You Guys Ever Been to Walmart?

Part of a series on Ray William Johnson. [View Related Entries]

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About

"You Guys Ever Been to Walmart?" refers to a clip of YouTuber Ray William Johnsons asking the viewers "You guys ever been to Walmart?" during a transition in an episode of his =3 YouTube series. In early June 2020, the clip went viral on Instagram due to being automatically tagged as sensitive content by the platform.

Origin

The clip of YouTuber Ray William Johnson saying "You ever been to Walmart?" originates from episode "I murdered my husband…" of his =3 YouTube series. The original episode^[1] was uploaded on April 9th, 2013, and has since been made private by the YouTuber (reupload^[2] shown below). In the episode, Ray William Johnson reviews a viral clip of a woman climbing inside a cage holding ball toys in a supermarket.

You guys ever been to Walmart? I prefer thrift shops myself, it's where I buy my underwear.

On March 26th, 2018, Twitter^[3] user @wombocorp posted an out of context clip from the video, gaining over 207,700 views, 4,700 retweets and 13,900 likes in two years (shown below).

pic.twitter.com/iQ0DwXZSj7

— wombocorp (@wombocorp) March 26, 2018

Spread

On April 13th, 2018, YouTuber^[4] Ewan reuploaded the clip to YouTube, gaining over 6,000 views in two years. In Spring and Summer 2018, several more uploads of the clip were made by YouTube users, including reuploads by VvvvvaVvvvvvr,^[5] wet almonds^[6] and Kyle Garcia.^[7]

On June 3rd, 2020, the clip went viral on Instagram due to the platform automatically tagging it as sensitive content. One of the earliest known uploads of the clip was made by Instagram user agentchodybanks.v5^[8] and received over 107,000 views and 18,400 likes in 12 hours. On that day, the clip was reposted at least several dozen times by a number of popular meme accounts, including posts by grandmas.butt^[9] (over 178,400 views), hydra_ironic.memes^[10] (over 64,500 views; shown below) and igotzuck^[11] (over 19,200 views). All reposts of the clip on the platform were automatically tagged as sensitive content as containing graphic or violent content.

The exact reason for the videos being tagged is unknown. False rumors were spread by some users on Instagram, such as Ray William Johnson committing a murder in a Walmart, or the comic wallpapers in the video containing photographs of the victims of the 2020 George Floyd Protests or child porn.

Africa Check

Africa Check is a non-profit fact checking organization based in South Africa. The organization gained notoriety on Instagram and became a popular subject of memes after it tagged Instagram memes about an RFID chip being located in a tire valve stem as false information.