Why are Europeans going viral over Walmart? (bigger is not better)

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Once some girlfriends from Germany came to New York to visit me and we decided to go on a road trip through the South. We tried to rent a mid-sized sedan in Manhattan. The clerk looked at three skinny women, saw fragility, and convinced us to get a giant SUV instead. “There are a lot of big cars on the highway!”

Dandy. Except that driving a Bearcat tank through Manhattan to get to the Holland Tunnel was like playing Grand Theft Auto except that you’re not allowed to kill the pedestrians and cyclists and delivery drivers and cars coming at you from all directions. “I wish we had recorded you,” Gina said, referring to the colorful verbiage I’d screamed at the Manhattan masses.

Once we were on the highway, I settled down, but anytime I had to switch lanes or make a turn, Gina, who had the fortitude to sit in the passenger seat while I repeatedly fell into hysterics, had to be our rear-view mirror—the car was so fucking big I couldn’t see anything behind me to the right. “OK. Ok, I think we can turn now?” she’d tentatively say, twisting her neck to Exorcist degrees to see behind the behemoth we were driving.

It was a good, memorable road trip. Taylor Swift singalongs. An eery cabin in the woods. New friends. A bonfire. Me performing dental surgery on myself with a pocket knife in an empty office parking lot.

One memory sticks out. We went to a Walmart in Virginia. We went to Walmart to buy an iPhone charger because I’d lost mine in a campground somewhere and also to make fun of Walmart.

We rolled in, smirking at the skyscraper-sized boxes of M&Ms and behemoth Pop Tarts, bulk product after bulk product after bulk product far past what the eye could see, a Backrooms of sorts. Shopping carts almost as big as the SUV we were driving, filled to the brim. How we smirked.

But then a woman, probably my age, chugged by us in an electric scooter. She was morbidly obese. Too big to walk. We averted our eyes, not wanting to stare and make her feel bad. It’s vile to snark about weight, a thing most people can’t control, and a hallmark of the noxious “manosphere” that now dominates the discourse over women’s bodies. Another woman, maybe a little bit older, but not old enough to be unable to walk due to her weight, also made her way across the grounds on an electric scooter. We wiped the stupid smirks off our faces and felt really bad. After we left the store, the Germans scanned the large strip mall. “There is nothing, nothing but fast food,” they observed, shaking their heads. “It’s so sad, it’s not people’s fault. What can they do?”

***

You may have noticed a major viral trend: Europeans visiting America for the World Cup posting videos of themselves dazzled by America’s bounty, it’s grandness, the bigness of everything.

Are they talking about the Grand Canyon? The New York City skyline? The Golden Gate Bridge? The Pacific Coast Highway? The endless sky in the Southwest dessert? I could go on. This is not an anti-America post. Everyone who’s not in danger of having their visa revoked for tweeting about Palestine should come see America.

But, instead, the viral content idolizes Walmart, with its endless bulk products. The expansive cheese aisles in grocery stores. Fried fare at the Cheesecake Factory. A gargantuan gas station. In one video, a crew of young men enter a state of ecstasy when they *realize* that in the land of the free they can refill their massive soda cups for free at a Taco Bell. A man claims a giant, tepid-looking bowl of pasta is better than any he’s had in Italy. Another grasps his face in euphoric disbelief in reaction to something unidentifiable but deep-fried from the Cheesecake Factory. A hot girl bites into a giant burger, her eyes widen — “It’s the best burger I’ve ever had!” A Scottish man stares agog at cheerleaders grinding at a football game.

“I was born in the wrong country!” is the forlorn conclusion many posters make about their brush with American greatness, one giant stack of pancakes at a time.

This content is boosted by right-wing influencers and it’s bled into cable news, with segments on CNN by Jake Tapper and Jesse Watters on Fox News. Batya Ungar-Sargon, a Berkeley grad who lives in New York, yet is self-appointed spokeswoman for the Red-MAGA American Everyman, breathlessly wrote:

It’s so wonderful to have outsiders appreciate all the wonders of American culture, cuisine, and life.

But what’s truly amazing is that these European admirers are enjoying the fruits of Red America—the exact things that the Left has the most contempt for: Walmart. Guns. Ranch dressing. Country music. People getting fat off fast food. The very things that Leftist elites love to deride about America, often from the vantage point of what a sneering Frenchman might say, are the things our European visitors are most admiring of, because they are the things that are most recognizably American.

At a time when Americans proud to be American has hit a record low, what a gift from Europe on our 250th birthday!

Jesse Watters@JesseBWatters

🚨 WATCH THIS: The WORLD just got a FRONT-ROW seat to America... and they can't stop talking about it🔥 From PACKED WORLD CUP stadiums to Europeans calling WALMART A "MUSEUM" 🤣👀 "I was born in the wrong country.... America is the most beautiful country in the world." 🔥

12:44 AM · Jun 16, 2026 · 123K Views

74 Replies · 669 Reposts · 3.83K Likes

***

It started when a post by a German man named Freddy about a Buccee’s, a giant refueling station that serves food, went hugely viral. Naturally a million copycats sprung up, which also went viral. And so on. They’re clearly shoved into the timeline by Musk’s algorithm.

