If, by some minuscule chance you don’t know, is a website dedicated primarily to photos of bizarrely dressed people seen in Walmart. The most recent thread I found was 2019 and I didn’t want to resurrect that zombie.
I just want to speculate what motivations the subjects have for putting themselves out there like that. Obviously (to me) most of them have zero fucks to give about other people’s opinion of them.
I’ll leave it here rather than grabbing the easy answers.
A very large percentage of them are probably people with very hard lives who don’t have the energy to care much about other people’s opinion of them. The concept of “people of Walmart” is extreme “punching down” by people with very little empathy.
Oh absolutely. I’ve lived in poverty before. That’s what it looks like.
I grew up as literal trailer trash, but this was before Walmart existed in my state. We learned pride and self-respect, despite collecting food stamps and welfare checks.
Standards regarding hygiene and dress have declined along with society. I’ve noticed it at places other than Walmart. More and more people simply don’t care anymore for any number of reasons.
I’ve seen the clickbait ads for those things, but have never looked. I agree - I bet someone could do a similar photo site with people at airports. I don’t fly that much, but I’ve seen people wearing things I wouldn’t wear in my front yard, let alone on a plane.
I used to wring my hands about this as well. There’s certainly some degree of making fun of poor people, but there are plenty of individuals who show up on People of Walmart for reasons that have nothing to do with poverty. If you see a woman wearing a Giraffe onsie that outfit is a deliberate decision on her part. A person wearing an animal tail and sporting animal ears on their head has made a deliberate choice about how to present themselves in public and this isn’t about poverty. An adult woman wearing a leash being held by a man is another example of a deliberate choices people have made about how they present themselves in public.
At the time People of Walmart became popular, approximately 100,000,000 Americans visited their store every week. I imagine Walmart’s customers range from the very poor to even the very wealthy.
In Portland, they’re just called “that guy/woman”. I used to see young people walk by our house in pajamas and bathrobes. These weren’t poor people, just people who don’t give a fuck.
I’ve told my wife if she ever catches me going to the store in my PJ pants to just put me out of my misery, as I’ve given up on life.
That said, it seems to be a conscious fashion choice these days (I don’t know about the bath robes, though. That I have not seen.) And, to be honest, I don’t have any good reason why I should be taken aback by it. Around here I’ve seen people out and about in PJs for about twenty years now, so I’ve gotten inured to it, I guess.
I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time at Walmart and airports.
By far I’ve seen much weirder clothing at airports.
Like this for example. Most of the people I have seen at Walmart when I’ve shopped are just people who look normal.
Yeah, the Walmart closest my house here in Chicago (the Walmart is technically just outside the border) looks like a giant chaotic mess to me. To be honest, I don’t even notice what people are wearing, it’s more like what they’re doing or not doing. If I drive over to the next shopping area where there’s a Target, it’s a night-and-day difference. The Target is clean, ordered, relatively quiet. It’s like the difference between eating in at a Popeye’s vs a Chick Fil A, or a Waffle House and an, I dunno, Cracker Barrel.
That said, the Walmarts I’ve been to in the Southwest, like Phoenix area generally, have all been really nice and nothing like the bedlam here.
I live here in Arkansas, home to Walmart, and going to the store can be a very different experience depending on where you are. If I go to the Walmart in Little Rock near the Chicot Road exit off I-30, it’s a mad house. The parking lot has enough garbage strewn about that it looks like the set of a post apocalyptic zombie movie and the inside of the story is often disarray. But if you go to the Walmart on Chenal Parkway, everything is clean & orderly and the produce is even good.
A couple days before Christmas my coffeepot died. Too late to order one in the midst of Xmas deliveries, so I needed to go buy one.
3-4 miles from here we have a Target across the street from a Wal*Mart. So same catchment area, same clientele geographically speaking. From my direction of approach it made sense to try WM first and Target second.
Jeebus was that an experience. The WM was trashed inside, the floors were dirty, the place was thronged with PJs and crocs chunky 'Murricah, the checkout lines were long, the clientele looked like they’d been up all night then smoked a pack of Camels for breakfast. But they did have a suitable coffeemaker. Looking at the checkout lines I decided to try Target on the theory I could double-back if I really needed to.
Target was clean, sane, busy but not crowded, well-staffed, much nicer looking and dressing customers, and had the exact same coffeemaker for $5 less. Which is a big difference in a $25 item.
There is evidently something about the mindset that finds WM attractive. I’m not sure if WM selects their customers or their customers select WM. But it’s a match made of scruffy and heavily decorated with attitude.
None of the Walmarts near me are anything like that description.
I think Walmart runs the full spectrum based on location of being clean with people who just look like average modern day Americans that wouldn’t stand out anywhere, to being a filthy hole with customers that are dressed like extras from Idiocracy.
There are three WalMarts in my general vicinity. The one on the other side of town I never go to because the layout is different and I can never find anything.
The one closest to home, a couple of miles, is the one with screaming kids (and adults) and the one where nobody puts their carts in the corral. The clientele is a mix of races and socioeconomic levels.
The third one, about 10 miles away, is quiet (rarely any kids), well-stocked and you never find errant carts in the parking lot. The clientele is overwhelmingly white.
Guess which one had a shooting one Saturday afternoon in the middle of the store? You’re right. #3.
I rarely see anyone dressed in some bizarre way in any of the stores. If someone is dressed that way, they are probably making a statement, rather than it being the result of their status.
@Atamasama two above …
I agree completely that zip code and resultant demographics matter hugely. As does urban, suburban, rural. This is in a pretty nice suburban zip code.
But the eye-opener for me was the comparison to Target is across the street. You could see the front door of one store from the front door of the other but for traffic on the boulevard between them and some trees. I’d expect the same people buying the same goods living in the same nearby neighborhoods shopping at both. That is not what it looked like to me.
There’s a whole “I’ll costume up and see if I get noticed or put on a website!” Cause they can. Cause they’re bored. Cause their other regular clothes are in the laundry. Those are not all that common.
I’ve seen lots of people from worksites running in to pick more drop sheets or paint.
I’ve seen moms with 5 kids and they haven’t showered in two days, but they’re out of diapers and Milk.
I’ve seen elders who obviously don’t care if they have plaids and paisley on together.
Then the kids. The teenagers who are out to hang out for funzies, in the Walmart.
Those are all common.
You miss my point. That’s not what I meant by “location”. I meant the specific store. Clearly that store wasn’t being managed well.
Gotcha. Thank you. I’m having an obtuse day.
It’s okay, I wasn’t particularly clear either.