A study published by Savvas Zannettou et al. on online anti-Semitism recorded the prevalence of the Happy Merchant and its variations on 4chan's &lt;a href="/pol/"&gt;/pol/&lt;/a&gt; board and Gab. The study found that usage of the Happy Merchant on /pol/ remained largely consistent (with a peak during the US airstrike on Syria in April 2017), while usage of the meme on Gab increased after the Charlottesville rally in August 2017. It was also determined that /pol/ influences the spread of Happy Merchant to other web platforms such as Twitter and Reddit.