zerohedge.com has some good articles on this full of links. Apparently there is a WallStreetBets topic on Reddit which was reportedly taken down and put back up (!). From what I can tell, the strategy was used by a company in Japan ("soft" something) per zerohedge articles many weeks ago. Then the "little guys" appear to have adopted the same idea by pooling their efforts using social media forums, so many little guys could play like one big guy. The idea is simple: buy out of the money calls. Those usually expire worthless if the stock price ends up below the call strike price. Those who sell the calls to the call buyers have to protect themselves and one way to do this is to buy shares of the underlying stock as they pocket the income from the call sales. So all is well if the stock price does not rise much: the call sellers get the money and call buyers lose all their money. EXCEPT, the call buyer group can also chime in and buy some of the shares, too. This double whammy of share buying increases the call price, creating a positive feedback loop where the call sellers feel they have to hedge further by buying even more of the underlying shares. Meanwhile, enter stage left, existing shorts of those shares. They loose big-time and have to buy back the shares at ever rising prices. Now we have three (3) sets of buyers of the shares and their price sky-rockets up (Think Tesla, for example). Summary: if the call buyers choose stocks with high-short interest, they have a pool of potential buyers (the shorts) to step in for them, and the call buyers can just sit back and sell their calls as their price increases. Get it?