CNN reports that a website called People of Wal-Mart has gone viral. The website has people send in photos of Wal-Mart shoppers and photos of vehicles parked in Wal-Mart's parking lots. The website contains photographs of Wal-Mart shoppers wearing extremely unfashionable outfits. There are also photographs of highly unusual vehicles parked in Wal-Mart's parking lots. There are also shoppers doing unusual things at Wal-Mart. One Wal-Mart shopper (see here) took their pet monkey to Wal-Mart with them.
"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.
Wal-Mart decided not to comment on CNN's story. However, Tim Marema, vice president of the Whitesburg, Kentucky-based Center for Rural Strategies, told CNN that "American culture likes to single out people who appear to be different. Whether it's a joke or not, all depends on which side of the camera you're on."
Tim Marema also said, "The reality is that everybody shops at Wal-Mart. If you want to find the guy in the golf shirt and khakis, he's there too."
