{"id":35032,"date":"2025-07-30T19:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/35032\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T19:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:07:08","slug":"meme-stock-investors-bet-on-sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/35032\/","title":{"rendered":"Meme-Stock Investors Bet on Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFresh off of selling a limited-edition soap that contained a dose of her actual bathwater<\/a>, Sydney Sweeney<\/a> took on a starring role in a denim campaign for fashion<\/a> brand American Eagle. The new collection includes the \u201cSydney Jean,\u201d produced in collaboration with the actress. It features a butterfly motif that represents domestic violence awareness, and 100 percent of the purchase price of the product goes to a crisis hotline.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you weren\u2019t aware of that bit of philanthropy, it\u2019s 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 \u201cwoke\u201d 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 one of the spots<\/a>,as she lounges in her denim: \u201cGenes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,\u201d she says. \u201cMy jeans are blue.\u201d The tagline: \u201cSydney Sweeney has great jeans.\u201d The curious pun read to critics as a dog whistle for white supremacy<\/a>, eugenics<\/a>, and fascism<\/a> in Trump<\/a>\u2018s America \u2014 a wink to Sweeney\u2019s correspondence to an Aryan archetype.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne group heard both of those responses to the viral ads and detected an opportunity. That would be the meme-stock investors, traders with Robinhood accounts who buy into brands not based on economic outlook, but vibes. Their most famous exploit was the short squeeze<\/a> of stock in the video game retailer GameStop in January 2021, though they have also tried to drive up the price of companies including AMC and BlackBerry, occasionally pulling off significant rallies<\/a>. As it happens, they\u2019ve successfully pumped<\/a> several struggling stocks in the past week, including Krispy Kreme and Kohl\u2019s, but saw a volatile cycle of gains and losses typical for this collective market mania. To the meme-stock community, the polarizing reaction to Sweeney\u2019s ads was a signal to also invest in American Eagle, since it meant that \u2014 good or bad \u2014 people were talking about the chain. (Although a few traders on Reddit\u2019s r\/wallstreetbets confirmed that Sweeney\u2019s sex appeal<\/a> factored into their investment.) The stock rose about 25 percent on Wednesday last week, the day the campaign debuted.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tSince 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. \u201cThe 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,\u201d claimed the financial commentator @ParrotCapital in an X post<\/a> on Monday, sharing screenshots of corporate executives and communications specialists condemning the Sweeney clips as offensive. (The Streisand Effect is a term describing how attempts to neutralize unfavorable internet content actually make it more visible.) Elsewhere on the platform, an investor posted a graph showing American Eagle\u2019s rising stock price, writing, \u201cCan more liberal woman please post their thoughts on $AEO<\/a>\u2026. We are almost there!\u201d On Tuesday, an investment YouTuber shared a video of a woman exhorting viewers to boycott the brand. \u201cBullish $AEO<\/a> as people recognize how stupid these people are and buy shit to distance themselves from the stupidity,\u201d he declared. One X user shared a similar TikTok of a woman calling the commercial \u201cwhite supremacy propaganda,\u201d saying it had convinced him to buy stock.<\/p>\n

\n\tOthers tried to look for actual evidence that the Gen Z Sweeney would boost sales among her generation, which is a key customer base<\/a> for American Eagle. They weren\u2019t disappointed. Some new items sold out within 48 hours of the ads hitting social media, with website traffic doubling in the same period. In-store foot traffic was up nine percent, according Solink and Shopify analytics tools.<\/a> Even so, the core of meme-stock strategy is a reliance on reading the cultural crosswinds to predict the natural outcome of the zeitgeist. On that front, traders seemed to side with right-wing figures \u2014 Sen. Ted Cruz<\/a> among them<\/a> \u2014 who rolled their eyes at the outcry from anti-MAGA<\/a> folks. Indeed, in the short but wild history of meme-driven market forces, this may be the first stock craze specifically predicated on \u201ctriggering the libs,\u201d riding a wave of resentment from ideological opponents. \u201cFree advertising by liberals ALWAYS works!\u201d wrote a Trump supporter in an X post on Tuesday, sharing a chart<\/a> of the rising $AEO stock price.<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe overall effect so far appears to invert a trend from 2023, when several brands, beginning with Bud Light<\/a>, were targeted for boycotts by conservatives<\/a> for marketing that celebrated racial and LGBTQ<\/a> diversity. A number of influencers also favorably compared the Sweeney-led campaign to inclusive American Eagle materials from years past that featured models with a broad range of body types. Radio host Glenn Beck<\/a> did so on his show, saying<\/a> that the new campaign was \u201crecognizing the American man again,\u201d insofar as Sweeney is \u201con a lot of people\u2019s \u2018I Wish I Had That Gal\u2019 list.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhether the genes\/jeans concept was just a case of accidental insensitivity, a deliberate provocation in a charged political climate, or something more nefarious, there\u2019s 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 \u2014 and it won\u2019t 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<\/a> on $AEO\u2019s potential, \u201cI just like to piss off fucking woke people.\u201d In this economy, that\u2019s apparently what passes for financial advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh off of selling a limited-edition soap that contained a dose of her actual bathwater, Sydney Sweeney took…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,1187,25474,24253,8917,5476],"class_list":{"0":"post-35032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-fashion","13":"tag-maga","14":"tag-meme-stocks","15":"tag-sydney-sweeney","16":"tag-twitter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}