“But anything from “day traders” endangering hedge fund machinations and trade gets immediately halted.”
The kiddies trading GME dont know how to trade. Probably most of them just place market orders that run through all the sitting orders, creating order book imbalances that the market makers step back from, hence the trading halts.
These kiddies have done their due diligence. They have exposed the shenanigans of the hedge funds and market makers. They have stuck by a company that actually has a good chance to transform themselves from brick and mortar to a modern internet sales business model. They believe that Ryan Cohen can due for GameStop what he did for Chewy. Think about who would have thought you could start up an internet pet supply company when a half dozen brick and mortar stores have online presence and Amazon sells the same stuff? But Ryan Cohen found a way and was richly rewarded for it.
The "kiddies" as you term them value the company as they would a start up. They believe that Ryan Cohen will successfully navigate the current crypto-technology space and put together a market place for games and other products that will become the dominant NFT marketplace.
So the "kiddies" have a compelling business model to invest in. They also have the fact that hedge funds tried to "cellar box" GME. This led to the realization that the hedge funds have been naked shorting this stock. They have discovered evidence that shows the current short interest is not a real indicator of how much a company is shorted. The hedge funds have been able to hide the naked shorts on the dark pools.
Finally, I have invested in GME. I'm far from being a "kiddie". I have DRS some of those shares as well. This is not investment advice, I just happen to like the stock.
One of these "kiddies" has curated a library of 232 Due Diligence type articles put together by the people that frequent the reddit subgroups. you can find it here: https://fliphtml5.com/bookcase/kosyg