This Is Financial Advice Preview Draft

A couple comments: You use the framing "People familiar with this are probably wondering why he's been absent so far" twice for two different people, using almost identical wording. It might be worth making one of them different. You mention at the beginning that the reason they are called apes will be explained later, but the only explanation is a very brief "apes together strong" quote. Might be worth adding an additional sentence to explain the context. Finally: "They don't hate Wall Street, they're tsundere for Wall Street" is a truly glorious comment that deserves to be framed and hung on the mantelpiece.

Just noticed a minor structural issue: You never really set up why AMC and Adam Aron are part of the Meme Stock culture. I'm unfortunately familiar with Ape lore so I understand, but why AMC theaters is involved might need a 30 second primer on why earlier in the video. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEzAmUNeNQo&list=WL&index=156&t=8079s for the time stamp an I think there was another Aron tweet story later on in the essay)

There's a flash of yellow highlight around 35:37 that disappears, seemingly, before it was intended to.

I have never commented and became a patron specifically for this video. I agree it's kind of weird pacing wise, and it doesn't really introduce the concept. This is not like the NFT video where I could and did pass it to my wife and so on. It just kind of assumes a lot of known context. It might also help to mention options vs. shares more clearly and especially the role RobinHood had in teaching a lot of millennials/genz types to gamble on the stock market with options trading. Wallstreetbets is a direct result, and that begat Gamestop, and Gamestop begat the more recent meme stocks. On that note, a big thing that's missing, honestly, is context about who these people are, what they think they're doing, and especially how many of them there are and where they came from. So ok, these guys are gamblers (which you mention at the end and honestly it deserves to be mentioned a lot earlier and not just in the closing) laundering their gambling habit through investment advice. Wallstreeetbets is gamblers, but a lot of /r/Wallstreeetbets guys move on when something doesn't work, and mostly these days they focus on losing money betting against Apple or Nvidia. But the AMC/party city/bbby people are gamblers who.. for some reason, started to believe. They distilled out of the general gambling-with-options group into something weird. I also think it would be worth at least mentioning the dynamics of the reddits in particular, where people literally can't be bothered to read a summary of an 8k (or whatever) and literally ask for "wrinkle brains" to come and interpret whatever has happened for them (in, as you note, a forced-positive way). One last thing: I think it might be worth framing the start in the ZIRP/rapid growth/free money setting that created it. Without a stock market bubble, Wallstreeetbets would never have taken off because the Robinhood gamblers would have had no wins to reenforce their behaviors. At the end of the video, you kind of express sympathy for the people being grifted. Reality is these guys are mostly young and stupid or gamblers and liars. Like bbby and amcstock and so on all have a lot of posters who routinely mention that they are basically in over their heads because if it doesn’t take off, their spouses will almost certainly leave them, at the very least they will be humiliated in front of family and friends. I think there's a human angle that is there but doesn't rise above the noise of the narrative. Lastly, I do wish you'd note the relationship between your observations in the flat earth videos, the prosperity scams (mickelson twins), the NFT and crypto cultists, and so on and how this has a relationship to that. The BBBY crazies are a borderline apocalyptic doomsday cult, and that does come across, but that we appear to live in a golden era of cults which birthed the things listed above, birthed this, and will birth something else, kind of doesn;t. Either way, I am so pumped about this being close to getting out the door. Watching the ape thing emerge has been pretty disturbing as the low-thought problem is endemic all over society. Last edit, I promise: it is probably also worth having a screen shot of https://www.reddit.com/r/prtyhouse/ (the party city reddit) and the grim sticky at the top: "Please sticky: Crisis Services USA: Suicide Prevention Service 988. Remember, it's just money."

