Robin Hood society inundated as thousands confuse it with GameStop investment app

A society dedicated to the literary figure of Robin Hood has been inundated with new followers who mistook it for the amateur stock trading platform Robinhood.

The World Wide Robin Hood Society gained 36,000 followers on Twitter after the similarly-named app hit the headlines, having begun with just 400.

The society, which works to promote the famous outlaw and his connection to Nottinghamshire, posted:

“Lovely to have all these new followers … can we just check that you know you’re following the World Wide Robin Hood Society in Nottignham and not the Robin Hood App … if so … a big welcome from Sherwood.”

The tweet only helped the society’s newfound popularity surge even more: it was liked more than 300,000 times and described as the “funniest thing to come out of this GameStop rollercoaster”.

Robinhood the app shot to notoriety after restricting users’ ability to purchase stocks in companies like GameStop and AMC following a surge in their value brought on by the efforts of a group of amateur investors coordinating on Reddit.

It later promised to resume limited trading in these stocks, although not before a class action lawsuit was filed against the company for allegedly attempting “to manipulate the market for the benefit of people and financial institutions”. Robinhood says that restricting trading was necessary to comply with government rules for broker dealers. 

The Robin Hood Society isn’t the only one to have found themselves receiving unwarranted attention on the back of this controversy. 

A New York-based charity named Robin Hood aimed at tackling poverty tweeted:

“Robin Hood is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. We are not affiliated with any for-profit businesses that use a similar name.”

The Robin Hood Society responded “hope your day is going as well as ours”. 

Meanwhile, writer Zoah Hedges-Stocks tweeted:

“This is not a finance account. I do not have any trading advice. Hedges-Stocks is my surname.”

Dr Vyom Gamestop responded: “I know how you feel.”

The whole saga was probably best summed up by Twitter user Cynthia Miller who wrote: this has “big Four Seasons Landscaping energy”. 

MORE: The GameStop saga shows taking down capitalism is possible – or at least messing it up for a while is