have observed, COVID has been a cultural accelerant and, in this case, humanity finally caught up with technology. The fluidity of the this news story shouldn’t prevent us from pausing and pursuing learnings. Because of my educational background and vocation, I’d like to view all this through the lens of churches and non-profits. Let’s begin with how we got here.
THE RISE OF THE AGGREGATOR
Have you ever thought about how you consume the world wide web? The internet offers us unlimited information so it’s wise to have tools by which to organize online interactions. In the early years of the web, I discovered the value of aggregators; with aggregators, you could sample a buffet of diverse web content in a singular location. In the beginning, I had a well-curated RSS Reader Feed until Google determine it was a technology destined to die. I then moved to using Twitter to organize content, but revised algorithms decided I should spend more time exploring what Beyoncé was doing with her life so I had to move on to something new.
I thought I had found everything I was wanted when I discovered Digg: a link aggregator launched in 2004. Instead of scouring the web for the latest news, user-submitted links were available as fast as media outlets could produce content. Yet after a myriad of miscues intended to increase profit, there was a mass-exodus from Digg, and that’s what led the masses toward Reddit. Digg and Reddit were contemporaries, started within months of each other, but well Digg “sold out,” Reddit won the war. At first, I disliked Reddit; the user-interface was sloppy and it wasn’t a pure aggregator. But as more people switched over to the platform, Reddit became more user-friendly and helpful. The key to Redditing is to cultivate personal topics of interest through their system of subreddits (microsites dedicated to specific subjects). I’ve been using the Reddit for nearly a decade now and I visit multiple times daily.
My Reddit subscriptions are both playful (sports) and professional (economics). Due to my work in the the ledning sector, I subscribe to quite a few subreddits featuring finance. One I’ve followed for a few years is r/WallStreetBets. In its early years, the microsite focused on speculative trading. The subreddit seemingly blew up when the Robinhood app became popular. This platform brought options trading into the hands of the novice investor and WallStreetBets essentially morphed into a place where users bragged about their Robinhood losses.
THE ROAD TO REVOLT
While both WallStreetBets and Robinhood have been around for years, there’s been a recent surge in public interest because of GameStop stock. For the unaware, a brief primer: GameStop is a franchise of brick-and-mortar stores that sell video game products. The WallStreetBets community mobilized thousands of individual investors to buy the company’s stock to the detriment of hedge funds who had overleveraged options positions on GameStop. More simply, numerous hedge funds were betting that the company would fail, the WallStreetBets community took the opposite position. This pushed the stock price up and forced hedge funds to take large losses. In the days since, GameStop stock has been volatile but continues to achieve record highs. Investment experts are flummoxed at how a digital community of individuals was able to upset established Wall Street certainties. For more detail about this, you can look here, here, and here.
Note: personally, I’ve been watching it all as a spectator. It means little to me as my financial strategy leans toward long-term plays and diversity; I don’t actively trade nor do mess with options.
Despite all the media interest, I’m convinced that it’s nothing more than zeitgeist. I suspect hedge funds will learn their lesson and be careful not to commit the same mistakes . . . at least for a little while. But while observing this cultural phenomenon, I just can’t help to see its connectedness to an issue with which many in my network have been wrestling. Currently, the most popular piece of speculation among churches and non-profits is the new normal for a post-COVID world. I haven’t contributed much to this conversation thus far as I’m not sure there’s much we know at this time. But since 2021 seems to be the year we transition toward this new normal, the GameStop story might provide a glimpse of the future.
LEARNING FROM THE SUBREDDIT
While I’ve heard pundits suggest that WallStreetBets is nothing more than a group of Millennials and GenZ’ers inciting chaos, I believe this underestimates the power of the community. In many ways, WallStreetBets reminds me of an online church.
- The congregation maintains basic beliefs that units the community.
- Members check in daily to both consume and create content.
- The community emphasizes resource allocation (stewardship) toward a common goal.
- Tens of thousands claim adherence to the cause (and this number is far than the “preacher’s count” of more than seven million subscribers to the subreddit).
