Now then, what was the very first thing that entered your mind when I said that?
I'll give you a second to still process the word I said...
Ok, so if you answered "trading cards and Bitcoin" then CONGRATULATIONS, you start a managerial position next Monday.
So, let's unpack this a bit more (tism got me soundin like GPT).
Earlier today, I was browsing Slashdot like I normally do, and lo and behold, I find an article about GameStop's future plans. And whaddaya know, they're moving away from games and onto trading cards and Bitcoin as a business model.
Of all the shit-eating monkeybrained ideas GameStop has had in the last 10 or so years, this takes the cake. Never mind that this isn't GameStop's first rodeo with the asinine world of blockchain technology, as in the past they've experimented with NFTs and a stupid-ass shitcoin that literally nobody asked for.
But, I wanna tackle this whole ordeal in an organized way so as not to waste your time reading this even though you have definitely clicked off by now, and for that to happen, I must start with the most obvious of the talking points here: trading cards.
I'm just gonna get my bias out the way first: I think trading cards are the stupidest fad in the world. Pokemon is the worst offender, and is an intrinsically retarded concept made with no other purpose than to suck wallets dry. I hate it with a burning passion.
Look, I'm not against GameStop wanting to sell cards. But do they really need to make that their whole focus instead of games? Absolutely not. Sell your stupid wallet-emptying TCG slop, but also sell the thing that built you up from nothing and has been working just fine so far. I mean, for fuck's sake, it's literally in the name "GameStop" unless they intend on becoming CardStop, a move that, while it would be shooting their SEO presence in the balls with a Deagle, is exactly the kind of crack bender idea I'd imagine GameStop would eat up.
Putting aside the reality that GameStop is probably not gonna bother enforcing any kind of buying limit on cards, rendering the company a scalper's wet dream, which only exacerbates the already-prevalent scalping problem in the TCG world right now, it's just not a good idea in general. Like, who actually stopped and thought to themselves with a straight face "Hey, let's pull a complete 540 on our business model and focus on a recently-revived fad that most certainly won't die out in 2 years instead of working with the tried-and-true business model that's defined our company's legacy for the better half of 25 years, or even more if you count our pre-GameStop incarnations. That's a great idea with no possible downsides!! :D"
It'd be like if Apple just up and said "Hey, we're not making computers and iPhones anymore, we're a Korean restaurant chain now!"
Next up is their decision to implement Bitcoin into their business somehow.
Look man, the crypto/NFT hypetrain is dead. It's been dead since 2020. It will be dead until the end of time. The only thing keeping Bitcoin alive is the crypto doodbros who missed the memo, still insisting that buying a proof of ownership slip to a link to a monkey JPEG is a good investment (just a "proof of ownership" for the link, not even the link itself, and certainly not the monkey JPEG. That's what they're insisting is a good investment. Jeezus, these people...). The only use for cryptocurrency these days is buying shit, and you can really only do that reliably with Monero in my opinion, since it's kind of made for transactional use in a privacy-respecting manner, whereas other cryptocurrencies are pretty much solely meant for investing and trading like penny stocks, all in a very privacy-disrespecting way.
Just don't bother.
Of course, GameStop wouldn't be in half as much deep shit if it didn't have a far-right, corpo-shill, conspiracy theorist, meme-obsessed freakazoid running the damn company. I'm calling it here: in due time, Ryan Cohen is probably gonna be arrested or otherwise in trouble for some amount of insider trading/fraud/other illegal financial bullshit. His obsession with crypto nonsense and shitcoins has been the slow downfall of GameStop, but he just keeps pursuing this nonsense as a business model. Under him, GameStop has been the poster child for "Elon Musk meets r/memes meets NFT bros" and it's fucking asinine.
At this point, I think it's pretty agreeable that GameStop should just die at this point, because clearly it's beyond saving as long as they keep this bullshit up, and as long as they have Ryan Cohen running things. If, in the very unlikely event that GameStop is still around in 10 years (becoming less and less likely with each passing second), I predict that they'll take another crack at NFTs and it'll ultimately be the final nail in the coffin. Either that, or GameStop will somehow be around until the end of time despite literally no profit, and against all logic of the universe, like a cockroach in the blast zone of a nuke with Trump's face on it.
Well, now that I've yapped for an entire blog post, I should probably set you free before the hostage negotiator gets tired and sends the snipers to make my head contents open-source.