WallStreetBets: Positions or Ban
This addresses how online communities form and sustain engagement, particularly in niche financial contexts, but is incremental in applying existing theories.
The paper analyzes the r/wallstreetbets subreddit to understand how it built a large, loyal user base through humor and community design, arguing that humor fosters in-group cohesion and provides support for traders.
r/wallstreetbets (WallStreetBets or WSB) is a subreddit devoted to irreverent memes and high-risk options trading. As of March 30, 2020, the subreddit boasts a usership of nearly 1.1 millions subscribers and self-describes as "if 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal." This paper will utilize Amy Jo Kim's community design principles along with social psychology theory as frameworks to understand how this chaotic, oftentimes offensive community has developed one of the largest and most loyal user bases on the platform. We will further argue that humor plays a vital role in promoting in-group cohesion and in providing an unconventional third place for traders (and thinly veiled gamblers) to seek support from each other in the form of vulgar, yet good-humored taunting.