Have you seen People of Wal-Mart? What do you think?

Walmart looks depressing.

Anywhere there’s cheap stuff and bargains (like costco or target) there’s bound to be freaks roaming about.

On first glance it is entertainment but I wonder if it does not cross a line.

Yes- they are in public.
Yes- they are not within social norms.

But should people really have a right to post another persons photo on the internet without permission?

Would these same people who post want themselves or their family to be photographed and placed on a site set up so that the world can laugh at them?

How do you think the person being photographed would feel if they saw the photograph being taken? Would they feel their privacy violated or would they perhaps come after the photographer with violence? How do you think the people would feel seeing themselves on the internet with judgmental comments about them.

It seems juvenile and hurtful to me.

They are different but does that give us the right to be the schoolyard bully and point out their flaws to the world?

Humiliate people, in other words the same every site on the internet does.

Surely some of those folks know about the site , and dress or do stupid things just to get on it . Funny as f*&% tho and thanks for the new site to watch

I don’t like it. It’s mean spirited to ridicule people.

I love it. HAHAHAHA def my kind of site.

http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2007/09/great-olan-mills-photos.html hehehehe here’s another one

it’s not so much mocking people as pointing out obvious fact.

the few times ive been stuck going into a Walmart, you inevitably see someone like in those pictures.

Who the hell wears fuzzy slippers and pink stretchy pants ever, let alone in public?!

@eponymoushipster Are you Curious George from the link ?

Hilarious.

I just think it’s interesting to see all the different people. I remember seeing the most interesting couple at a Rayley’s in South Lake Tahoe. Wish I could’ve taken a picture of them. I don’t see how it would do any damage to Wal Mart; so almost anyone shops there, who gives?

And I don’t really know how I feel about the destruction of “Main Street USA”. I don’t know much about Wal Mart, but in terms of Amazon, I just think that local stores can lower prices too. I have a friend who doesn’t have much money, but he wanted a nice digital camera. He had enough money to buy a $400 camera. Well, the camera he wanted was $500 at the local camera store. He searched the same camera on Amazon and it was $350. The local camera store was selling it for full retail. I can understand why people turn to Amazon, not to mention they have everything. Convenience + lower prices = sale.

Ok… maybe the woman wearing the swastika sweatshirt needs to be pointed out as ignorant.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic I’ll certainly agree with you there.

This site does not do damage to walmart – it caters to their target audience which is both
the people in the pics who likely have a mentality that makes them feel famous to know they’re famous on the net (if they wear those things I can’t see their mentality being much higher) & the other half of the target customer the Jerry Springer voyeur type.

@eponymoushipster What, you don’t like my outfit? ;)

I think its mean, but I also think its funny. These people go out in public like this so they know they’re going to be seen. Its not like anyone is violating their privacy by making their picture even more public since they were taken in a public place. At the same time, I see where it would be humiliating to have something like this pointing out how strange/inappropriate you are. The ones I like are those where you can’t clearly see the person’s face and the vehicle pictures.

It’s not like these people wouldn’t exist if Wal Mart wasn’t around. This site is exploiting a small minority of people. I shop at Wal Mart because I am a mother of three that needs to shop at the store with the lowest prices. I rarely witness shoppers that look like this.

i am Furious George.

They could put a Wal Mart on 5th avenue in midtown Manhattan and those people would still show up.

I think that there are a lot of people who are down on Wal-Mart… because they have options. Where I’m from, its “get it at Wal-Mart or do without.” I was reading a recipe last night which told me to go down to my local Asian grocery and pick up ingredients and I had to think about how very far away the closest Asian grocery is. When you live in a place where even the Wal-Mart is half an hour away, you have more of an appreciation for the store and the fact that they do have most everything in once place… Especially when those things can’t be found anywhere else.

Naturally, the weirdos come out to Wal-Mart… But you probably see them more and in greater concentration in places where there are a lack of options than you would in other places where they have several places to shop and don’t have to clump up.

I have this theory that the doors to Wal-Mart are just a magic portal that beam you to one mothership Wal-Mart somewhere. I marvel always at the fact that there seem to be the same people in Wal-Mart, no matter where in the country I go.

I think the site is a bit mean-spirited, in that it makes fun of people.. however, I basically have the same thoughts whenever I shop at Wal-Mart, so I can’t claim a high moral ground on this one.

@AlenaD I’ve been known to follow people around for a while if I find them particularly entertaining. Not for long and only if I have time on my hands… But I completely understand this site.

It’s funny to me. I go to Wal-Mart a couple times a week and see people like that all the time.

Am I the only American who has never been to Wal-mart?

@teh_kvlt_liberal Possibly. Then again, there are places where there are no WalMarts, like (I think) NYC.

Yeah I live in NYC

Me too.