Lord there is a lot of information in there to try an keep track of. Love the video. Not sure if its the sort of thing you are asking us to point out, but at around 44.50-44.56 there's a flub and repeat which hasn't been edited out

Hiya, adding on to the other comments. Fantastic video, very well done but a few notes. I think a brief description of the GME rise and fall in January would be very useful to ensure the audience is on the same page. You said you didn't want to relitigate it considering how widely it was shared, but even as someone who read about it at the time and watched the Netflix documentary it was very jarring when the video discussed how the event ended and the papers written after the fact without first having a short little recap. This may be difficult given how you go more in-depth afterwards, but perhaps a Ryan Cohen invested on X date, started a snowball from X stockprice to X stockprice on X date, Robin Hood turned off the buy button, etc. A slower start in general would make the pacing flow a bit more naturally to me. I feel like setting the stage with the GME event, defining terms likes Apes, and the original more modest beliefs of the r/Wallstreet forum on GME would make the turn to the conspiratorial MOASS feel like we're along for a weird situation that then turned insane, rather than having to backtrack. A bit like how the Flat Earth video started with the limited belief on flat earth before unveiling all the Qanon stuff.

Humans are just so incredibly efficient at creating religion out of any little piece of thin air... it's as impressive as it is sad

Great video. Even in its current state its one of my favourites. A few comments i am sure others have mentioned. 1. The heat lamp theory chapter left me very confused as to what heat lamp theory actually is, how it connects to MOASS, GME or BBBY etc, the fact its the first chapter makes the video a rocky start. Even at the end of the video i still did not know what it was, the lunatic text about the hamburgers did not help lol. 2. The use of acronyms, especially before they are explicitly spelled out, makes following confusing sometimes. 3. The volume of the video goes up and down throughout. On a positive note, I loved the creativity you brought in this video. Voice actors, new environments, the skits with Vegas Dan. The last 30min or so was a very strong ending, great job.

Thanks for this really great video Dan, your patience and thoroughness is truly remarkable. You have such a wonderful, dry, yet somehow incredulous wit when explaining the most bizarre Poe's law-esque corners of the internet, yet you never slide into outright vindictiveness. You're a paragon of stoicism. I'm sorry for the cringe gushing but I just had to say it. Some notes: - The part where the shares keep multiplying when you are explaining about dilution (towards the ends, sorry for no specific timestamp) is extremely harsh on the eyes and potentially even an epilepsy risk - You kept bringing up "heat lamp" but I have no idea what it is. Admittedly I am way out of my breadth here and this is an extremely dense video with missing visual aids but it seems like it was a really important point and it flew right past me - How about juxtaposing Keith Gill against that facepainted psycho as a before/after the gamestonk incident? It seems worth noting how Keith is really from a different "era" of reddit meme traders. /r/wallstreetbets was already around beforehand and was fairly obnoxious, but it seemed a lot more restrained back then, and the people involved, while still probably containing a lot of gambling addicts, seemed like they were significantly more aware that the whole chest-beating "wolf of wall street" fin-bro thing really was just an act. Keith is leaning into it for fun but you can clearly tell that he is firmly hinged in reality. - You introduced both Keith Gill and Ryan Cohen as being "someone who is significantly absent" (or something to that effect). It sounded a bit robotic - Overall 2.5 hours might be a lot. This content is extremely dense. How about putting in an intermission or even 2? The chapters can serve as stopping points, sure, but I feel like something to very strongly truncate the flow would be nice indicators on when to take a break and digest this absolute fucking informational sausage of a video.

this gamestop stock sounds like the apes just copy/pasted the bitcoin mythos onto wall street

At the very end, some of the credits are listed as r/[deleted] instead of u/[deleted]. Also, at 2:27:03, the voice credits never swap to real names.

Unrelated, what happened to the Scientism video? Did it become the Flat Earth/QAnon or Heliocentricism videos or did you lose interest in the project?

A few title cards/text bubbles with brief explainations for some of the more jargony bits and acronyms upon first mention would be very welcome

i think you said 'renumeration' when you meant remuneration but like, that could have just been my ears

We're the points where the flubbed take was in before the final take left in on purpose?

