The meme stock community has become a cult hoping to 'erase the economy,' says a widely followed skeptic whose anti-NFT video went viral

• The meme-stock short-squeeze of 2021 has created a cult-like community that has lost touch with reality, according to documentary maker Dan Olson.
• Olson highlighted that some investors in stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment are waiting for a "Mother of all short-squeezes" that's not going to happen.
• "People YOLO their life savings into a short squeeze orchestrated on Reddit, refuse to sell anywhere near the peak, and invent a neo-religion to explain why," Olson said.

The meme-stock short-squeeze of 2021 created massive profits for everyday retail investors at the expense of some well-known hedge funds, but not everyone made out like a bandit, and now the meme-stock community is struggling to replicate the magic of last year.

That's according to widely followed Youtuber and documentarian Dan Olson, who is known for creating long-form video essays that tackle subjects ranging from NFTs to flat-earth conspiracy theories. His video critiquing the culture and market around digital assets has over 9 million views, and states that crypto's existence is possible only through the "greater fool" theory, wherein less informed people buy in at higher and higher prices until they're left holding the bag for the early adopters who cash out at the first sign of trouble in the market.

In a Twitter thread on Monday, Olson highlighted what he discovered after diving head first into the meme stock community: "It's weird man."

"Somehow a short squeeze opportunity back in 2020 has mutated into a straight up apocalypse cult trying to trigger the end of the world," Olson said.

The issue is that while meme stock prices saw a meteoric rise, they also saw a swift and sharp decline that hooked in a lot of FOMO-stricken retail investors who were hoping that lightning can strike the same place in the stock market twice.

"The squeeze generated a lot of bag holders, the profits have to come from somewhere. A lot of that came from the hedge funds, for sure, but after the shorts closed all the cash was coming from fresh recruits FOMOing in on the way back down," Olson explained.

And it's been a tough road since the squeeze. Shares of AMC Entertainment and GameStop are down 91% and 79% from their record highs, respectively. Meanwhile, AMC's recently issued preferred stock is down 73% from its late-August debut.

But many meme-stock investors have convinced themselves that a MOASS, or "mother of all short squeezes," is about to happen at any minute.

MOASS is "a math trick mixed with basically magic. The idea is that if the signs and portents are correct and the planets are aligned then someone at the NYSE will have to take the stock of video game retailer GameStop and divide by zero, causing the price to [go to infinity]," Olson explained.

And such a squeeze could wreck the financial system and bring down the entire economy, according to Olson's analysis of how their thinking goes. "'Erase the economy' has become not a flaw in the Stonk belief system, but a pillar," Olson said.

"So, yeah, another weird expression of our current state of anxiety: people YOLO their life savings into a short squeeze orchestrated on Reddit, refuse to sell anywhere near the peak, and invent a neo-religion to explain why," Olson concluded.