- Ryan Cohen's Twitter account is taking on a new persona that's similar to Elon Musk's.
- Cohen, GameStop chairman of the board, has 230,000 Twitter followers, while Musk has 63 million.
- The Chewy cofounder is working to transform GameStop into the Amazon of gaming.
Ryan Cohen's Twitter account is starting to look a lot like Elon Musk's.
The Chewy cofounder and now, more notably, the chairman of the board at GameStop has been posting tweets that are similar in tone to those from the Tesla chief.
Take a look for yourself. On Monday, Cohen tweeted:
If you're not sure what it means, try reading it backwards. It's oddly reminiscent of a raunchy tweet from Musk in response to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, on November 7.
On the subreddit r/Superstonk, about 16,000 people liked a post about Cohen's tweet. And on Twitter, well-known retail traders like Matt Kohrs commented with backwards text too. "Emas," Kohrs said.
Cohen joined Twitter a little over two years ago, and it started slow with infrequent posts mainly of articles about himself. It grew into a gif-heavy page, and in the last month, he's sent out several tweets, like the one above, that retail traders lauded.
Cohen's emerging online persona is somewhat a mix of Musk's and AMC CEO Adam Aron's — both of whom have garnered the attention of the retail-trading crowd with crypto tweets and Twitter polls. Once, Musk even responded to one of Aron's tweets.
Still, Cohen has just 230,000 followers, while Musk, the world's richest man, has about 63 million.
On Oct. 31, Cohen tweeted "MGGA," to which many on Twitter guessed was a twist on former president Donald Trump's slogan meaning "Make GameStop Great Again."
A tweet from November 8 read, "Deciding between two options for my GME shares: HOLD or HODL…" "Hodl" refers to a well-known Reddit investing term that means to hold onto shares. A site called "GME DD," which reports on GameStop for the retail crowd, guessed the tweet was poking fun at Musk, who posted a poll asking his followers whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stake.
GameStop did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment or clarification on Cohen's tweets.
Being the chairman at GameStop has put Cohen in the spotlight among the army of retail traders backing the company. One September post titled "4 things to know about Ryan Cohen" received 10,000 upvotes on the r/Superstonk thread.
Cohen has said he wants to turn the retailer into the Amazon of gaming. Since then, the company has posted jobs relating to blockchain and the metaverse, and is planning on launching a platform for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. Retail traders on Reddit have been hyping up the prospects.
GameStop stock, which was in single digits last year, has soared more than 1,000% this year with the support of an army of retail traders mobilized on Reddit investing threads like Wall Street Bets and Superstonk. Shares traded at $207.63 at 1:28 p.m. in New York.