Echoing a lot that others have brought up here: 2.5 hours of run time may also mean that a stopping/starting may happen in terms of viewership which only really impacted my capacity to keep up with the countless abbreviations scattered through every aspect of this topic. This seems potentially remediable by including a glossary in the comments section or info box (hyping that platform-facilitated digital intertextuallity). I appreciated how the interludes with crystal tried to fill that role that Margot Robbie and others play in the big short, and think that expanding her presence in the video by including more of the already shot explainers could be very helpful. I also think an explicit introduction to the cinematic canon and narrative structure of gme might be useful. Finally, I think the interstitial titles could be more graphically/sonically distinct. Just a preference of mine but it definitely helped in line goes up to break through the heavy-duty metabolising necessary to follow you on this deep dive.

3:20 - said "in 2001" instead of (I assume) "in 2021" 5:00-10:00 - the "what's happened since 2021" section is too low-context for me to understand, but too long for me to interpret it as a simple "hey things got weird" blurb. I felt like I was supposed to understand it, but didn't. - rapidly flipping between posts/tweets stabilized to show how they all use the same phrase is working really well. It's super evocative. 43:45 - 45:00 - a few stutters / loose edits 1:31:10 - the deep-fry here is a little too cursed for my taste. YMMV

I'm having a bit of trouble following the narrative just before 1h. What, precisely, was expected to happen by the apes, and what actually happened? I broadly get that the apes intended to show patterns of votes that can only be possible if more votes than intended were possible, but what outcomes did they exactly expect, and get? Maybe some graphs, pie charts, whatever?

44:51 too

43:44 has a missed edit/flubbed line

I feel like a better summary/recap of what the whole ape thing was should be put at the front. Not a long one mind you, just a recap for all of us that forgot some important details of the whole story. You seem to be treating it as stuff that everyone knows and is sick of by now, but some of us just remember the vaguest outlines of what went down.

This is unsurprisingly excellent, and I'm really glad to see a greater focus regarding the locations, character work and cinematography choices here. I've always really enjoyed these elements of the videos, and while I think they're properly balanced in other essays to avoid detracting from the overall topic, I think with the sheer density, length and jargon-heavy subject matter of this particular essay, they really sing and help to break up the video. I agree with most of the critiques I've seen here - from the (I imagine, pretty common) audience perspective of someone who read into the GME situation when it happened in the first few months of 2021, didn't get too deep into it, and then basically forgot about it, a greater focus on either introducing the terminology for a finance-illiterate audience, or acknowledging the partial futility in trying to get a complete picture of the stock market from one video, would help onboard less dedicated viewers. As it stands, the video gets easier to follow in the latter two-thirds. On that point, I'm curious why so much of the Crystal Donovan "SHORT SELLING What You NEED to Know" video was cut out? Watching it when it was released here, I thought it did a pretty great job of explaining some of the terms to a novice, and its current placement in the final essay (showing up in the first few minutes, then again briefly as the title footage for Chapter 10) threw me a bit. I'd love to see more of it threaded through the video, since as it stands, I think someone who hadn't seen the full Patreon video might just think it's from an actual old documentary, and wind up confused why you never reference what it's from, and why its shown so sparingly. I can understand if it just ended up not quite fitting with the final points of the essay, but that was the main thing that I found to take me out of the video. As I said up top, this is excellent, and I would agree it's the most ambitious Folding Ideas documentary thus far. It's also quite nice from an editors perspective to get to see one of this channel's videos in an unfinished state, knowing how tight and well-crafted the cutting on the finished videos is. Can't wait for it!

Maybe I'm slow but what's "DD", "DTC", "DTCC", "DRS", "FTDs" at 7:40+? And it sounds like "Computer Shares Algorithm" around that timestamp is a proper name I'm expected to recognize. Or is it just the general concept of computerized trading? Is "Heat Lamp Theory" a person?

Another banger! I didn't know much about this topic coming in and feel like I learned a lot.

