A weirdly fascinating documentary with a cast of seriously weird characters! It explored/gave an account of/explained (?) an episode a few years ago in the financial markets where very large numbers of independent investors, acting via Reddit groups rather than the stock exchanges managed to make vast amounts of money via Gamestock shares, using a phone app. The idea seemed to be to allow ordinary people to have an influence on the financial markets rather than it being left to the Big Boys of the hedge funds. As it turned out, there were, it seems, definite links between the ‘ordinary’ couple of individuals who originally set up the app and trading procedure, and the big hedge funds. With a key aim at the start, it seemed, of trying to play these funds at their own game and gain some of the vast wealth that they managed to accumulate, they ended up; it seems, as being just like them. And of course none of these ‘small’ and big players spoke or said anything for the documentary.
But the Redditors who drive this phenomenon…a deeply weird bunch of people including one person who made millions who was more dead-eyed and dead-voiced than a Kardashian. Interpersonal social skills, I suspect, were clearly lacking in most of them. But some, to a degree, did achieve something, although I wonder how many actually lost everything an form whom we did not hear.
The visual style of the documentary was almost absurdly OTT with at times word-by-word ‘illustration’ of what was happening with random images. Very characteristic of modern documentaries it seemed but it was done so excessively that it was less annoying than if it has only been done periodically. Going OTT in this style, weirdly, seemed to work.