Meme-Stock Traders Thrilled at Outrage Over American Eagle Ads Starring Sydney Sweeney
Fresh off selling a limited-edition soap that contained a dose of fashion brand American Eagle. The new collection includes the “Sydney Jean,” produced in collaboration with the actress. It features a butterfly motif that represents domestic violence awareness, and 100 percent of the product’s purchase price goes to a crisis hotline.
If you weren’t aware of that bit of philanthropy, it’s probably because reactions to the new ads were entirely focused on their political resonance, not the clothes. To some on the right, the casting of a blonde, blue-eyed, buxom celebrity in jeans commercials signaled the death of “woke” advertising and a return to the conventional wisdom of old Madison Avenue. Some liberals and leftists, meanwhile, were perturbed by the scripted lines Sweeney utters in fascism in Trump‘s America — a wink to Sweeney’s correspondence to an Aryan archetype.
One group heard both of those responses to the viral ads and detected an opportunity. That would be the meme-stock investors, traders with Robin Hood accounts who buy into brands not based on economic outlook, but vibes. Their most famous exploit was the sex appeal factored into their investment.) The stock rose about 25 percent on July 23, the day the campaign debuted.
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Since then, shares have dipped a bit, yet the meme-stock crowd still appears to believe that they can juice the outrage (and the corresponding conservative mockery of this backlash) to make good on their speculation. “The Sydney Sweeney / American Eagle $AEO backlash by those taking issue with the ad is causing the Streisand Effect of amplifying the marketing campaign for free,” claimed the financial commentator @ParrotCapital in an X $AEO as people recognize how stupid these people are and buy shit to distance themselves from the stupidity,” he declared. One X user shared a similar TikTok of a woman calling the commercial “white supremacy propaganda,” saying it had persuaded him to buy stock.
Others tried to look for actual evidence that the Gen Z Sweeney would boost sales among her generation, which is a among them — who rolled their eyes at the outcry from anti-chart of the rising $AEO stock price.
The overall effect so far appears to invert a trend from 2023, when several brands, beginning with Glenn Beck did so on his show, saying that the new campaign was “recognizing the American man again,” insofar as Sweeney is “on a lot of people’s ‘I Wish I Had That Gal’ list.”
Whether the genes/jeans concept was just a case of accidental insensitivity, a deliberate provocation in a charged political climate, or something more nefarious, there’s no denying that it got massive attention by cutting through the digital noise, and that was surely by design. (The company, however, did not respond to a request for comment.) The question is how long the controversy can last after the first week of takes — and it won’t be a surprise if the meme-stock investors look to keep stirring the pot in hopes of a tidy profit. Of course, some of them are simply in it for spite. As a r/wallstreetbets redditor put it in a recent thread on $AEO’s potential, “I just like to piss off fucking woke people.” In this economy, that’s apparently what passes for financial advice.
