And then, I suppose, the expectation was to sell most shares to desperate hedge funds and maybe keep one or two because you actually like GameStop. The idealistic and completely unrealistic narrative being that it would only be short sellers that pay for the redditor's profits, of course. I think GME wouldn't really have had the opportunity to capitalize on the situation, because them issuing shares would have angered basically 95% of reddit -- and if you're dependant on gamer's liking you, that would probably be a death sentence.

> con them into working with you

I'm not sure how much active misleading was going on, when the narrative that most people believed allowed for motivating people to buy/hold without any nefarious motives.