Users have donated around £252,000
(Picture: Unsplash)Reddit users who turned around GameStop’s fortunes by driving up stocks have adopted thousands of gorillas.
Members of the popular WallStreetBets forum have adopted more than 3,500 gorillas since Saturday - totalling $350,000 (£252,000) in donations to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
Some users are naming GameStop or the New York Stock Exchange as the adopter.
Many WallStreetBets members refer to each other as "apes", and "Apes Together Strong" is a popular catchphrase on the forum.
🚨WE HAVE NEWS 🚨 It’s safe to say that the #investor community on @reddit is not traditionally who we think of as our supporter base. But they definitely surprised and overwhelmed us over the weekend. A THREAD. @CNN @CNBC @business @WSJ pic.twitter.com/JRB1Gj1Mub
— Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (@SavingGorillas) March 15, 2021
The trend began when one user posted an adoption certificate on the site - leading to a spate of copycat adoptions.
The charity's president Dr Tara Stoinski paid tribute to the community while speaking to the BBC.
She told BBC News: "They've truly made a difference for our world and shown what can be accomplished when people come together. When we save gorillas and we save forests, we save our world."
Previously small time investors have used the forum to successfully outmanoeuvre professional Wall Street investors.
The Redditors rallied around GameStop after the bricks and mortar game shop's shares came under pressure from shorting by hedge funds.
Short selling or shorting, is effectively a bet that the price of a company’s shares will fall.
But if the share price instead goes up, an investor will lose money.
Reddit users spotted that GameStop, a company which holds a lot of sentimental value to man, was being heavily shorted and retaliated by buying stocks and driving up the price. This forced the short sellers to buy back shares at a higher price.
