What Americans Think About The GameStop Investors

America loves a good underdog story — and that’s exactly what it got in late January, when a plucky band of netizens on Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets message board decided to stick it to Wall Street by collectively driving up the price of GameStop, a video-game retailer best known for its brick-and-mortar stores.

The populist stock market uprising, with droves of at-home investors beating hedge funds at their own game, is only part of the story, though. While many of these novice investors did make large sums of money — at its...