Folding Ideas

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This is Financial Advice

Video Overview & Insights

Clickbait Title: if the price is zero then you can buy all the shares

“

55:58 number jumpscare

— @ValeBridges

I tell you what, when you try and tell this story you either sum it up in ten minutes with the broadest strokes or you settle in for a rabbit hole made entirely out of onions and ogres. Conspiracy theorists flock together and constantly try and rope each other into the orbit of their personal hobby horse conspiracy, so once you break the surface suddenly you're digging through endless side stories, each with their own cast of characters, trying to figure out if some tertiary claim is true, was maybe true in the past but is no longer true, or was never true, and discover that the only sources on the matter are the same three people quoting each other in an endless circle of false legitimacy.

Written by Dan Olson and Nathan Landel

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One thing I haven't stopped thinking about since I first watched this video: why wouldn't short hedge funds simply buy the pool of "real shares" before flooding the market with fakes specifically to avoid a scenario where they're held hostage by a bunch of doofus like these?

— @ofelia-viscera

Performed by Dan Olson

Camera by Dan Olson and Kara Artym

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Funnily enough, as of mid 2026, the shareprice of GME appears to have stabilized at around 20$, which still noteably higher than the price was before 2020

— @enderkatze6129

Edited by Dan Olson

Production Assistant Laura Schultz

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56:49 The most baffling thing to me about this isn’t MOASS. It’s complicated stuff told to people willing to believe anything because they’re already in a massive hole. The thing I don’t get is the expectation they’d actually be paid out if the fed had to get involved. You know who the fed cares a lot more about than a couple thousand retail traders? The entire United States economy! You’d be treated like the native Americans with gold on their land. They simply ignored the paper because they were weak and it was worth it. They would do the same to you now. It’s not a video game if someone finds an infinite money glitch the people in charge quickly stamp that out especially if the people who would be paid out have little influence or power.

— @therai8392

Featuring music by Young Neighbours - https://linktr.ee/youngneighbours

Special thanks to Eric Pauls, a friend of mine from film school, for digging up 15 year old hard drives just to re-master some songs he wrote back in college when I was like "those old tracks you and Cam did, they've got the perfect vibe I'm looking for!"

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8:33 this excerpt is really fucking insane. Not only is critiquing a single premise of an argument not a strawman fallacy, but its also just a normal part of rhetoric and debate. You learn this in high school.

— @SentimentalFella

Crowdfunding: https://www.patreon.com/foldablehuman

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman

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The apes are still at it btw

— @Buttsguy13

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/foldablehuman.bsky.social

00:00:00 - Diamond Hands

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It's like they're trying to use the stock market to flip the iceberg in Club Penguin

— @cortisolmarinade

00:02:14 - Heat Lamp

00:13:26 - GME Fallout

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I have watched this several times, and every time one question comes up again and again.
"How does Dan keep a straight face while saying the most ridiculous shit on the planet."

— @tiironsunyal8046

00:23:31 - MOASS

00:58:10 - The Vote

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Have had to revisit since Ploot became Director of Global Intelligence. Absolutely insane world that we live in.

— @Slip-n6n

01:04:36 - Deep F*ing Value

01:12:39 - Measure of a Meme Stock

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I know the juxtaposition is like, THE ENTIRE POINT, but the extreme contrast between all of the screaming conspiracy nonsense the apes rope DFV into and actual video clips of him...is almost incomprehensible on each rewatch. There's not much logic to the kind of groupthink that brings people to hold up someone as a symbol of cultlike dedication, obviously, but I'm still left wondering how many of them actually engaged with the full picture of what he was saying rather than just cherry-picking his words for their risky investment decisions.

— @localinternetclown

01:16:38 - Due Diligence

01:50:27 - The Book King

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This video is the evil twin to Jacob Geller's secret serkers video

— @theetrip199

01:55:38 - Teddy Day

02:07:32 - BBBY Endgame

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LOL Bill Pulte, the new Director of National Intelligence nominee and current director of the Housing Finance Agency, is a meme stock ape. He's a literal PE goon descended from one of the largest construction companies in the world, and he's a meme stock ape.