I have watched this all the way through once and the first half a second time. Maybe I'm tired or stupid but I definitely need spelled out definitions like DD, DTC, heat lamp, etc. I tried to look up what the "heat lamp" thing was about and the internet is only giving me information about literal heat lamps. I do not know if there is a more linear way to talk about this, but the pacing feels jarring and like we are jumping around. Again, maybe I'm tired or stupid, but I'd like some assistance to understand this subject because it is fascinating to me. I'm excited for the finished video!

Always excited to watch a deep dive about an unfamiliar topic. 1) This may just be me, but the speed of the "fly-in" text effect during the duck segment is a bit disorienting, like a bit dizzying. I think maybe if it were a faster fly in it wouldn't produce that response? 2) Love the use of a box and whiskers plot. The most underrated data visualization.

Might just be part of it being unfinished, but at 3:22: you said "2001" when I think you mean "2021"

I like the Where we are at recap and could use another one earlier.

Overall really liked the video. Only a few comments: the first third of the video was a little bit of a slog for me could use some tightening up in general, the duck/geese video at about 32 minutes goes on way too long for my liking, and (this is extremely petty) at 1:51:27 there is a ">" that should be a "<" on slide H.

On my second full rewatch and yeah I share sentiment that maybe something of a “hey here’s some jargon we’ll be covering” at the start would help getting into the flow of the video, otherwise enjoying it.

at 3:45, a graph shows stock prices with notes re: the release dates for various home consoles. an arrow around 2013 refers to PS4 and XBox Series X/S, but should probably refer to PS4 and the XBox One (released 2013), since the Series X/S didn't release until 2020. UPDATE: the same graph is referenced again at 1:01:10 and put in context of a specific blog post where the error likely originated

The 'Wow' of the employee in Gamestop at 1:50 is just... *chef's kiss*

The Vocals for the Letter from Nicholas at 1:08:17 is only coming on the Left Audio Channel, it's a little jarring.

Just commenting to 'plus one' the general consensus on the heavy technicals at the start. Edit: It really does feel like there is an explicit explainer missing at the start. I've had to google 'apes' and 'dtcc'. LGU works so well as you dedicate a good 10mins to catching everyone up at the start

Looks like it's going to be a fantastic video. The closing 21 metaphor and the "Hit me. Hit me." is beautiful.

Good video. There were a couple things I noticed that might already be cleaned up, but just in case. 1) The explanation of heat lamp seems to assume some underlying understanding of the US financial system (and specifically financial acronyms: DTC, DTCC, FTD) that I would absolutely not assume everyone knows. In particular DTC and DTCC come up several more times, and since personally I map them to engine error codes, it would have been nice to have the correct translation without googling. 2) While the acronyms used by apes are explained (DTS, DD, MOASS, etc), they tend to be kind of out-of-order...DD in particular is ranted about a lot in the clips maybe 8 or 10 minutes in, but it doesn't get defined for a solid hour afterwards. MOASS also comes up around the same time, but it gets defined 10 min later, so less of an issue there. 3) Maybe I just missed it, but where was the explanation for why they call themselves apes? I know the movie so I can guess (maybe the clip was the explanation?) but I assumed 'we'll talk more about that later' would involve more talking.

I appreciate how this somehow feels more dense than line goes up and yet rather than having an emotional through-line of anger and frustration from Dan's performance the take away seems to be "Hey you apes are assholes but the hole you've dug yourself shouldn't be your metaphorical grave.". There's a real push for empathy in this one that really comes through especially in the ending. I will say though I had a lot of trouble making out the first few words Crystal has when she's explaining naked shorts not because of the delivery but because there's no gap between the music from the segment before that one and the start of that explanation. You guys did an excellent job, can't wait to watch it 100 more times and hope fervently that those gun laden drs pics don't manifest into Jan 6: Wall Street edition. Fingers crossed

Incredible stuff as always. Some of the end credit names read "r/[deleted]" instead of "u/[deleted]."

