There are a whole community of trading degenerates who trade 0-days till expiration (0dte) options all day long. Some of them claim they make money with black box algos. Those options move a little too fast to trade as a human unless you sit there with your finger on the sell button all day long.

I wonder if this is more about lighting up the gambling addiction thrill seeking and whatnot part of the brain than it is really about getting rich quick for some individuals.

A lot of Investing is just a legitimized, sanitized, gentlemanly form of gambling. Definition: “placing a monetary wager on an uncertain future event.” Instead of professional gamblers sitting at a poker table in dirty casino that smells like smoke, you’ve got professional gamblers sitting in Goldman Sachs Or Morgan Stanley doing the same thing. Instead of firing up DraftKings, youre firing up eTrade. It’s the exact same thing but we pretend things like options trading are a respectable part of the economy because Ivy Leaguers do it.

You'll definitely get flagged because of the disproportionate non linear payoffs. But that's the point of call options. So some people do use them legitimately

I'm assuming all the redditeurs who bought GameStop shares a few years ago didn't go to jail.

As posted elsewhere, making $107k is illegal. Making $107M is legal. Lots of people made thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. In aggregate, they made single-digit billions based on the losses Citadel had to report. DFV alone made north of ten million (realized then) and is up north of $200 million right now (currently unrealized gains).