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I was not personally involved with the short sell gaming that went on with AMC (and possibly is still going on), but I know someone who is and this is how it was explained to me:

“When you sell short you borrow stocks from a broker for a fee. You have to return those stocks within a month. You take those stocks that you BORROWED AND SELL THEM ON THE MARKET. Let’s say they sell for $100 per share. You are BETTING THAT IN THAT MONTH they will drop to $50 per share. YOU BUY THEM BACK AT $50 per share and keep the $50 profit, RETURN THE STOCKS TO THE BROKER MINUS A FEE... You made $40 (just an estimate) per share.
The problem is the brokerage house only pretends to have the stock in inventory to “loan” the short seller. It is fraud all the way around. Normally, the way it works is that hedge fund managers make billions of dollars by gaming the system.

But this time, some very smart trolls gamed the system themselves and hedge fund managers (as in the AMC situation) lost billions. You might say they GameStopped the system.

Hundreds of them bought AMC stock while the price was at its lowest, then held on to it.In the big scheme of things, these were little guys, but when they banded together they caused a huge impact, and the ones who bought in early (like my friend) even made some money from it.

I don’t know if it is still going on but if you are interested I can ask my friend for you.