Not necessarily. Investing in stocks isn't necessarily a zero-sum game like a lot of people assume. Both the buyer and seller could make profit on a transaction.
Imagine person A bought AMZN for 1000 and later sold it to person B for 2000. A made 1000, and now B made 1000+ on it.
So looking at it from a whole is different from just the buyer and seller. There's a chain.
I agree it's not a zero sum as stocks can rise independently of just market activity if the company is doing well.
(Some companies have non-voting stock, and some don't pay dividends, but in all cases everyone is holding out for the eventual promise of capital returned from the business's actual profits.)
At first it was a value play for some, GME was undervalued, then it became a, look all these funds are so short the stock, we can make them hurt, and make them pay us.
One thing you could ask is is the average Redditor smart enough to see the consequences or is this really a bunch of teens putting up their savings being hyped by a hype machine?