John Mackey himself used a burner account on Yahoo finance message boards to talk trash on Wild Oats to try and lower their stock price before Whole Foods acquired them in the mid 00s.

chron.com/business/article/Whole-Foods-CEO-used-fake-name-to-knock-rival-1830788.php

In hindsight, that didn't get nearly as much publicity as it should have.

Happened a lot when Shkreli was still mod

The Shrkeli, "former hedge fund manager and convicted felon"?

The same.

Matter of time? It's definitely been happening since the beginning of this thing. GME isn't the only stock talked about on WSB.