Hardly anyone will sell you GME stock, rumors are everywhere about this being co-ordinated with Citron etc increasing their short positions.
Unconfirmed reports about Robinhood and TD Ameritrade forcing people to sell "for their own good".
Why has everyone rushed to defend random hedge funds? Do these people have any other ties?
They won't be manipulated. But a dead market is a dead market. The market value loss across the board will be what naturally comes, not an artificial manipulation.
I doubt that. As long as this can be framed "correctly" by media and financial news orgs, nobody who wasn't involved in this will remember any of it.
Hardly any normal people who invest know more than what's in the WSJ, MarketWatch, Bloomberg etc.