Whirl-Mart is a
culture jamming
Culture jamming (sometimes also guerrilla communication) is a form of protest used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It att ...
tactic aimed at retail establishments, typically
superstores.
Stewart, Kathleen. Ordinary Affects. Duke University Press, 2007
. P.102
Whirl-Mart consists of a group of "Whirl-Marters" who congregate at a large superstore (usually a Walmart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...
, Asda
Asda Stores Ltd. () (often styled as ASDA) is a British supermarket chain. It is headquartered in Leeds, England. The company was founded in 1949 when the Asquith family merged their retail business with the Associated Dairies company of Yorks ...
, or Sainsbury's
J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, with a 14.6% share of UK supermarket sales.
Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company ...
) and slowly push empty shopping carts
A shopping cart (American English), trolley (British English, Australian English), or buggy (Southern American English, Appalachian English), also known by a variety of other names, is a wheeled cart supplied by a shop or store, especiall ...
silently through store aisles. Participants will not purchase anything and seek to form a lengthy chain of non-shoppers, continually weaving and "whirling" through a maze of store aisles for up to an hour at a time. Participants describe their actions as "a collective reclamation of space that is otherwise only used for buying and selling". Whirl-Marters seek to mimic and mock what they perceive as the absurdity of the shopping
Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the potential intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. A typology of shopper types has been developed by scho ...
process.
Origins
The activity was founded by the group "Breathing Planet Troupe" at a Walmart store in Troy, New York
Troy is a city in the U.S. state of New York and the county seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany ...
on April 1, 2001. The group was seeking to respond to an article from ''Adbusters
The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profit, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as "a global network of artists, activis ...
'' magazine that called for foolish activities in conjunction with April Fool's Day
April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which ma ...
. Since then, Whirl-Mart activities have spread to many other countries, such as Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
.
Tactics
In addition to the act's satirical and comedic value, Whirl-Mart provides a legal, non-confrontational outlet for would-be protesters to address consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the su ...
and materialism. Whirl-Marters do not aim to block store aisles or interfere with legitimate shoppers, and typically will not speak unless addressed. Their aim is to basically create a silent, non-violent protest or mockery of consumerism. Participants are typically non-confrontational, seeking to make themselves silent examples rather than active propagandists.
One variation of the Whirl-Mart protest involves filling carts but either simply abandoning them or, while checking out, either returning everything or claiming to have forgotten the money to purchase the items in the cart, leaving the full cart for the employees to clean up. However, this is usually not preferred, as this tends to affect regular employees, not the store's management. This also implies the Whirl-Marter was a regular shopper who would have purchased those items anyway, decreasing the effectiveness of the tactic.
Whirl-Marters are often very loosely organized, describing themselves as open to anyone wishing to participate.
Confrontations
Whirl-Marters, when confronted by security or store management, typically do not admit to being protestors, generally replying in a tongue-in-cheek manner that may subtly attack consumerism or the store itself. Alternatively, they may pretend they are regular shoppers who are "still looking for something to buy" after spending up to an hour wandering aimlessly through a superstore.
Whirl-Marters claim they can talk their way out of being removed from the store (though the involvement of law enforcement officials in removing Whirl-Marters is not unheard of). When confronted, Whirl-Mart participants may sometimes scatter to various store aisles, forcing management or security to confront them individually. Participants will very rarely admit to or even address commercialism, materialism, or any other reason they are actually there. Whirl-Marters often wear an identifying outfit, typically consisting of plain, featureless clothing or clothing with ideological slogans or symbols. Some Whirl-Marters may wear hoodies and face masks to hide their identities, though this tends to attract the attention of employees.
Some Whirl-Marters have attempted to document their activities with video cameras or phones. Stores typically do not permit recordings (aside from their own security cameras
Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...
), so recordings of these instances are often seized by store authorities, if they are even recorded at all.
See also
* Anti-consumerism
*Over-consumption
Overconsumption describes a situation where a consumer overuses their available goods and services to where they can't, or don't want to, replenish or reuse them. In microeconomics, this may be described as the point where the marginal cost of ...
*Anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine ''New Statesman'' ...
References
{{culture jamming
Culture jamming
Anti-consumerism
Satire
Protest tactics