In January, a bunch of Reddit users made a bunch of money trading GameStop stock, and the subreddit responsible, WallStreetBets, has pooled together and used the money for a good cause over the weekend. The users have poured over $311k into the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, a wildlife conservation organization dedicated to saving Gorillas around the world.
At the beginning of the year, an online stock trading community on Reddit noticed that some hedge fund companies were intending on shorting out GameStop stock, which essentially means they were betting large sums of money that GameStop’s stock would drop and payout those who bought in at a higher price. The WallStreetBets community rallied together to instead buy up as much GameStop stock as possible, so instead the price of the stock skyrocketed to record levels for the company, with the hedge funds instead losing massive amounts of money and the users at WallStreetBets becoming millionaires overnight.
Over the weekend, users from the WallStreetBets subreddit on Reddit have been donating money to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International after a meme spread through the site, prompting more users to get involved. The first gorilla to be adopted on the subreddit was jokingly named “GameStop” after the historic event back in January. Soon after the first gorilla was posted to the site, many others began following suit, posting more pictures of adopted wildlife with GME based names.
Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International is a not-for-profit organization devoted to studying and protecting the lives of wild gorillas in Rwanda. As part of the organization’s way to raise funds to continue helping the wild gorillas, people who donate to the fund can ceremoniously adopt a gorilla for a small amount of money. Those who choose to ‘adopt’ get to rename the chosen gorilla, receiving an adoption certificate and photo of the gorilla they’ve helped. The organization even makes a special video of the gorilla just for the donor, sending updates on how the creature is doing, with photos included.
WallStreetBets members have also found other wildlife conservation fund organizations, going on to adopt snow leopards, donkeys, warthogs, manatees and other endangered animals. In the megathread, which moderators of the subreddit were forced to make due to the overwhelming amount of posts related to animal adoption on the site, many users submitted links to animal conservation and charity funds that could be donated to. The sheer amount of adopted animals in that thread alone has raised over $300k for endangered wildlife as of this post, which is surely way more than any hedge fund company would have donated.
Source: Reddit / Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International