For years, the online subculture surrounding gaming has faced accusations of dangerous links with the radical Right. Between the Gamergate controversy and counterterrorism practitioners identifying gaming platforms as popular potential sites of radicalisation, as well as the hypothesis that first-person shooter games desensitise players to offline violence, headlines with the phrase ‘gaming’ and ‘the radical Right’ are myriad and concerns about the real-world implications of this form of entertainment abound.
While less readily apparent, the GameStop squeeze represents yet another facet of this threat, one that the continuous media coverage will serve only to buoy. What may be seen as the economic equivalent of David vs Goliath may nevertheless give new life to the anti-capitalist fringes of the radical Right.
‘Gamestonk’, as Elon Musk coined the GameStop squeeze, itself has much less to do with gaming than it does with economics and the intricacies of financial markets. In January 2021, Reddit users on the forum ‘r/wallstreetbets’ observed that a number of hedge funds had large ‘short positions’ in GameStop, a gaming retailer struggling in the face of the growth in online gaming. In essence, ‘shorting’ involves selling shares today in the hopes of purchasing them back at a lower price at some later date. Inherently risky, losses can prove unlimited if the shares appreciate in value.
