I remember the first time I heard the term “meme stock.” It was early 2021, and my cousin—a guy who’d previously only invested in fantasy football—suddenly became an overnight financial analyst. He was glued to his phone, spouting acronyms like GME and AMC, while refreshing Reddit threads like they were gospel. “We’re gonna take down Wall Street,” he told me, eyes gleaming with a mixture of defiance and dopamine. I laughed at the time. But looking back, that moment captured something real—something wild, naive, oddly beautiful. And now, years later, I can’t help but ask: whatever happened to all that energy?
It’s tempting to reduce meme stocks to a brief cultural hiccup. A strange little blip on the financial timeline. A bunch of Redditors banding together to inflate the value of failing companies while chanting “diamond hands” and posting rocket emojis. But doing so misses the deeper truth: meme stocks weren’t just about money. They were a movement—part protest, part party, part panic attack. And maybe that’s what made them so powerful, and so dangerous.
Let’s be honest: the traditional financial world never saw it coming. Hedge funds with multi-billion-dollar positions were suddenly humbled by kids trading from their iPhones. It was like David versus Goliath, except David was armed with memes, and Goliath didn’t know what hit him. GameStop's meteoric rise wasn’t just about stocks—it was a middle finger to a system that had long felt rigged. For once, it felt like the little guys were winning. And for a moment, they were.
I remember my Uber driver telling me he’d put half his savings into AMC because a TikTok told him it was “going to the moon.” At first, I was horrified. Then I realized he wasn’t alone. There were teachers, delivery workers, students—people who’d never owned a share in their life—jumping headfirst into the market. Not because of some quarterly earnings report, but because it felt like something. A cause. A rebellion. A joke too big not to be part of. They weren’t buying stocks—they were buying belonging.
But, as with any high, the comedown was inevitable. Stocks that flew too close to the sun eventually plummeted. GameStop never became Amazon. AMC didn’t reinvent cinema. And for every early adopter who cashed out at the peak, there were ten who held on too long and watched their portfolios bleed. My cousin? He’s back to fantasy football now. He doesn’t like talking about his Robinhood account.
It’s easy to scoff at all this in hindsight. To treat meme stocks as a cautionary tale about herd mentality and the perils of internet hype. But that misses the point. The rise of meme stocks revealed a hunger—no, a desperation—for control in a world where so many felt powerless. It wasn’t about financial logic. It was about making noise in a system that so often silences ordinary voices. You can’t analyze that on a balance sheet.
Even now, in 2025, that hunger hasn’t gone away. It’s just... changed. The frenzy has quieted. The memes are fewer, the message boards less chaotic. But the core sentiment—the belief that finance shouldn’t just belong to suits in Manhattan—is still simmering beneath the surface. It’s in the way people trade crypto, invest in fractional shares of sneakers, or rally around new “underdog” companies. The form has shifted. The spirit? Still alive.
So, the big question: are meme stocks still worth it?
Well, that depends on what you’re looking for.
If you’re chasing stability, then no—meme stocks are not your friend. They are erratic, emotional, and allergic to logic. Betting on them is like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded. You might get lucky, sure. But more often, you’ll feel sick, disoriented, and broke.
But if you’re looking for connection, for a shot at being part of something bigger than yourself, for a little chaos in your portfolio—then maybe, just maybe, they’re still worth a glance. Not as a strategy. Not as a retirement plan. But as a reminder that the market is made of people, not just numbers.
A friend of mine—let’s call her Jess—works in healthcare. She's sharp, cautious, very Type A. Not the kind you'd expect to dabble in meme stocks. But in 2021, she bought into BlackBerry, not because she thought it would become the next Apple, but because she loved the absurdity of it all. “It felt like a financial flash mob,” she said. She lost a few hundred dollars. But she doesn’t regret it. “For once, investing felt human.”
And maybe that’s what meme stocks gave us: a reminder that the market isn’t just a cold machine spitting out numbers—it’s a messy, irrational reflection of human hope, fear, and curiosity. Sure, most meme stocks are terrible businesses. Sure, most people lost money. But for a brief moment, the walls of finance came down, and regular people stormed the castle.
Today, I see echoes of that spirit everywhere. In the way people rally around indie creators. In the way communities form around causes, not corporations. In how financial literacy has become a TikTok trend. The meme stock movement may have lost its momentum, but it sparked something bigger: a cultural shift in how we think about money, power, and participation.
No one can say where it goes from here. Maybe meme stocks become relics, a punchline in future finance textbooks. Maybe a new wave of digital movements emerges, even wilder and more decentralized. But one thing is clear: the genie’s out of the bottle. People now know they have a voice in the market, even if it’s small and silly and shaped like a Shiba Inu.
So are meme stocks worth the hype in 2025? Not in the old sense. Not as investments you can count on. But as cultural artifacts? As proof that people can still break the rules, even in places as rigid as the stock market? Absolutely.
They’re a reminder that sometimes, financial systems aren’t just about money. They’re about meaning. And for a world that’s often lonely, uncertain, and tilted toward the powerful, meaning is a currency of its own.
So go ahead—buy a share of something ridiculous. Just one. Frame it on your wall. Not because it’ll make you rich, but because it’ll remind you that once, for a little while, the internet took on Wall Street—and actually made it flinch.