It's just so incredibly impressive to see that populist movement come together and make the ripples that we're honestly still feeling today um. It might be hard to answer, but out of it like when you were researching, it obviously you're very familiar with gambling and you don't under other things, related to like the markets and wall street and all that was there a special like takeaway from this. That you're, just like that's just wild, like something that you learned about this, that, like it's just like still to today, like dumb found you almost um yeah a couple things, one of the things that you know, one of the main characters in my book is this College kid who put a few thousand dollars into gamestop and he was he wrote it all the way to 250 000, and you know he wanted to sell. But the power of the peer pressure of the community was so intense that he really felt he would be betraying the moment if he sold and i think that's something that you don't learn in business school right.

The idea that the rational move and we could talk about where gamestop should be and whatever, but this guy had turned two thousand dollars into 250 000. There is no businessman in the world who would say you shouldn't sell that at that point right take some of it off the table, but he felt he would be betraying wall street vets. These people he'd never met. He will never meet any of these people um and the memes.

It all meant something really truly emotional to him. So that to me was stunning to watch like it's. He almost had a mental breakdown over selling a stock um and and that's something that i don't think you you learn, that's something that's really unique. I think to this sort of value coming from the community, oh for sure, and i would almost take it a step further and say without that type of sentiment it would have never got to where it did.

You had to have so many people who were on that exact same page and that's what really brought it to life yeah, it's just it's just nuts and i think at first i really looked at it like okay, it was a social internet. Culture thing of like are you in on the joke or like hey we're sitting around as the pandemic, we're all on our couch, we're not going outside, so we're consuming more technology, we're concerning more of like internet culture, so they're in on the joke. But then the more i got into it, it was humor that was wrapped around a very serious disgust and almost distaste for wall street like so it was the joke and then all of a sudden i started seeing people more of like, especially when uh those government Panels and senate hearings and that stuff they were happening they're like trying to pin it on keith and everyone's like whoa whoa whoa in 2008. No one in wall street got in trouble.

Why are they talking about like one retail and then like? I you could almost feel a bit of anger and, like i said it was mask and humor and internet culture, but when you were doing your research, did you kind of see that thing like? The underlying thing was a big big anger towards wall street and, let's say the quote: unquote: uh, cronyism of elites. Yeah i mean this is this is really a movement uh. That starts all the way back with occupy wall street in the 2008 crash. There is this real sentiment.

Everyone i interviewed, who had bought gamestop that was part of their thinking, was that wall street is not going to screw us this time like they have screwed us over and over again, it's a completely rigged game. It's completely unfair. These people, in their suits and ties, are shorting this company in the middle of a pandemic they're all working together. I mean there was this real feeling of of a battle.

You know that we were fighting or people who thought k-stop were fighting against. You know and melvin capital was stuck in the middle. I will say that listen, shorting gamestop from their position was not a unique trade. It wasn't something that you would say.

Oh you should never do that. I mean they shorted a lot of companies, but they became the target because it came out that they had done this and when you sort of weigh who they were versus, who the reddit crowd was. It really does feel like an elite uh. You know wall street fund run by a billionaire who has his penthouse in miami and his penthouse in new york versus people sitting on their couch trapped at home in the middle of a pandemic, who can't even go to starbucks right um? So it was it was.

There was a real feeling of of anger that drove this um to the degree that it drove it. People would not sell because they wanted to see melvin get destroyed right. That was really the anger and the chernobyl video um was really just a centerpiece um in my book, but as well as of the movement, the idea that it was going to erupt, it was going to explode um and you know what they. It really did.

That's the kind of crazy thing had they not been bailed out, although they'll never call it a bailout um. You know, and i should couch this and they say that it was absolutely not a bailout. It was a fine investment and a fine company, but had they not received an infusion of cash from you know their friends um, you know who knows what could have happened to them, so i do think it was a really interesting, interesting moment where all this anger's Been boiling for a while, but what did occupy wall street really do nothing right. It did nothing um.

This really actually did something um. This actually, for this moment, really really changed wall street, and i think, going forward will continue to change the way the game is played. It showed the power of the crowd for sure you bring up such a good point that i don't know if i've really internalized like at first it was game, stop and i would argue a little bit later, because amc kind of went crazy. Also in june, they became symbolic of that fight against wall street, the fight for market transparency.

Well, there was probably many many hedge funds that were shorting both of these, but melvin became the symbol. There were many market like market makers that were dealing with this, but through the connection with robin hood and citadel citadel became the symbol robin there were many brokerages that stopped people from buying, but yet robin hood became the symbol. So it's interesting from a crowd. Psychology point to see how we have these individual symbols that to today, when you bring up robin hood to the like kind of average retail person like i'm, not using it like they're, it's a pr nightmare and they're like i hate them and probably for good reason.

Like at the time that it happened, i don't think they handled it, the best they could have but symbols, and that just shows how incredibly strong that is right now yeah and that's the whole meme stock phenomenon, it's like memes and have so much power and imagery And symbols: it's like. We rally around things like that, and we always have i mean you can look at any industry in or any war or anything like that at all one little symbol can be more powerful than anything else, and these you know these became targets right. Robin hood is a perfect target and it is all about. You know the whole meme, the meme right.

That's what we're talking about here and when i launched our nft line. That's why we wanted to use all this imagery, because it was these symbols that really galvanized this community forward for sure. Well, i have to admit uh. I really like mine, like the imagery on it, like whoever your artist's team was.

It's definitely super super impressive. Now i don't know if you can um share any of this, but i know with the anti-social network, particularly there are talks of it becoming a movie and i believe mgm had bought the rights. Can you give us like updates on that? Like is the movie a production? Is there a time frame or we're actually going to shoot uh this summer, it's actually moving very quickly um. The script is done.

It was written by these two wonderful women who actually wrote orange is the new black and they are writing the picture with ryan gosling um. We have a fantastic director soon to be announced which uh, which will as soon as we do that we'll start the casting process. But the goal is to have this potentially out at the end of the year um. It's it's moved quickly because there were, you know, other projects developing, but we're the one that's going to be in the movie theaters and it is the team you know behind the social network um, and so it's going to be.

You know somewhat of a dark comedy. I think in the vein of a big short or a social network, there's a lot of funny elements to this story for sure um. But it's attempting to capture a movement um on screen so uh. I can't wait to see it and i think it's gon na be a blast, so um yeah we're moving forward on that very quickly.

Well, i can't wait to watch that one in an amc, theater.