People of Walmart and 4 Other Sites That Make Fun of Strangers

If you shop at Walmart, wear skinny jeans, wear sports jerseys, attend parties or post updates about your kids on your Facebook account, beware. Your photograph or update could become fodder for an online joke in which you are the punch line.

Michigan resident Melanie Wheeler says her mother was shocked to find her photo on a website called People of Walmart, which posts (you guessed it) photographs of people shopping in Walmart. Anyone can take a photo, submit it to the site and see it uploaded, complete with snarky caption.

Wheeler told MyFoxDetroit that her mother "was upset about it. Her first reaction when I told her was 'I want the picture taken off. Can you do it?' And I'm like no, I don't run the website."

According to People of Walmart's FAQ, the site's owners will unpublish photographs if asked to do so. Otherwise, they're looking for "funny looking people, crazy outfits, the creepiest of the creepy, and the ugliest of the ugly." A book version of the site, titled "People of Walmart: Shop & Awe," was published in 2010.

Walmart shoppers aren't the only ones who have become unwitting targets of Internet mockery. A number of similarly motivated websites have popped up in recent years, each of them devoted to making fun of a specific group of people.

1. Look at That F**king Hipster
As the name implies, comedian Joe Mande's website is devoted to pictures and video of hipsters, some culled from the media and archival sources and others submitted by readers. While there's no strict definition of "hipster" on LATFH, targets typically include young men with facial hair and young women with bangs and/or glasses. Mande turned the site into a book in 2009. When blogger Marissa A. Ross discovered a picture of herself (with the requisite mocking caption) on Mande's site, she wrote: "I just want to tell you it feels really good to know I've been classified officially as a hipster by someone who is definitely not a hipster, collecting hipster photos for a blog (totally NOT HIP, BTW)."

2. Sorry I Missed Your Party
The subtitle says it all: "Pictures of other people's parties from Flickr." This includes pictures of people drinking, eating, dancing, posing and engaging in the sorts of activities that seem fun at a party, but which become funny to strangers who look at them later. There are also photos of people who have passed out or become otherwise incapacitated. Sample headline and caption, accompanying a photograph of four male friends: "Take your pick, ladies. You get to pick one to take home tonight. Choose wisely."

3. STFU, Parents
People who have kids like to talk about their kids, and Facebook has increased both the number of ways parents can talk about their kids and the number of ways people can become annoyed with parents who talk about their kids. The site reposts actual Facebook content uploaded by parents, from praise for baby's first bowel movement to close-up photos of said bowel movement.

4. Straight Cash Homey
Billing itself as "the world's only website devoted to random jerseys," Straight Cash Homey encourages readers to submit photos of nonathletes wearing sports jerseys. The result is a stream of photos of people's backs, plus captions. Sample, below a photograph of a man in a Nate Huffman/Toronto Raptors jersey: "Nate Huffman played seven games in the NBA. Hey, that's seven more than you! (Please note: caption does not work if you are, in fact, Nate Huffman)."


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