Today, the @GameStop handle on X / Twitter replies to numerous separate posts with a butterfly emoji 🦋
This was of course noticed in online Reddit communities, notably superstonk and theppshow.
theppshow: post, another, another
On superstonk, this was evidently something that mod team there is a little bit sensitive about.
Mod pinned comment there: "Sometimes a butterfly is just a butterfly. Sometimes it's a reference to a fairy game. Sometimes it's used as a placeholder for a company that is, we can all agree, NOT GME. Sometimes the SMRT team tweets something that means more than one thing, depending on who is reading it. We've been inundated with this same tweet. Mass-sharing rules apply - there's no reason to keep spamming it to the sub. But this is a reminder to the community here (and visitors from butterfly lands) that you need to keep the conversation on GME."
This pinned mod comment came after previous posts were removed. Here is a screenshot taken of a post that was made by I believe the same hey_ross here on Lemmy in which the mod message said: "butterflies have been ruined by a collective of bad apples and now the bunch is spoiled... this is a measure to protect Superstonk from malicious brigaders and wasn't a measure taken lightly."
There was also a butterfly themed post was put on superstonk 5 days ago and removed, with a mod comment of: "This "Butterfly" theory is known to be about BBBYQ which at this point should not be discussed outside of how it might in some way effect GME as as of its delisting or some other relevant data point. Any post specifically trying to hype BBBYQ through cryptic emotes is absolutely not to be tolerated and will be considered brigading of this sub from outside of Superstonk."
It it interesting to see the ever-changing nature of the larger community of investors that are interested in different parts of this story. I wrote this not to offer judgement on either subreddit mentioned here, just to display that the community is ever evolving. superstonk was a bustling place for quite a while. But then, things there changed, for whatever reasons. Regardless of the reasons, and regardless of any suspected intentions, that is all besides the point being made here.
When a large group of hundreds of thousands of curious individuals in one place starts to experience friction and restrictions of their ability to share and discuss certain bits of information that they believe to be worthwhile, then they will inevitably find some other place to go to share that information that they feel to be valuable. Evidently, here we are on Lemmy, ("Lemmy" being a word which is interestingly forbidden in some such places). Everyone wants to be able to pursue the truth, and they will continue to find ways to do so. Sometimes when you face increased resistance to your efforts in searching for the truth, it might be an indicator that you're heading in the right direction.
Why did GameStop tweet the butterflies?
today, a member of the "superstonk community corps" aka scc makes a long post complaining about butterflies.
most of the comments in the thread by community participants are not in agreement with this position held by superstonk mods and scc.
Because, why is there this big artificial barrier in that subreddit preventing people there from talking about specific subjects that they all collectively want to talk about, even if it isn't explicitly about GME?
That post was infuriating to read. I had to take the rest of the day off from reddit after that.