The Wall Street Journal wrote an excellent profile of the man who started r / WallStreetBets, the subreddit that is involved in controversy this week. His name is Jaime Rogozinski, and if you’re wondering how he’s feeling about it all, he likens it to “watching one of those horror movies where you can see the bandit slowly coming up the stairs”.
The article gives the impression that the subreddit, which is now trying to raise GameStop’s stock price to the moon, was not created just for profit – it was created for fun. Rogozinski was apparently bored with the usual stock market advice about just buying index funds and was looking for real discussions about individual stocks. He also talks about how “refreshing” the community is, with posts ranging from “Look at my money!” for “See all that money I lost”
However, as many classic stories happen, creation ends up turning on the creator. Rogozinski is no longer a subreddit moderator; he was expelled last April after clashing with moderators who he said “were supporters of white supremacy”. This is a problem, it seems, that the community has been dealing with for some time.
It is an excellent story and gives a great insight into what happens when a community becomes something that its creator never intended and the consequences that they can have on the creator’s life. If you’ve been following the history of WallStreetBets, it’s definitely worth reading.