Good discussion. I'm glad you realize that short selling has its role in the market. Like everything else, it can be abused and needs to have some rules governing how it works. Spreading lies to move a stock price (up or down) is illegal and should investigated and punished by the SEC. But it is also important to note that some hedge funds made hundreds of millions of dollars betting long on GME. Most of Wall Street is long most of the time, and that certainly has its excess as well. Investing with emotion insted of logic usually leads to dissapointing results, as most individual investors who recently lost a ton of money on GME are learning the hard way.