You can redefine it, or give it a different name other than "fundamental value", but the point is that these buyers from wsb may be paying to play the game, not for financial profit, but for the lolz. Like house-odds gambling (which, has negative "fundamental value"), people still do it.

Now, as for whether there are enough of these crazy types to actually push the price of GME up this much - i'm skeptical. I suspect that it's a battle between different hedge funds who first caught on to this small group of crazies on wsb, and saw an opportunity.

Of course the rich guys will use human shields to protect themselves as you are indicating. They will demonize this action as the work of jokers who just want to see the world burn. If your pension fund was relying on short selling, you had a terrible pension fund! The only place where blame should lie for any outcomes of this is squarely in the lap of luxury. Any average investors who were burned by this should be pointing their fingers at the hands that promised to feed them and have repeatedly failed to do so.

To further your point, things like these trigger a domino effect that ultimately hurt ones at the bottom.

Trouble is, the ones at the bottom already feel that they are hurt so much and won't mind a new round of hurt.

That probably is not a verifiable truth, but the fact that this impression prevails for enough people to do this is probably where the real corrective actions should be directed at.