Let's just assume that there are 100 shares of GameStop (worldwide) and go from there. Let's assume that the price per share/stock before all of this was $100 (in a "good" economy, etc.). How would this all work?
A nice timeline, step by step, line by line would be nice. For ex:
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Stock is selling at $100 per share (100 shares total). June 20XX
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Economy starts tanking, stock now at $95 per share. August 20XX
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People start predicting that it will go down further, thus they start "betting" (insert definitions that are accessible and not jargony), etc.
^ something like that would be nice. Thanks!
Some dudes borrowed a bunch of stonks for 100$ a stonk. They would have to sell the stonks back later. They were betting that later the stonks would only be 1$ a stonk, and they could pocket the 99$ difference.
Now some assholes are buying up all the stonks and now the stonks are worth 500$. Instead of pocketing 99$ the dudes are going to have to sell the stonks at a huge, huge loss, so they will lose tons of money.
People are very mad about this.