So I'm very familiar with this subject, I've followed GME/WSB/Superstonk and was generally able to follow all the subject matter. Great video, some of your highest production value so far. However, I watched it with my wife, who is almost fully unfamiliar with all of this, and I think the video really needs a down-to-earth and expansive introduction targeted at somebody who has *no idea* what any of this is, even the GME squeeze. I think the existing video attempts to get a new person on-board by blasting confusing terms, reddit posts, etc -- this works in something like the Decentraland video because the nonsense posts are paired with compelling visuals that convey to a new viewer how bad Decentraland is. But here I fear the opening does not come across as intentionally-confusing but instead just confusing. I think the intent is "The audience understands they are confused on-purpose, and all will be revealed soon". Line Goes Up accomplishes this well by--very early in the video--stating "Sorry, a lot of this video is just gonna be like this. Financial people talk about things as though they are complex because it makes them sound smart for understanding it. You are not dumb for thinking this is nonsense." I think just devoting some time to covering who these people are, why they are crazy, maybe focus entirely on the perspective of someone who is only peripherally aware of this would let people get invested in the details. Maybe navigating from Wallstreetbets, to Robinhood, to the WSB dissolution and Superstonk, to the DRS mania to just kind of introduce "This has been happening at the periphery of your attention". Without this kind of barebones no-inside-jokes introduction I think the video might have the problem where it can only really work for someone already broadly familiar with the topic, sort of like a movie adaptation of a book that only really works for people who are familiar with the book. Great draft, really looking forward to the final product!

I will echo much of what others have said. Great content, but the organization sometimes seems out of order or lacks transition from piece to piece. In the intro, you promise us a tale of much more than what we know about meme stocks, and the video delivers. My biggest criticism is that it sometimes feels bloated, with too many screengrabs or cringe videos and insufficient analysis. I believe that shifting that ratio and editing down some content will streamline your ideas and keep the thread of the absurdity of meme stock mentality clearer as you move from point to point.

precisely how much rap music IS there about volatile securities? like, why is this a thing?

Also, the increasing dots at 2:05/6 are a cool visual, but the way they shift as they grow became physically uncomfortable, I'm not sure if someone more photosensitive would have problems with it

Yet more world class work. Worth the wait for all us Meltdown posters, that's for sure. Unlike Web3 grifts, content of this quality being free at the point of use is a true fulfilment of the promise of the internet.

I agree that the first part was rapid fire in a way that's not clear if you're supposed to understand it all yet, or if the rest of the 2 hour runtime will explain it. Honestly, rather than redoing the whole thing, even just an additional line at the end of the speed-read heat lamp section (or something similar) saying "let's break that all down" would help. It could show it's meant to be overwhelming, not that you don't have the necessary understanding to even engage with the rest of the essay.

Looks promising ! ^^ I'm happy to see this !

This is going to be a great video. During the discussion of the Ape understanding of MOASS breaking the US government, I did end up wishing there was a final punctuation that points out that all of this is just a “sovereign citizen” fantasy about how governments and ownership work. Even in the non-existent fever dream where the stock price goes to infinite dollars, the US government has all the tools to protect itself, including changing the laws. I was saying to myself, ‘but even if any of this was ever going to happen, the US govt just has to XXXX, and the entire issue of GME stock ownership goes away,’ and trying to think what XXXX would be. Would they buy GameStop, the company, and dissolve it, making all shares disappear? Something involving eminent domain? Mint the trillion dollar coin? To me, including an end cap like that could feel very satisfying.

I really feel like the chapter 2 is the real introduction, and everything before should be redistributed later in the video. As others have said, i struggled to understand the chapter 1 without proper context. It may cause a lot of listeners to give up.

