Over the last couple of days, a group of cheap stocks has been pushed to the moon and back by speculative investment. Collectively known as “meme stocks,” GameStop et al., or all those short stocks, or anything else the internet thinks is clever. Here’s a brief history of the phenomenon.

About a week ago, a few hedge-fund guys were galivanting around the internet bragging about all the short positions they had on Gamestop stock. Gamestop is a brick-and-mortar video game store that sells game consoles, new releases, and resells used games. Gamestop has seen better days; they’re getting murdered by direct shipping and direct downloads through Steam.

A short bet seemed to be a sure bet, but other day traders, commoners, and people with a bit of stimulus money took exception to these rich fellows trying to drive a business they have some fondness for into the ground. They decided to run the stock price up, forcing the short sellers to cover for significant losses. The genesis for this was apparently a subreddit called r/wallstreetbets.

As the stock jumped in price, many daytraders, casual investors, and internet squatters took notice and joined the buying frenzy. At this point, a bit of nostalgia turned into a full-on speculative bubble. The primary purpose of the options and stock purchase began to be making scads of money as opposed to just giving a black eye to rich people who brag about being rich.

As the bubble began to inflate, various Wall Street institutions jumped into action attempting to halt runaway trading. Trading in Gamestop was paused, but other stocks took up the mantle through Twitter and Reddit, among them AMC, Blackberry, and Nokia. Overnight these meme stocks became a full-on phenomenon with investors, dabblers, and people who had no experience whatsoever placing buy orders for when trading resumed in the morning.

One of the most popular ways to do this was by an app called Robinhood which allowed regular everyday people to trade commission-free in about five minutes after setting up an account. Robinhood, along with many brokerage firms, disallowed the buying of new shares this morning.

So here we sit. Wall Street, as a collective, has decided to pause these bubbles till they can figure out “what the heck is going on.” The brokerage firms won’t let people trade, some won’t even let people sell, and boy, are people mad about it. Robinhood is taking the brunt of the ire.

Anyway, Dems will call for more regulation. Investing will have higher costs and more barriers to entry. Voters will lose any faith they had left in free markets.

Hopefully, the summary helps. I’m sure people have opinions.