— @hummus-vv6sv

02:18:03 - BBBankruptcy

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Returning to this video to try to make sense of the fact that we nominated one of these guys to be director of national intelligence

— @needmorechocolate

More User Perspectives

This is my weirdest comfort video. NGL

@Jechti307

Mr. Olson, how do you feel about the fact a GME/BBBY true believer is now Acting Director of National Intelligence of the United States?

@raphsere

After my 10th rewatch of this video I finally get what a short sale is.

@MrBlueWaooWaoo

I am always a little impressed when a non-native pronounces Nevada the right way. I know the "right way" is technically NeVAHduh but we all fucking hate it. Props.

@FearHimself666

And this is why The Music Man should be required reading…

@prettypic444

"We're fighting for the common man against big finance! That's right, the internet's most insufferable assholes just got more insular and self-righteous!"

Everyone I've ever met who's identified as "Diamond Hands" is a deliberate asshole ("troll") who thinks cruelty is comedy, and still has to work a 9 to 5. Finance bros are not serious people, and I avoid them like the plague.

@willmatthews8542

I'm shocked that people are shocked about "wife-changing money." 'Take my wife -- please!' has been the go-to punchline of miserable white guys for a century. Or is the average viewer here way younger than Dan and I, lol.

@allict

I pre-ordered a digital game at GameStop because i ended up with a gift card against my wishes. So i figured i might as well use it. The release day came last week, the download code never generated, and in multiple calls to customer service (with a person who i literally think was the same person each time) all they could say was "Well, we don't generate the codes, we get them from the manufacturer, there's nothing we can really do, sorry". And the whole time i just laughed to myself thinking about how THIS is the company that the apes thought would take over the world, meanwhile they can't even do the one thing they claim they exist to do.

@happymcgoo

This was on in my sleep and triggered a dream about a film called Mo’ Ass, a spike lee joint probably. Made me realise how overwhelmingly white this scene was/is, because they went forever with the comparison to the MOAB instead of the film I dreamt with an amazing long take opening 😔

Obviously joking, but also I’d wager it’s mainly white males who are always falling for this crypto shit.

@Halokon

Dudes at it again with the ebay thing. Must be a genius move we can't see.

@BenjaminJohnGates

Another win for historical materialism

@reesetyra902

I'v been on reddit since 2009. I've seen subreddits come and go. The annoying GME bullshit has been around a long time, and I'll admit I looked into it - is there anything there worth anything? I basically figured out there wasn't. But it wasn't until this video that my eyes were opened to the depth of the cult bullshit going on there. Holy shit they are in DEEP. It's.... sad.

@Isaac.Eiland-Hall

I am returning to this years later, hopeful that the GME cult would have finally died off by now and we could look back at it and just laugh at the sheer absurdity of it...

@Armorion

Quintuple.

Cohen wants to quintuple the number of outstanding shares.

And still somehow these nuts will think they own the float. Despite 2 billion new shares on the market.

@mac4974

9:30 - Oh god, I'm so confused, I don't understand a word they're saying.
Dan: We have a lot of ground to cover before that makes any sense at all

Oh thank Hell

@devinkerr5474

I thought that the DRS song was a bit...

@myOhaiChan

“Wall Street is filled with B- students who wrapped their heads around it, you can too”

This isn’t the biggest problem with Wall Street or corrupt power structures, in fact many of the most destructive and evil businessmen are actually pretty shrewd and Machiavellian people, but i think about this quote every day. For as insanely impactful as big business and the stock market is, a lot of the employees taking substantial actions probably aren’t the sharpest, most inquisitive thinkers. This is gonna sound pretty judgmental, but the stereotype of credulous fratbros all being business majors isn’t too far off the mark.

@JesusChristMarie

…wife-changing?

