The WallStreetBets subreddit has helped drive $ 383, 000 in donations to a gorilla protection organization this week. The preceding sentence would even have been barely intelligible last December, and yet here we are.
Too fast resume: In January, people on the r / WallStreetBets subreddit made headlines for buying up shares of GameStop stock and other oft-known companies like AMC Theaters. A number of hedge funds had short-circuited GameStop, banking on the price of their shares take a dip, which could make them money in a perverse way. The wave of Redditors buying Gamestop and others who wanted to get in on the investment frenzy however, caused stock prices to soar, screwing up the hedge funds and shorting the company while also allowing some Redditors and individual investors to become very rich. (Some every day people were too left very screwed
WallStreetBets folks have long referred to themselves as ‘monkeys’ – it kind of is inside joke based on Harambe’s memeification, de gorilla who was shot dead at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 after a child fell in his enclosure. They are always the ones who have bonded a little bit, they have donated to efforts to save other apes.
Many have donated to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, an international charity dedicated to the preservation, protection, and study of gorillas in Africa. The organization usually receives 20 donations in an average weekend of people who want to symbolically adopt gorillas, but since last Saturday, it says it has been received thousands of adoption donations in total more than $ 383,000Many of the adoptions were made using fake names created to shade hedge fund managers: A wire on the subreddit called “This MFer is probably richer than me now” shows certificates formatted “Jim Cramer’s Tears’ and ‘Fuck Melvin Capital’. Yes, this is not the systemic change we have to save endangered species, but it’s a bit tight when you look at gorillas are declining damage to habitats by industry, poaching, industry, and climate change
This was such a big deal for charity that President and CEO Tara Stoinski (more like Stonksy, am I right?) recorded a video message especially for the RedditorsThe group also called them out on their webpage by adding the hashtag #ApesTogetherStrong and a limited edition merchandise line with it passing the symbols for diamond handsThe slogan is curbed from one meme based on the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but WallStreetBets members use to describe their collective action to outsmart wealthy hedge financiers.
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WallStreetBets incomeRS have also donated to other animal protection organizations. The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust saw one $ 10,000 peak in donations last weekend, including the adoption of an orphan elephant in Kenya. Members have also sent money to the Orangutan Project and Others charities
“Fucking love this community,” a WallStreetBets user wrote“I mean, frankly, can you ever imagine that somewhere on Wall Street or in Chicago they’ve devoted even a little bit of a post-it to something more than just their own damn money?”