The main driver of this trade on WSB is a user “deepfuckingvalues”. As of September 2019 they were posting GME holdings of 1,000 Jan 21 calls at $8, a position they built up since June 2019. [1]
The user then posted monthly updates ever since.
By May 2020 they had 2,500 call option contracts and had a net loss of $10k. By August 2020 they had lost $60k on $145k. Then it all started turning around.
They were an activist investor that actively rallied the Board to do buybacks and pushed overall interest in a GME turnaround.
As usual, by the time the mass media picks up on something it looks to the outside world like something that just magically happened like a rocketship taking off in just the last week.
In reality this was over a year in the making by a devoted user of WSB who gained a following over many months of persistence in the face of mounting losses. It was in fact the perfect WSB story. Initially every comment is begging them to sell, and then mocking their losses, and then reveling in their pain... and still they held and posted YOLO month after month.
As of their last update on the 26th their account value is $23mm.