Very excited to see the return of fan favorite character, Headband!Dan, The Dan with a Headband

Great work, I'm excited to see the final version. Here are some notes I hope are worthwhile: - The opening sequence feels out of order. In particular, the scene transition at 00:16 feels abrupt, with the switch from the musical montage to just dialogue with no other sound. I would've expected to see a title card there, taking a beat to pause before jumping into the meat of the subject. - More generally, the transitions between Dan talking outside and Dan talking over graphics create an awkward contrast in audio quality, between what was recorded outdoors and what was recorded in-studio. It feels appropriate when switching between Headband Dan and Explainer Dan, with the former sounding busier and more chaotic while the later is clear and focused, but is a bit jarring when cutting between two recordings of what is ostensibly the same character. (I should note that while this stuck out to me initially, I had totally forgotten by the end of the video, so it doesn't seem to be a chronic problem). - This is a very minor issue, but the same "hard pills to swallow" meme is used at 41:52 and 49:41 (there are a few other repeated memes as well, I didn't count them all), and I wasn't sure if this was an intentional callback or a mistake. I figured I'd mention it just in case, so I apologize if it turns out I'm being needlessly nitpicky. - [33:12] Love the background ducklings! - [1:12:10] My favorite joke of the video -- "the more due the diligence." A+ comedy. - [2:03:05] This is a really cool shot. It's obvious you got more cinematically ambitious with this project, and it paid off. - [2:18:08] Another minor nitpick, but that's not how I've ever heard anyone pronounce tsundere. - Chapter 1 is titled Heat Lamp, but the explanation of what that is isn't until much later in the video. Maybe consider using a different title for the first chapter, unless that was intended as foreshadowing. That's everything I noticed on first viewing. I've tried to be clear and specific, so hopefully this comment is constructive and not just a collection of irrelevant, insubstantial remarks. As always, I'm entranced by your deep, thorough, and well-structured explanations, and the artistry with which you present them. Thank you so much for continuing to do this amazing thing that you do.

I'm gonna have to watch this a couple time over, because I don't understand anything. 42:29 there's a weird little skip in the audio. Doesn't hinder comprehension but it's noticeable

I haven't yet seen the video but I am anxious to get back from work, get some pizza and watch this in its full glory. This topic is very interesting to me, as I was there during the initial squeeze and closely followed the consequent cult formation with all its myths and copes.

I'm still in the midst of watching the video so correct me if this has been done for a reason, but the sender's email address hasn't been censored when shown around the 1hr 9min mark

Excellent work here. Couple notes: 1) Maybe this is just me, but during the overview of heat lamp theory in Chapter 1, I struggled to understand anything I was hearing and initially felt like it was because I needed to come into the video knowing more about finance than I did. The rest of the video explained everything I needed to know and showed me that I just needed to be patient, but as writ, that section of Chapter 1 might turn some viewers off before they get that far. I feel like you could tweak it in one of two directions: either simplify it down to something like "a conspiracy between short hedge funds, Computershare, the DTCC, and Reddit mods to commit fraud by naked short selling Gamestop shares," or blow it up into such an obviously overwhelming deluge of insane and inscrutable info that it's clear to the audience that the only way to know what you're even talking about is to keep watching. 2) You introduce both Keith Gill and Ryan Cohen using the same phrases--noting that to people "familiar with the story," they've been "conspicuously absent." If this isn't intentional, one of these intros should be rephrased, and if it is intentional, that should be more obvious.

Not sure how helpful this is as feedback but I did struggle pretty badly to keep up early on cos I felt like I didn't understand a lot of what was being brought up. I may have missed it but I think "DD" was being talked about a lot before it was explained what it stood for. And I really struggled to figure out how short selling works at all. The video is definitely great! Just not sure if I'm struggling to keep up because that's my problem or if it needs some clearer explanations.

That ending is great ‘cause the people trying to exercise OTM options really are like someone hitting on a 21 and getting mad that the casino won’t let them.

Apocalyptic Investment Cult would make a great band name. It's the Millennial version of Blue Oyster Cult

The prologue was so confusing because I completely forgot that the GameStop thing even happened. Wow…so much has happened in the last few years

watching you deliver those lines while you held a burning match made me too anxious to continue so i will finish tomorrow

My body is ready!

Wait...did you actually go to Vegas?

Been looking forward to this for ages. I did notice at 3:20 in that you say “In 2001, GameStop got a second chance” rather than 2021.

i guarantee most of it will fly over my head but i think that’s a mark of pride for y’all really