As the article points out, it's about reality being controlled. In this case the user wrote something to change reality for their benefit. The change they want

As the article points out, it's about reality being controlled. In this case the user wrote something to change reality for their benefit. The change they want is for more people to play the wsb game. And for more people to believe that the game has many winners. The mistake is that their message was untruthful, it was an exaggerated attempt to create hype. Or. It was a user lying to make them get attention on the internet and feel better for a short amount of time, but I like my first idea as it's directly called out in the subject we are discussing. Thanks for unveiling it! edits - I think its also like if you say something is important enough, it becomes important. So if wall street are still debating if wsb is or isnt actually relevant it means they already are. So the message is twofold. Firstly it's a "play the game, we need the hype" but more like "these comments have importance in itself because we say so". It's similar to meme magic - to say that 4chan memed Trump into office is utterly ridiculous, in reality they didn't. But enough people believed they might have and looked into it and thought maybe they did, that the effect of 4chan became important. A magic trick is about what you think you saw after you leave the theatre. edit2 - and even my comment reinforces the effectiveness of the strategy just by commenting on it!