Over a quarter of American adults say they bought GameStop (GME) or another viral stock in January, according to a new survey from Yahoo Finance and The Harris Poll.

The GameStop frenzy, kicked off by the subreddit r/wallstreetbets, struck a chord with many retail investors and individuals who resented what they viewed as the Wall Street establishment, a few hedge funds that had shorted the stock, betting it would go down.

The survey data speaks to the scope of the tug of war between short sellers and retail investors flooding the market with money.

Despite recent losses, GameStop is up more than 150% year-to-date. It’s now worth around 10% of its all-time intraday high, when it was trading at $483 for a moment at the end of January.

Using a representative sample size of 1,089 Americans, the survey found that GameStop wasn’t actually the most popular stock from a “how many people bought it” standpoint. While 9% of Americans bought at least one share of GameStop, according to the poll, 10% bought a share of AMC Entertainment (AMC). Other popular stocks of the Reddit frenzy included BlackBerry (BB) at 6%, Nokia (NOK) at 5%, Castor Maritime (CTRM) at 4%, and about a dozen other "meme stocks."

The median investment, according to the survey, was $150. Around 7% of people who bought viral stocks invested between $1,001 and $5,000 and 8% invested over $5,000. This drove up the average investment to $8,533.

All in, 28% of Americans say they bought one of these viral stocks, the Yahoo Finance-Harris Poll found. In the Conference Board's quarterly U.S. Consumer Dynamics Report, surveys found that more people are buying stocks because they have fewer spending options due to COVID-19. Boredom and a higher savings rate may have played a significant role as well.

In relative terms, 35% of people who bought one of these stocks bought AMC, 33% bought GameStop, and 23% bought BlackBerry.

The Yahoo Finance-Harris Poll survey found the demographic breakdown of the GameStop mania is what most people might expect: the group that put the most money in was men between 18 to 44, at 40%. Only 17% of women in this age range invested in these stocks.

In terms of the amounts, just over half of investments were under $250 in size, but 15% of the people who invested this past January invested $1,000 or more.

Around half of buyers sold in January and a third planned to hold for less than a month. (The survey was conducted between Feb. 2 and 5.)

All thanks to the internet

The survey shed light on how exactly all these investors discovered a fairly back-water stock: the news, trading forums, and social media had a three-way tie, showing the diverse paths investors had to the stock.