By viewing this secular movement through an ecclesiological framework, I’m not suggesting that their intentions are spiritual. My observation is that one must be impressed at the ability of this online community to spur discernible action. Consider this: even though the January 6th storming of the capitol has garnered far more attention, the WallStreetBets play on GameStop involved more people, more money, and no violence. It’s why I believe leaders of faith communities should pay attention. Understanding this digital phenomenon may help us better understand how the church must operate in the post-COVID world. Key points:
1. The development of robust community online
Up until last year, there were passionate arguments suggesting that online church was fake community. The pandemic forced a pivot here, when even the most ardent critics softened their stance last spring when strategizing how to keep their communities together digitally. While some voices are again suggesting that the end of COVID should be the death of online church, this perspective is far too binary. The pandemic accelerated the trend of online becoming an extension of the real world. Recall that, up until the first quarter of 2020, numerous parents and educators made pleas to curtail the screen time of young people. Just a year later, the screen has proved itself vital, providing the only community that some kids have in a wilderness of isolation.
Normally, when movements begin online, they see their greatest effectiveness when they transition to the real world. Zeynep Tufecki provides valuable research here in her book Twitter and Tear Gas. Tufecki demonstrates that while recent revolutionary movements now start digitally, and continue to grow by using social media for organization, there’s a point when the movement moves from online to in person (the recent anti-Putin in Russia is an example of this). But WallStreetBets has remained entirely virtual. Solely through digital connectivity, they made an impact on the market to the tune of billions of dollars. I’m not suggesting this is a mark of communal health, but it is without a doubt validation that people can create potent communal relationships completely online and ministry practitioners should acknowledge it.
2. The stewardship of personal resources for communal goals
This is what I find most compelling about the GameStop story: the movement of millions of dollars into the market are the result of simple encouragement from within the subreddit. Churches and non-profits are forced to focus on fundraising (gifts and offerings) to fuel kingdom initiatives both domestically and internationally. The pandemic has provided a challenge to ministries as their supporters have been physically separated from their community. While some churches have been able to manage, quite a few churches have struggled with reduced giving levels.
Simultaneously, WallStreetBets motivated thousands of investors to participate in a GoFundMe without a singular entry point. To be sure, these funds are investment capital so it’s not identical to charitable giving. But the digital encouragement has extended beyond individual returns. In fact, quite a few Redditors who made money in GameStop immediately donated part of their stock earnings to the less fortunate. Yes, there’s a movement within the WallStreetBets movement to emphasize philanthropy. It would be easy to label the actions of WallStreetBets as organized greed, but it seems that some are more motivated by the idea of justice itself. Regardless, it’s impressive that the microsite moved individuals to allocate their personal financial resources toward a communal goal.
3. The empowerment of content creators
Churches have been challenged during the pandemic to create content. While describing the production of the weekend worship experience as “content creation” might seem sketchy (and theologically unfulfilling), many churches have started taking cues from the social media world. Ministries of all shapes and sizes started to invest in technology in order to broadcast services to retain communal connectivity. Yet the focus here has generally been on content creation not content cultivation. One of the strengths of WallStreetBets has been that there’s no singular voice of this movement. While Keith Gill is credited as the instigator of the GameStop strategy, he is merely one of many evangelists. The subreddit community is, well, creating liturgy on the fly.
Admittedly, much of the WallStreetBets content is sophomoric humor. But even in jest, posts are intended to motivate and transform. Comedy can definitely serves a role in cultivating community dynamic. With WallStreetBets, most of the humor is been self-depreciating. Users project pride in their movement, but even when its braggadocios, it’s still framed in the context of an outmatched underdog. As Christian communities continue their digital strategy post-pandemic, the successful ones will create platforms for laypeople to contribute as much as clergy do.
4. The digital community beyond singular platforms
When dissecting the GameStop incident, there are conflicts evident, but they aren’t as much within the community, but with the platforms used to support the movement. For example, Robinhood is a fintech company branded as an app to provide hedge fund power to individual investors. In recent days, they decided to briefly limit trading on GameStop and other meme stocks. By doing so, they increased speculation that the company was actually in cahoots with the hedge funds—slowing trading to help them avoid taking on even more losses. While this is still being investigated and perhaps litigated (likely the SEC will get involved), it did not deter the WallStreetBets community. The community responded by endorsing a slew of competitor investment platforms while simultaneously inundating app stores with negative reviews of Robinhood .
