<nettime> HODL: the other insurrection

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

It's hard not to see parallels between the events at the US Capitol
earlier this month and the current events on Wall Street surrounding
#Gamestop.

A bunch of people -- mostly regarded as fools (QAnons and daytraders) by
professionals -- storming the citadels of power, coordinated over social
media, creating havoc in the process.

In both cases, this story is probably over-simplistic, with systemic
actors contributing to, and hoping to profit from, these events. In the
first case, it was obviously Trump and other Republican politicians. In
the case of Gamestop, the largest shareholder, hence major beneficiary
of the rise in share prices, is Black Rock, not exactly a Wall Street
outsider.

While I don't want to emphasize the parallels, reading the two events
together, shows just how fragile the institutional arrangements in the
US have become, how deep popular anger runs, how much short-term power
can be generated over social media, and exposes the deep rifts among
core groups in the power structure. It's not just republicans against
democrats, but also Silicon Valley CEOs against Wall Street.

Like republicans and democrats, Silicon Valley and Wall Street are
deeply intertwined, but also in a real power struggle against each
other. In the long run, this might be the more important one.






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