While the GameStop bubble is starting to burst, the phenomena of retail investors coming together online isn't going away. 

The stock market frenzy around the U.S. electronics company pitted hedge funds against individual investors brought together on social media site Reddit and this seems to be the tip of the iceberg, with stock "activism" spreading to other businesses and asset classes – there have been Reddit-driven spikes in BlackBerry, AMC Entertainment, Bitcoin and the commodity silver. 

The individual investors, called "retail investors," purchased GameStop shares en masse. That pushed up share prices more than 1,000 percent in two weeks and left one particular hedge fund called Melvin Capital with huge losses.

Melvin Capital had been "short selling" GameStop. "Shorting" is a process by which hedge funds borrow shares in a company they believe is failing, sell them immediately, wait for the value to fall, then buy them back – pocketing the difference.

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GameStop shares may have plunged in recent days as traders dumped their stock, but to many of the young investors on Reddit, pushing up the price was a way of punishing the financial establishment for the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

Myron Sakkas is an 18-year-old British university student who bought, then sold, GameStop shares. Referring to the financial establishment post-financial crisis, he says: "None of them got held accountable, none of them. These people on Reddit and so many people in my age group have had their lives largely impacted by the financial crisis of 2008. And so that's what drove the craze."

The trend has raised questions for regulators and online platforms that cater for small investors. One of the biggest platforms is Robinhood, which restricted trading on some shares, including GameStop. It said it was obliged to do that because of market rules, but the move sparked opposition from its users.

The show of force from small investors looks set to have long-term implications. 

Hedge funds have become wary of shorting businesses, or at least admitting doing so. And the unpredictability of a social media-directed investor army may also deter companies from placing their shares in public markets. People power versus "Big Finance" is the latest manifestation of discontent over inequalities in society – and it may have left hedge funds looking for new ways to play their own game.