There are some who suggest that individual social media platforms are inseparable from the dynamic online community themselves: that if you merely ban users from Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, the movement will simply disintegrate. Yet if a movement is truly a movement, no singular platform will be able to contain it. If the community is robust, the platform remains a tool of the network. If the community is robust, people will find ways to connect despite platform limitations.
FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION
While I see parallels in WallStreetBets and post-COVID digital models, I observe a few flaws in the movement that should be considered.
1. Lack of transparency
The vast majority of Redditors prefer to keep their identity hidden. As a result, you’re not sure who is actually offering you investment advice: it could be someone with a Masters in Economics but it could just as easily be a hedge fund’s bot. This has long been an issue with digital community: anonymity prevents accountability.
Digital anonymity can be helpful for someone in the midst of spiritual crisis—someone seeking counsel in secret for fear of their sin being exposed. But in areas of leadership and authority, it’s important to know who’s speaking to ensure that their words are being lived out—that their lifestyle is bearing fruit. It would take another article to explain the following observation theologically, but I hold that church online can be biblical provided it offers personal accountability. As churches and non-profits attempt to cultivate digital communities, they must consider the point at which users should be asked to identify themselves.
2. Decentralization and lack of direction
Building on the issue of transparency, we highlight the issue of leadership. Again, one of the reasons the GameStop short squeeze is so fascinating is that the movement behind it had no clearly delineated leader. Even though WallStreetBets has a plurality of subreddit moderators, these individuals are generally only tasked to enforce site-wide decorum policies. As such, leadership is dispersed among a myriad of people and, as noted above, their identity is often hidden.
At first glance, this lack of leadership appears that it could coincide with Christian teaching. A key theological concept within Protestantism (and modern evangelicalism) is derived from the epistle of First Peter. The doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is a response to the hierarchical, priestly structure of the Roman Catholic system where individuals needed an intercessor. While this revised tenet of priesthood was meant to communicate the accessibility of God to the individual, it was never intended to be the driving force of ecclesiological structure. There’s an adage that state, “when everyone’s in charge, no one’s in charge.” While decentralization can fuel short-term growth, it usually leads to chaos. Christian digital communities need leadership.
3. Pursuing Longevity
After considering transparency and leadership, we then need to ask, “will it last?” That’s what I’ve been wondering about WallStreetBets: will it retain viability? When the hedge funds start limiting their exposure on options, will the community have a new rallying cry that continues the movement? Perhaps the subreddit will be able to articulate a revised mission that keeps it moving forward but issue-spawned movements struggle to survive in the long term. Without this direction, it might split into smaller factions—new subreddits that emphasize more finite interests.
For a subreddit, long term viability is no big deal. For churches and non-profits trying to establish a digital extension of their work, it’s a critical issue. Digital community isn’t a fad but continues to be treated as such. I’m guessing, as people return to church buildings, many congregations will lose interest in maintaining their online communities and slowly withdraw their investment in these areas. This would be a mistake. The long-term survival of churches and non-profits will involve a digital strategy intertwined with an in-person strategy.
4. From digital to physical again
The point of this longwinded musing is my belief that WallStreetBets reveals the new power of digital community. While there are those who believe the future is exclusively digital, lessons learned during the pandemic reveals that the analog still has its place. In fact, I’d say social distancing has revealed how compelling it is to still meet in person. Live experiences are never curated as well as digital ones. Without the ability to reshoot or edit, there’s drama in live content. I suspect that in the months ahead, people will be so desperate to experience this drama that sporting events and concerts and yes, worship gatherings, will become must-attend opportunities.
A pre-COVID staple among many subreddits were regularly scheduled meet-ups. People would step out of the shadows to build relationships that sacrificed anonymity. Taking the digital relationship to the real world essentially made it even more real. In fact, if WallStreetBets continues to exist as a movement, it will likely feature post-pandemic, in-person meetings as an emphasis of its viability. Similarly, just because churches and non-profits are creating new spaces for digital interactions, the best ones will serve as launching pads for in-person experiences.
Reflecting on these observations, you might think the take-away is for churches and non-profits to intertwine the physical and digital realms (the encapsulation of the post-pandemic buzzword phygital).
More than this, however, ministries that thrive need to refocus their attention on the power of Christian community. If a ragtag group of internet investors can make such a large impact in a short amount of time, how much more could communities of faith mobilize believers to impact the world for Christ?