This “viral trend” is both depressing and terrifying. Let’s start with depressing. There’s the disdain and contempt the media people amplifying this “totally organic trend!” have for their audience: Batya and Jesse Watters and Jake Tapper have most likely been to Europe more than once; they clearly assume their intended audience has not, because only someone who has never set foot outside of the United States would believe that European countries don’t have large grocery stores that carry an array of cheeses. Or that drab, yet ferociously caloric, chain restaurant U.S. pasta dishes are better than pasta in Italy. Or that there aren’t any in Europe! I’m in one of the poorest E.U. countries and there’s a diner chain called “Happy” that’s so ubiquitous in location and advertising I suspect the overlords of Happy” run the country—there are roughly one million items on the menu, ranging from pasta to bacon cheeseburgers to surprisingly good sushi.

The young guys freaking out about giant soda refills at the Taco Bell? Please. In Europe you can buy very, very cheap beer and wine as a teenager, and they’re losing their minds over a giant plastic cup of Mountain Dew?

The man who practically collapses at the sight of cheerleaders? I’m sorry, was the Bring it On franchise banned in Scotland, so he hadn’t heard of or seen hot, gyrating cheerleaders until coming to America?

Here’s one of the many odes to Walmart:

Yαѕмιη@yasminelle0

I love how Europeans come to the US and get completely mesmerized by Walmart. They think it’s peak culinary heaven, meanwhile the rest of us are just trying to survive the chaotic "People of Walmart" energy. 😂 You can instantly spot the foreigners because they’re standing in

12:34 AM · Jun 15, 2026 · 37K Views

20 Replies · 86 Reposts · 648 Likes

The items displayed in wonder include a frozen pizza, a large slab of meat. A gallon of milk. You can get every one of these things in any city in Europe. There are like 5 butcher shops within walking distance from where I am where you can, in fact, purchase a giant slab of meat. There are multiple brands of frozen pizza in every grocery store no different than the Walmart one held aloft by the man in the video as if he’s discovered a rare diamond.

Yαѕмιη@yasminelle0

I love how Europeans come to the US and get completely mesmerized by Walmart. They think it’s peak culinary heaven, meanwhile the rest of us are just trying to survive the chaotic "People of Walmart" energy. 😂 You can instantly spot the foreigners because they’re standing in

12:34 AM · Jun 15, 2026 · 10.3K Views

4 Replies · 28 Reposts · 213 Likes

***

Why shit on a feel-good trend? Can’t leftists enjoy anything? Well because, for the reasons listed above—these MAGA-coded aspects of U.S. life either suck and/or also exist in Europe— it’s clearly not an organic trend. I mean the people are real. But the sentiments are for the most part bullshit and they’re chasing virality and virality is given to them.

It has to be viewed in the context that the man whose team controls the algorithm is obsessed with dismantling the E.U. Many of the posts aren’t purely celebratory, there’s often an implicit and sometimes explicit MAGA-messaging about Europe falling apart due to immigration and regulation. In one video, a man films a squirrel skittering across the sidewalk and professes great shock that the creature is not being eaten by “barbarians” as presumably it would be in Paris.

Musk is pissed that the E.U. has retained a shred of the post-WW2 world order, and a) does not want to feed Muslim refugees and immigrants into a meat grinder b) places some tepid regulations on his ventures, including AI. He’s has not been shy airing his opinions about the perfidy of the E.U. and centrist European governments on matters of immigration and regulation of social media and tech companies. Right-wing influencers who boost these posts often bash the E.U. directly.

Abigail@OctoAbbi

Europeans were basically propogandized by corrupt EU regulations to believe these things about US food. They think an extra tablespoon of sugar makes bread cake bc the EU says so or only Germany has real beer bc they were only allowed to call 1 specific thing beer until recently

7:02 PM · Jun 14, 2026 · 4.4K Views

47 Replies · 9 Reposts · 115 Likes

Again, this is not an anti-America post. Every place has great things, every place has problems. And some of this content highlights the incredible friendliness of regular people in the U.S., which is true. And while I personally get panic attacks in Costco, older relatives who lived through Soviet-era shortages think it’s Heaven. But, again, in the year 2026, the idea that a 25-year-old German would be in orgiastic ecstasy because they found a large frozen pizza in a Walmart is absurd.

Unless it’s the Grand Canyon, big is not usually better.

Bigger cars (nope!), bigger gas stations (again, what? What are the benefits of an empty gas station the size of half a soccer field?) Bigger portions. Bigger stadiums, bigger malls (oh yeah, I forget about the “omg look at this giant mall!” content. There are giant malls in Europe.) Young bodies so big they can’t traverse a Walmart without an electric scooter.