Big old cities like NYC and SF don’t tend to have big discount stores like Target, Kmart, and Wal-Mart because there’s no room for them and such. I go to Target, but I have to go to Daly City, which is south of San Francisco. There’s none of those stores in San Francisco.

@DominicX in NYC, part of it has to do with the mob and unions.

The “People of Wal Mart” that I see when I shop there once or twice a week are nurses, doctors, teachers, students, mom and dads, dentists, lawyers, policemen, office workers and everyone else that is trying to save a little money.

I’m tempted to go to my local Wal Mart right now with a camera. I guarantee there might be one person that looks like some of these people from the site, but that’s it.

I actually took my camera to Walmart yesterday after seeing the site. There were plenty of people to choose from, for sure, but I forgot all about it because I was caught up in my shopping.

The site is funny, but I would DIE if I ever found myself on there. Same goes with cakewrecks, awful family photos and those emails that circulate around. Wouldn’t you hate to see yourself or something you made on any of those? Then again, I snicker to myself when I see them in person so other than a considerably wider audience there isn’t a lot of difference.

I have to admit that I laughed. It is mean, though. I would feel a lot better about it if they blurred people’s faces (though that would obscure the point of some of the pictures altogether).

I shop at Wal-Mart semi-regularly, and I do see people like that… most often when I go late at night.

Our local WalMart is where I go when I need ideas for playing either a street person or a person with mental illness. They tend to hang out in the McDonald’s that is on site, so you can relax with a bottled water and let your mind soak up their odd traits.

Certainly some odd folks show up at WalMart, but what those pictures do not, and cannot, address is the smell.

i think it’s funny, but some of them are pretty mean. besides, i could find people who look that silly in a million places besides wal mart.
and i think some of those people look awesome. like this guy. and
him too.

Everybody is talking about it, so I guess the word is getting around. Only a really stupid person would actually believe that Wal Mart is the only place you would see these people.

I hadn’t heard of it it until now. Sort of a lolcustomerz, it seems. I’d say most of those folks were not averse to being noticed, but this was probably not what they had in mind.

Actually, I have seen a lot of similar-looking folks on the streets of New York City.

@Jeruba LOL at “lolcustomerz!”

@DominicX the reason big cities don’t have walmarts isn’t because of space – we big city folks build higher buildings if we really want something.

The reason is because in big cities the erosion, increase in traffic, tax cost due to increased repair on roads & such, increase in crime, increased need for resources to be shared such as police/fire services & more – not to mention that many are opposed to some of the business practices regarding walmarts treatment of particular ethnic groups of workers & their manipulation of people in their acquiring of property to build on & even further to the extent that they often fight for land that is sacred space to particular indigenous groups where their Indian mounds & grave sites etc are housed. Walmart quite often behaves like a big bully & us city folks don’t like inviting more of that than we already deal with in life. To us city people quite often the image that comes to mind when one is threatening to come in is of those “people of walmart” coming into our neighborhoods using up our resources & increasing our taxes just to leave with their aquanet hairspray, half shirts, & spandex jogging suits & bulk loads of toilet paper on hand while we are left holding the bag. Just sayin’ – small town walmarts & city walmarts are two different animals.

@Jenniehowell Wow. I would hope that you are not as apt to describe and stereotype other groups and races as you are all of us poor dumb rubes that frequent Wal-Mart.

I’m happy for you, that your level of income is such that you can look down on and make fun of folks who utilize the discount chains such as Wal-Mart, just to make ends meet.

Good for you.

@jonsblond what, you buy your aquanet hair spray at Wal-Mart?

@YARNLADY Not only that, but also my sexy spandex jogging suits. I’ve got suits in every color available!

@jonsblond nearly everything I buy these days comes from there. We recently got a brand new portable play yard for only $35.00 for my youngest grandson.

I’m not going to lie. I do find some of the pictures on this web site humorous but at the same time, I see many of the photographs as exploitative and unflattering also. I really don’t interpret this site to be a way of getting back at Wal-Mart but there is the potential of humiliating some people due to the content of the photos. That in itself is mean spirited, in my opinion, even if it wasn’t the original intention of the website.

@Bluefreedom GA

@jonsblond sorry – I must admit there are groups which I lump in stereotypical ways. As far as my income I struggle to live paycheck to paycheck eating beans & rice but the end cost to citizens fir supporting walmart is much more than paying a bit extra for certain things & eating beans & rice instead of chicken or whatever. Though I’m better off than some I’m still on the low end living check to check.
It is true though that city people tend to fight walmarts coming in due to the cost & also in part the “people of walmart” – I for one have no problem with those folks living right next door to me (I’m originally from OKLA so for some time in my life they did & I still see them at family reunions) the problem isn’t the people it’s the fact that they come to the neighborhood & drive ip costs then leave with their bulk goods while the neighborhood folks pay for it via taxes etc.