@xx-eb9eg

I haven't gotten very far into the video yet, but already the people comparing grinding in a video game to gaming the stock market makes me shake my head. There's a big difference between grinding in a game to get a guaranteed reward that you know the value of and have decided you are willing to spend your time getting, and waiting for a nebulous maybe reward that you have no guarantee of getting and don't actually know the value of and have not been promised as an intended feature, and you don't get any tangible sense of progression towards it. Having patience for one doesn't automatically translate to having patience for the other, and even if it did, that doesn't make it a virtue since it's far more reasonable to do that when you're making an informed decision and not when you are, essentially, just gambling. In fact in many cases it can be an active detriment to have that kind of disposition when it comes to gambling.

@oMuStiiA

these guys would love being taylor swift fans. and i think that would be a less harmful use of the hero worship and insane overanalysis of ''"'easter eggs''''"

@seeuinthecosmos

The funniest part is the death spiral: Bed Bath & Beyond completely ran out of money, so Hudson Bay offered them a pittance in exchange for the authority to generate an absolutely obscene amount of new worthless shares to be sold off for pennies to raise enough to cover a fraction of the company's debt as they went out of business.

It was the exact thing the apes had insisted was happening all along, the thing they swore they were protesting, and when it actually happened, they thanked the person who did it!

@notoriouswhitemoth

So, conservative YouTubers who “festered” an audience of “ fascists” are audience captured?
You mean like…Hasan Piker? You mean like The Young Turks?
You mean like every single breadtuber who swore up and down that the country would become “A handmaids tale” if Trump won the 2024 election?

It’s really fucking funny to me how people of your political persuasion will rant day in and day out about “muh BoTh SiDeS!” But then clam up when an ACTUAL example (that paints your side badly) shows up

@jomahawk7488

I know "Line Goes Up" is the big one everyone remembers but I think this is my favorite video in this series

@itsmerlingray

i exclusively play games on their hardest difficulty because souls games have trained me to enjoy failure and slow progress. thus, i believe i am highly qualified to become the next world's greatest investor. please give me all your reddit awards.

@silly_lilliee

Visiting in 2026, after Ryan Cohen failed to purchase eBay after proposing to basically take more loans than reasonably possible

@wesleycampbellcaretto6942

44:07 I just realized is he saying retail doesn’t buy Amazon? The thing every retail investor does that isn’t a GameStop ape is invest in like Faang stocks that’s the stereotype I’ve heard for years about retail

@DocMarsTalesToAmaze

Having watched this video about 20 times in the past, I felt like a sleeper agent hearing my activation phrase when I was idly listening to the news and heard "Ryan Cohen, CEO of Gamestop" as the whole eBay buyout fiasco happened and my body went into fight or flight mode.

@trouty606

The breakdown of Ryan Cohen’s disastrous career is really funny to come back to, given his recent ridiculous play to “buy” eBay when he didn’t even have the funds to do so, and then his hilarious interview that followed

@christianwhalen9263

Please make a video like this about sovereign citizens, they are fascinating

@hennaoctopus

EBay stock just reached it's ATH after the company told Ryan Cohen to go f*** himself.

Pretty hilarious

@mattdeaver6850

today ebay sale to GME has been rejected

@wallsofwater

I realized part of why I find communities like this. It's because if magic is real these are the types of obsessives, ritually engaging in extremely weird nonsense, that I'd expect to stumble upon it. That inexplicably, GME does actually turn it around and MOASS raptures the true believers away. Because even in that world, all of the things in this video still happened, and it would mean there's some chain of events that gets us from here to there, but there definitely isn't. Magic.

@jessdawitch

The "I also have a free NFT giveaway" line at the very end is the Dan Olson equivalent of showing Thanos in a post credits scene

@rebeccaaustin6667

It's like clockwork, every year the apes lose another chunk of their hivemind and I'm back here, checking in.

@MichaelLaneMonkeywrench

2:11:32 (one of) the saddest things here is that during ALL this time if they had just invested more broadly during these years they’d have made a killing.

@d.c.4618

7:24 small factual correction: Ken Griffin is the CEO of Citadel, but not Citadel Securities

@sarcia3

I was here again for gamestop trying to buy ebay of all things. I guess the apes got to gamestop in someway

@starmaker75

#Criticism