shorts get a bad rap for being one of the more transparent cases of profiting from the misfortune of others in finance. and yes, it does create incentives to do

shorts get a bad rap for being one of the more transparent cases of profiting from the misfortune of others in finance. and yes, it does create incentives to do other stuff to kill the company, but similar incentives exist with a long position (one way for a symbol to go up is for competitors to fail). so far I haven't read anything suggesting these hedge funds did anything other than take a large short position in $GME.