If you knew for a fact that steps were going to be taken to tank the stock, i.e.: delist, dilute, deregister, then you had a sure ride to short like crazy and, if there was an uptick, you had shares to cover. Beyond that, you could cooperate in the process by shorting and selling at the same time and build up a massive pile of cash to buy back in low to be ready for the buyout to come.
We are the monkey in the wrench because we bought so many shares that they can't buy back as many shares as they wanted.
And we sit around arguing about the meaning of stakeholder.