>It's why have they all decided to act right now, just as this gamestop maneuver is happening?

the demonstrated power and financial success of WSB, even if fleeting and temporary, provides a lot of implicit credibility and validation to the "retard/YOLO" non-PC culture of WSB. The modern society worships success, and the people pay oversized attention to what successful people do - like what they eat, how exercise, how they stay motivated, etc. And now instead of respectable, successful, well dressed, educated, smart, cool, etc. Wall Street-ers a bunch of "retards" crawled from under the rock, teared a new one to those Wall Street-ers and got right on top of that podium of success veneration and idolation (like the "nerds" did 20 years ago with their tech startups). No surprise all the establishment (which these days naturally includes successful "nerds" of the previous generation) fights back. The established interests are always scared of changes, and especially when changes look like paradigm shift (while we wouldn't know for quite some time whether it is a true paradigm shift or just an aberration, the scare is real)