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At the risk of sounding dumb; why not? As long as you put money in you're willing to lose it seems it's better to take a calculated risk on a stock or cryptocurrency in hopes for a return. When you're poor and can make as much as a paycheck in a single lucky trade it almost doesn't make sense not to try.

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When you're poor and inexperienced, you probably don't have much of a basis of estimating the risk versus reward of all the potential options you could put that money into. There are a lot of influencers selling courses saying that trading forex, crypto, and meme stocks will make you rich in 10 easy steps, and it's very easy to get mixed up in an echo chamber that's trying to extract money from you instead of helping you grow your money.

It's not calculated risks for the poor though. It's putting their paycheck on hot tips from Wall Street and tech bros who think losing large multiples of a poor person's paycheck is hilarious and ending up struggling to pay rent because it turns out their advice wasn't so good. When you haven't got much capital, the amount of good luck you need in investment to not be poor is enormous, and losing more than you can afford by trying is near certain.

When you're poor, a share in GME is not the sort of money you're willing to lose, and it makes no sense at all to participate in a rich person's subculture that sees losing several times your income as a cause for boasting.

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