WallStreetBets Moderators Say Forum’s Culture Is Misunderstood

(Bloomberg) -- Moderators of the popular WallStreetBets forum on Reddit said Friday that they were focused on supporting its growing community, which is on track to reach 30 million users next month.

“At this frenetic time, our main focus is on supporting our community and being a safe place for them,” a moderator wrote in an Ask Me Anything event hosted on the forum, adding that they were focused on insulating users from scams and paid training seminars. “The world is swirling around wallstreetbets right now and we feel it.”

When asked on Twitter if there had been any contact from authorities at the SEC after a furious week of Reddit-backed attacks on short sellers that sent shares of companies including GameStop on wild rides, the moderators responded with a simple “No.”

Key quotes from a WallStreetBets moderator, labeled as speaking officially:

• “Some people misunderstand the culture and have tried to link us to various real world subcultures, but this culture is our own.”

• “Our irreverent and self-deprecating culture is what attracted our initial userbase. Users were free to pitch any idea, position, and size, no matter how ridiculous, and suffer possibly relentless ridicule if others disagreed.”

• “Moderating WSB has taught us that retail investors can be every bit as sophisticated as institutional investors, and, in some cases even more so. We have researchers, mathematicians, momentum traders, gamblers, and so much more.”

• “There are a large number of people in America today that see a series of risky lottery tickets as a more viable path to the American dream than grinding away at a day job.”

• “An influx of users makes this challenging, but we persist. Traditional Wall Street is scared of retail understanding the individual power now at their fingertips, and for good reason. Wall Street has historically been the gatekeeper, whether for information or for actual control of people's funds.”

• “Elon even saved our bacon with our Discord, which had suffered the fate we feared for our Reddit. Thanks Elon. A good friend of mine really appreciated that.”

• “After Reddit got things sorted out and hooked us up with faster API access we used advanced scaling methods like running eight copies of the same bot at very inconsiderate speeds and we were able to deal with the 30k comments per hour and 75k submissions per day we're now getting.”

• “Whatever our plans are for the future, they'll probably be dashed by more insane 2021 reality madlibs. Once Ja Rule was on our team I knew we made it.”

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