Donations to a gorilla conservation fund rose over the weekend after a meme was distributed by subreddit r / WallStreetBets, leading its members to symbolically adopt animals.
The community, which has more than nine million members as of Monday, is usually committed to financial trading and in January was at the center of a stock market chase that poured money into GameStop and other companies in an effort to disrupt hedge funds. sellers.
Since Saturday, users have been putting their money into another business: The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. It has received more than $ 265,000 from members since Saturday, a spokesman said Newsweek.
The charity’s website says it is dedicated to “protecting and studying gorillas and their habitats in Africa” and allows people to symbolically adopt animals to raise funds. In return, donors are sent an adoption certificate showing their name – a gift that has become central to the meme.
On Saturday, a WallStreetBets user started the trend after sharing an image of an adopted gorilla made under the donor name ‘GameStop’. It has since attracted more than 2,000 comments in the community.
Others soon followed, with the general link being the Dian Fossey Fund. Another user adopted the same mountain gorilla under the name “GME”, which indicates GameStop’s stock market. That snowball from there.
The topics now include: “I like this trend. Come on my fellow monkeys, let’s buy them a rainforest,” “Inspired by the rest of the subreddit, I adopted a Gorilla,” “I see we’re adopting gorillas now. Well, I ‘down,’ and ‘Give credit where credit is due … Monkeys are taken care of by you.’
As reported by Gizmodo, one user donated under the name “F *** Melvin Capital”, which was a reference to one targeted hedge fund.
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund said in a tweet on Sunday that it had raised $ 77,000 that day and thanked r / WallStreetBets specifically.
The president and CEO of the fund, dr. Tara Stoinski, praised a video over the weekend praising the adoptions and donation.
She said: “I was just made aware that you have adopted gorillas on our site, and I just wanted to say thank you so much for this incredible support … it will help our important mission.”
Thousands of r / WallStreetBets users responded. The best comment reads: “Lol if GME picks up 10,000 Gorillas, definitely comes off the endangered list.”
A statement attributed to dr. Stoinski aan Newsweek Monday reads: “The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund is amazed, excited and appreciating the grassroots donations that have come our way, thanks to a group of investors on Reddit. In one weekend, they donated more than $ 200,000, mostly through us symbolic adoption of gorillas program.
“We rely on individual donors who give to us year after year because they know we can trust to be careful stewards of their donations … We thank these new donors for their contribution to the success of our mission – because we save gorillas “We’re saving the planet.”
ISAAC KASAMANI / AFP / Getty Images