Chamath Palihapitiya was celebrated not for his trades but for a series of interviews he gave to financial talking heads where he said the things that WSB wante

Chamath Palihapitiya was celebrated not for his trades but for a series of interviews he gave to financial talking heads where he said the things that WSB wanted to say (example: https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l69jz5/honorary_wsb_autist_award_goes_to_chamath/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l69jz5/hono...) The Musk worship is cringe-inducing, but he signal-boosted WSB shortly before the whole thing exploded out of Reddit and into Congress and every television set and living room in the country. I don't get the sense he's their big hero, the core WSB community is far too chaotic-neutral to agree on a hero. edit: To the second half you added to your comment, we can take a quick trip through a few key WSB threads and see for ourselves how this evolved. First, there's https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/kxw4hu/dont_relent_now_boys_i_just_bought_1000_on_margin/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/kxw4hu/dont... from about two weeks ago, where the activity was pretty typical WSB stuff and GME was just starting to look like it might have some legs. Then, there was the post that ignited WSB a week ago, https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l2x7he/gme_yolo_update_jan_22_2021/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l2x7he/gme_... , which is still mostly WSB commentary but the first stick-it-to-the-hedge-fund comments are there. At this time GME was still in the $50 to $65 range and the party hadn't really started yet. I think this makes a good case against the pump-and-dump explanation. Right around the same time there was the person that paid off their student loans, https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l3aj4z/i_love_you_guys/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l3aj4z/i_lo... , and the comments are still pretty typical WSB but with pepperings of diamond-hands &etc. Within 24 hours, attention started to leak out of WSB and into places like CNBC, which started to accuse WSB of things like "market manipulation", and that led to posts like this: https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l3z0n8/howd_you_guys_manage_to_win_so_big_it_made_these/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l3z0n8/howd... , which is when things really started to turn into a proper protest. Initially some WSB nutcases figured they could gamble their way into a little bit of money, but when Wall Street took them seriously and started fighting back, it became a protest.