"Apes Together Strong" is a popular saying in Reddit's WallStreetBets forum, a subreddit with nearly 11 million users. It's where every day people discuss aping into stock and option trading, and its collective community was the force behind the revitalization of the GameStop GME stocks despite the hedge fund squeeze.
In case you've been living in a cave, on January 22, 202 users of r/wallstreetbets initiated a short squeeze on GameStop after a comment from Citron Research predicting the value of the stock would decrease. The stock price flew more than 600% by January 26. The response by trading platform Robinhood was to restrict trading GME on January 28.
The Mulligan Brothers join us in this AMA to talk about their documentary "Apes Together Strong".
This Slogging thread by Akasha Rose, Mulligan Brothers, Justin Roberti, Limarc Ambalina, Katarina Andrejević and David Smooke occurred in slogging's official #amas channel, and has been edited for readability.
Meet the Mulligan Brothers, Portland-based brothers Finley and Quinn Mulligan who are both active among the WSB Reddit community and have worked together on multiple film and music projects.
Finley has spent most of his career working for Laika Studios, the award-winning stop-motion animation studio, as Assistant Director on such films as the BAFTA award winner Kubo and the Two Strings and the Golden Globe winner Missing Link.
Quinn is a highly acclaimed singer-songwriter who first gained attention while playing with his band Fanno Creek. He has since recorded extensively as a solo artist. Producing for Inner Station is Andrew Weiner (Mail
Order Wife, The Take, Hit & Run, and The Frankenstein Theory).
Finley says, “People like to claim that this has all been the work of a greedy band of internet trolls trying to game the system. But that’s simply not the case. These are normal, everyday people who wisely saw an opportunity of a lifetime to make money and they took it — only to be robbed by their own brokers. How the “Apes” are being portrayed as the bad guys in this story is beyond me, and we’re determined to set the record straight.”