Main Character of the Week: Target

Main Character of the Week is a weekly column that tells you the most prominent “main character” online (good or bad). It runs on Fridays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.

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The internet is a stage, and someone unwillingly stumbles onto it weekly. This makes them the “main character” online. Sometimes their story is heartwarming, like the friends who go out for $1 Applebee’s margaritas with only $4.57 to their names; usually it’s a gaffe. In any case, that main character energy flows through the news cycle and turbo-charges debate for several business days.

Here’s the Trending team’s main character of the week.

It’s Target, the enormous retailer that’s one of the few safe spaces Democrats and Republicans can agree on.

Americans lean on Target as a catch-all stop for grocery and clothing runs alike. Everyone knows that “I need to make a Target run” means you’ll stop-by for a $21 watch that you won’t care gets damaged during soccer practice but leave with Tostitos salsa, Milk Bones, and new pants. But as of late, these shopping gestures have been on ice due to locked in-store items.

So is the era of the “Target run” officially over? That was the case made by Dr. Emily Long, whose viral TikTok posited that even essential items are behind glass cases. As we reported recently: 

“...tell me why it just took me an entire hour for this,” Long said as she held up a mid-size Target bag of goods. “…I’ll tell you why, it’s because they’re essential, and apparently, Target now locks away all essential items. So while you could get like $40 La Roche-Posay or makeup that was sitting out, my $8 body wash was locked away as was my deodorant and my husband’s body wash and his razors and the basic things that I went to Target to get… And I, like many other former Target lovers, was planning on perusing the fall items maybe sniffing a candle or two, maybe buying one I didn’t need, but I was literally fighting for my life in that store. I was so desperate to get out of there, and then I finally get to the end, there’s a giant line.”

It happens at Walmart too. But now, apparently more affluent and white communities are experiencing the same policing that Black communities have for years. And they don’t like it.

TikTok creator @tmoorehome called this out, criticizing a white TikToker who said of her Target now displaying locked items: “There aren’t any homeless people around.” As @tmoorehome rebuffed: “You stop short of saying even the white people products are locked up. Like, come on. People who are not white have been telling us about this for a f*cking decade at least and you guys didn’t care. But now it’s your products so you’re mad as hell like, I just, just listen to yourself for like a second please.”

Target’s added security measures do have a crime backdrop, as Daily Dot reporter Jack Alban wrote this week too: 

Retail workers, like a Walgreens employee who recorded two shoplifters pilfering from the store at different times on the same day, have been reporting mass thefts. There have been a series of smash-and-grab thefts featuring thieves coordinating efforts to “flash loot” stores all across the country. In fact, the state of California has specifically targeted these types of crimes and has allocated funds specifically to handle the “epidemic” of thefts occurring in America.

There have been some individuals who have defended looting, stating that thieves are primarily stealing luxury goods and highly sought-after items in an attempt to resell them so that they can afford to live. The cost of living in the United States skyrocketed 7.8% between 2021 and 2022, the highest ever since 1981, with inflation rates projected to continually rise heading into 2024.

Whatever Target’s motivations, we’ve reached out for comment all week to no avail, the “vibes” are off, TikTokers are saying that Walmart and Dollar Tree are cool now that Target is “over,” and I blame the astrological chaos surrounding our planet. After all, Mars just entered Scorpio from Aries on the very week where there will be a new moon solar eclipse in Libra. Hang onto your hat folks, the vibes are definitely different. 

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