While the narrative has made him the poster boy, you can look at the past discussions regarding GME. His initial posts around a value play were widely ridiculed

While the narrative has made him the poster boy, you can look at the past discussions regarding GME. His initial posts around a value play were widely ridiculed. The short squeeze thesis(s) were made by other reddit users. Even those weren't particularly popular until around 1/13-1/15 when GME saw an unexpected pop. It was around then people were like "oh this squeeze thing might happen. we could test it"