Only At Walmart Can You Dress Anyway You Want, And Slap Other People's Kids

Author: Dawn Olsen
Published: September 03, 2009 at 12:52 pm
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Save Money - Live Worse, ALWAYS.

Two top stories on CNN right now feature the greatest place to buy the crappiest of crap in crapdom. Don't get me wrong, I am forced to spend my stimulus checks at Walmart too, but I am not happy about it. Over the years, after discovering how sub-par many of the products are and how much of the merchandise comes from China (virtually 90% based on my expert analysis) I have been going to Target more and more. Plus, Target has a better level of customers. Think I am being a snob - read this:

"People of Wal-Mart," a gag started by two 20-something brothers and their buddy to share crazy pictures with their friends, has gone viral. Promoted largely on sites like Digg and Funny or Die — and linked ad nauseam on Facebook and Twitter — the site picked up enough traffic to crash its servers on Wednesday.

"I'm still baffled — I really am," said Andrew Kipple, 23, one of the creators of the site, who said his team was frantically working Wednesday to add enough server space to handle the surge in traffic.

Photos on the site, sent in by viewers all over the United States, frequently feature overweight people wearing tight clothes, bizarre hairstyles (with versions of the short-in-front, long-in-back "mullet" leading the pack) and fashion crimes ranging from furry leg warmers to miniskirts that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.

So what inspired these two brothers to take their keen observation of the cultural phenomenon to the web? Hot messes of course:

Andrew and his brother Adam, 25, said they thought of the site after a visit to a South Carolina Wal-Mart where they saw a woman they believed to be a stripper, wearing an obscene T-shirt and leading a toddler in a harness. Around the next corner was a man with a beard reminiscent of the rock band ZZ Top.

"It's kind of like the light bulb went off," Andrew said. "We get the e-mails already from people who are like, 'Why didn't I think of this?' We just happened to be fortunate enough to have the ability to actually follow through on it."

While not every Walmart is as culturally rich in inappropriate attire and poorly executed hairstyles, the ones in the rural/and or southern parts of the country seem to attract an inordinate number of misfits. Cheap, poorly made goods in a consumer obsessed society is bound to have side effects and there's no good reason we shouldn't poke fun at these folks, many of whom live in very secluded little segments of this great country. Despite the internet's ubiquity, there are still people who think a mullet, a wife beater and white socks and dress shoes is a fashion "do."

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Article Author: Dawn Olsen

A veteran blogger since 2002, Dawn has written for many different blog incarnations ranging from parenting, politics, popular culture, music and everything in between. Her writing can be found Blogcritics.org and her celebrity blog, Glosslip.com. }

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