What is Target Jennifer?

Target Jennifer is the name Twitter users gave to a woman filmed in a power wheelchair outside a looted Minneapolis Target in late May 2020, in a series of clips where she swung a knife, crashed into a wall, cried, and was later seen walking.

Where did Target Jennifer come from?

The first video was posted on May 27, 2020 by Twitter user @___0HOUR1, who called her an "Elderly Resident" trying to stop looting during the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis.

What does Target Jennifer mean?

The name refers specifically to Jennifer and the chaotic clip set from that Target, which Twitter users turned into a trending topic alongside hashtags like "She's 30" and "Gypsy Rose" after follow-up videos undercut the original framing.

How do you use Target Jennifer?

People typically share the stacked clip thread or stills from it, often with commentary pointing out contradictions between the "elderly disabled woman" narrative in the first video and the walking and knife-swinging in the later ones.

Is Target Jennifer still popular?

The videos are a classic reference from the first week of the 2020 Minneapolis protests rather than an active meme format, with most of the engagement happening on May 27 and 28, 2020.

Target Jennifer

2020viral videoclassic

Published October 23, 2026

Target Jennifer refers to a series of May 2020 viral videos showing a woman named Jennifer trying to block looters outside a Minneapolis Target in a power wheelchair during the George Floyd protests. The clips showed her swinging a knife, getting sprayed with a fire extinguisher, crashing into a wall, crying, and later walking away from her wheelchair. By May 28, hashtags like "She's 30" and "Gypsy Rose" were trending on Twitter as users debated her story.

protest memes street footage memes hidden identity memes accidental fame memes tonal whiplash memes

Overview

Target Jennifer is the nickname Twitter gave to a woman filmed outside a looted Target in Minneapolis during the late May 2020 unrest after the death of George Floyd. The first clip framed her as an elderly resident defending the store from her wheelchair, but follow-up footage posted within 24 hours showed her lunging with a knife, being blasted by a fire extinguisher, and ramming her chair into a wall1 2.

As more videos surfaced, the story shifted sharply. One clip caught her sobbing to a bystander and insisting she had been peaceful3, while another showed a woman many viewers identified as the same person standing up out of the chair and walking near an ATM4. The whiplash between the sympathetic original framing and the later clips drove most of the engagement, with users stacking the videos together as a thread and arguing over who she actually was.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter

Date

2020

Catalyst event: On May 27, 2020, during the second night of Minneapolis protests over the killing of George Floyd, bystanders filmed a woman in a power wheelchair positioned at the entrance of a Target store that was being looted.

Earliest known viral post: That same day, Twitter user @___0HOUR1 uploaded the clip with the caption "Elderly Resident tried to stop the rioters from looting Target in Minnesota," and the video pulled in over 3.1 million views, 78,500 likes and 40,800 retweets within a day1. According to Know Your Meme, the woman's name was Jennifer, and the "elderly resident" framing fell apart once additional footage surfaced the next day5.

How It Spread

On May 28, 2020, a second clip posted by Twitter user @briaslnterIude showed Jennifer driving her wheelchair straight into a wall, picking up more than 770 likes and 700 retweets that day2. Hours later, @PoeticKaee shared video of her in the street after the looting, crying and trying to explain herself to the person filming, under the caption "She just needs to go home"3. That post reached over 4,900 likes and 4,200 retweets in a day.

A fourth clip from @SoraAubrey showed a woman in the distance trying to pry open an ATM and then walking on her own, captioned "Oh her legs definitely work !!" and reaching about 9,000 likes and 5,200 retweets4. By the end of May 28, "She's 30," "Jennifer," "She's Got a Knife" and "Gypsy Rose" were all trending on Twitter as users compared Jennifer to the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case and debated whether her disability was real5. The pile-on produced deep-fried edits and "she's 30 and she can walk" meta-commentary tweets, cementing Jennifer as one of the stranger side-characters of the first week of protest coverage.

Timeline

2020-05-27

@___0HOUR1 posts the first clip of Jennifer in her wheelchair at the Minneapolis Target entrance, framing her as an elderly resident blocking looters.

2020-05-28

@briaslnterIude posts footage of Jennifer running her wheelchair into a wall.

2020-05-28

@PoeticKaee posts video of Jennifer crying in the street under the caption "She just needs to go home."

2020-05-28

@SoraAubrey posts a clip of a woman identified as Jennifer walking and trying to break into an ATM.

2020-05-28

"She's 30," "Jennifer," "She's Got a Knife" and "Gypsy Rose" trend on Twitter as users debate her story.