Alright, this one finally got me at my keyboard. I’ve wanted to cover r/wallstreetbets for a week or so, but I never really had the motivation to sit down and actually do it. Well, what better motivation for me personally than sexism? That’s right! We got ourselves some sexists around here!

It’s you, Washington Post. We’re not missing. You just refuse to see us. Or maybe you do and you’re just stupid.

Alright. So. Since I’m a poor ape who can’t afford to diamond up my hands to help hold the line, I’d do what I can–pick apart your silly little attempt to, once again, paint these unlikely heroes as the villains. And trust me, I don’t use the term “hero” lightly. It has to be for someone, or someones, that I genuinely believe in. I don’t believe in people. I don’t believe in selfless actions. I don’t believe people can ever hope to win against capitalism. But you want to knw what I do believe in? Pure, unbridled chaos motivated by righteous anger and hatred. That’s what these people are.

But we’ll get to that later. First, let’s pick apart this shallow article’s understanding, shall we?

“She was determined to break into the boys’ club. When she searched for investment advice, she said, r/wallstreetbets kept coming up, surfacing with its avatar of a White man in a suit, with slicked-back hair and sunglasses.” This is the first little nugget I’m going to destroy from this cookie-cutter article. Your first mistake was turning to r/wallstreetbets for investment advice. Did you even research the topic you’d planned to cover? Isn’t that, you know, one of the sacred tenets of journalism? My only experience with journalism is a few college courses and even I know that.

Anyone who’s bothered to give this sub more than a cursory glance knows that this subreddit IS NOT AN INVESTEMENT ADVICE SUBREDDIT. The regulars even state as such on a near-constant basis in their posts! WSB is a meme sub, something you really should understand by now, as memes and meme culture have been around for nearly three decades now (yes, I’m counting their infancy in the 90s). Usually, the purpose of the sub is to lose money. Why? Because.

No, really. That’s it. Because.

If you look at humanity strictly through a lens of logic and order, you will never, ever hope to understand it, and your article so plainly puts this on display. They do it for the memes. For the fun of it. Those who are greedy, who willingly spread misinformation, could never grasp this concept. It is beyond you. Above you. Greater than you.

“Right away, Stevens struggled to understand the dense financial language and acronyms. (“So many acronyms,” she said.) She avoided asking questions, she said, worried that commenters would make fun of her for being too “stupid” to understand.”

I will give you this, and only this. I understand sexism and the “well, actually” vitriol spewed on the internet. I understand your knee-jerk reaction to not ask for help. I’ve been there. I get it. Truly, I do.

Even so, your misinformation is what lead to your false belief that this subreddit hates women. It doesn’t. It just likes the stock. Nobody cares what your gender is, what your race is, what your political views are. WSB is a strange anomaly wherein all labels fall off as you enter. You are an ape who belongs to one of two categories, neither of which I will repeat here.

Which brings me to my next point: the lingo. It really isn’t hard to understand…and I don’t fully understand it. Yep, you read that right! I don’t understand it! I’ve poured hours into it (I’m a newbie, so sue me), and I still don’t fully understand everything. I don’t have to.

What’s more, I hate the language they use. They toss around the R-slur like it’s candy. One of their insults is “gay bear.” Their language and culture is exclusionary…

But it’s not sexist. Get it right. If you want to write an article about the casual nature of exclusion on the internet, fine. If you want to call them out on perpetuating a mindset that slowly erodes a person’s soul over time, fine! But for the love of journalism, do it right. Don’t run away from the ugly parts and say you’ve seen it all. There’s a reason I still defend them. There’s a reason I call them heroes and truly believe it. It’s because the sum of their parts leaves us with something beautiful, but we’ll get to that.

Quickly, I’d like to cover the “my wife’s boyfriend” joke, as this is the closest thing to sexism you will find on WSB. It deserves no more than a hand wave. Simply put, it’s a cucking joke. It’s self-deprecating. If you don’t know what cucking is, ask Ben Shapiro. Moving on.

Alright. This is the part where I get offended and angry.

“They told all these crude jokes,” Stevens said, “things women just don’t tend to say.”

How dare you. How. Dare you.

How fucking DARE YOU.

“The subreddit r/wallstreetbets is about “betting,” he said, which appeals to men, particularly single men, far more than women, who tend to be more risk-averse.”

HOW. DARE. YOU.

How dare you speak for me?! How dare you write me off as some pussy-ass little shit who only speaks ~proper things~? How dare you distill my entire gender down to the outdated stereotype that women are ~purer~ and ~more civil~ and don’t enjoy a good ol’ fashioned RISK? Caroline Kitchener, you are a hypocrite. You want to see sexism where there is none, then you go and spew some nonsense like this? Do you see my dress and think I’m scared of the fuck word? Do you see my perfectly manicured nails and think I shrivel away at the first mention of cock and balls? I live for crude humor. I thrive off it. And because I thrive off it, because I see my fellow woman as more than a series of shallow traits that I can easily write off, I know, for a god damned fact, that women are not just one thing, and that those of us on WSB aren’t scared of the dirty jokes. We make them. We feed them.

I am r/wallstreetbets. I may only be part of the subreddit to look at memes since I’m too poor to help, but for you to erase me, to erase the other women, to erase this movement as nothing more than a “boy’s club” because YOU and YOURS see this conduct as something women don’t enjoy? That women would have a hard time being part of? Is for you to be the one my wife is fucking.

We are here. We stand, whether in money or in moral support, with our fellow apes against the likes of you. You will not destroy the women, the men, the nonbinary people who are fighting for something greater than themselves. Those who can afford to fight will gladly take the loss upon their own shoulders. They do it all the time. Those who can’t afford to help will do what I’m doing now, even if it reaches nobody. Because I know why they like the stock. They like it because all of this wonderful, crude, cum-splattered chaos has one purpose: to take back what’s ours. You wouldn’t know or care about the the struggle of choosing either rent or food, would you, Kitchener? You wouldn’t know the cold of living in your car, would you, Kitchener? You wouldn’t know how it feels to be a teenager watching your house be taken away by those with more money than you will ever make, would you, Kitchener? Because if you ever went through this, the reason for this phenomenon, this one-in-a-lifetime event, would become clear to you. You’d get it.

We aren’t going anywhere. Ape together strong. Ape together help each other.