Scary

@Jenniehowell I’m wondering about the neighborhood folks paying the taxes for outsiders. Here in our “new” city, we are glad to have outsiders come and shop here, because the sales tax they pay on their purchases stays here in our community. They are the main source of funding for our Police, roads, and public works.

@YARNLADY GA! Our community is happy to have anyone that is willing to purchase items here. The community benefits from these aquanet, bulk toilet paper buying lowlifes.

@Jenniehowell People do not fight Wal-Marts because of the “people of Wal-Mart.” They fight them for a variety of reasons, but not that one. You’re prejudices are showing all too clearly. Many of the “people of Wal-Mart” are those who are already in the communities, but can occasionally be found in that one central place. You can also find them in gas stations, grocery stores, and a variety of places.

If there weren’t any Wal-Marts, the “people of Wal-Mart” would be at the mall or at the dollar stores. Wal-Mart doesn’t attract them into town the way lights attract bugs. They are already there.

What Wal-Mart does, actually, is wipe out mom and pop stores and wipe out Main Street. Instead of going in to town, or going to the little grocery that’s been there forever, folks go to the giant “everything under one roof for a low price” mecca that is Wal-Mart. The city and/or the county still gets all the sales tax, but the older, less efficient commercial center of town dies out.

Personally I avoid Wal-Mart because our local one smells funny, has tiny aisles so you have to squeeze through the goods to find what you want, and you can never find an “associate” who knows where anything is when you can’t find it yourself. Also, Wal-Mart no longer carries much of anything made in the USA.

@YARNLADY the taxes on items is payed by the people who go to walmart but the taxes on the roadways & for increased fire/police work, increased traffic systems etc.
Are much higher than taxes on purchased items. That is why
generally if you attend zoning meetings during the approval stage for a new walmart you
find that they generally only are approved after an agreed upon amount is payed by walmart into these things like the fire dept.

@avvooooooo I agree that I have prejudices & they are quite obvious. I don’t try to hide them & I do try to work on them so I can’t say much more about that. It has been difficult to deal with family & acquaintances who have been filled with hate & who tend to fit into the “people of walmart” stereotype quite well & for a good ten years I’ve been working my way out of being just as bigoted as they are just in my own different categories. I’m not unaware of my problems but thanks fir your help as I am working to make myself better. I figure instead of “if you can’t beat em join em” as a motto I’ll go for “you
have to be the change you wish to see”

As far as the reasons city people fight walmart I
did mention much more than a biased & colorful description of the “people of walmart” as a reason. See above for the partial list where at the end I added my stereotype for the finale.

The people featured on the site are the inevitable result when one makes the incorrect assumption that taste is subjective. They’ve properly earned their ridicule.

I have to quibble a little bit with the whole “city Wal-Mart” idea. It’s true that space is limited, which is why you rarely see a big box store actually in a city. However, from my experience (that of the Bay Area), there are so many choices in retail stores in a city that there isn’t much need for a place like Wal-Mart. Dollar stores, Costco, etc. Many choices to shop for the best price.

I honestly think it has more to do with this than the fact that people are offended by Wal-Mart’s practices. You’ll find all kind of corporate-owned shops and restaurants in a city, and no one seems to balk at them. I think Wal-Mart sucks from the standpoint of how they do business and how they treat employees, but most corporations are not community-friendly because they’re so impersonal and the main goal is to make money. My point is that if people were opposed to the corporate business structure in general, you would not see Starbucks, Jamba Juice, Olive Garden, or whatever populating cities like they are now.

We recently fended off an attempt by Wal-Mart to put a Super Wal-Mart at the entrance to our neighborhood. The primary reason was not the people it might attract, or even the increase in traffic, but the fact that it would be a 24-hour store, with security lighting, large odiferous dumpsters, and large trucks coming and going all times of the day and night. Wal-Mart offered only a 10-foot cement block wall and a 50-foot buffer to protect homeowners from noise and light.

The thing is that there are parcels of land nearby that would allow the store to be built without impinging on a residential neighborhood, but Wal-Mart didn’t want to build there. They wanted to build in our back yards. If successful, BTW, that means our city would have had a Wal-Mart every 3.5 miles throughout the city (which is a long and narrow city, 7 miles wide and 40 miles long). That is more Wal-Mart than any city needs.

In addition, of course, many of us do have very real problems with the way in which Wal-Mart does business. I truly believe that Sam Walton is turning over in his grave at how Wal-Mart has changed to support jobs in China instead of North America. I also know a number of folks who have worked at Wal-Mart, and many of their supervisory practices are very, very nasty.

One reason why I suspect Wal-Mart is not as commonly found in cities, but more often in towns, suburbs and rural areas, is that their stores take up an enormous amount of land, up to several hundred acres for the Super stores and their parking. That large a parcel of land in a city is generally either unavailable, or so expensive that the store would take forever to pay for itself.