No idea. My uneducated guess would be for the same reason people drive SUVs in inner cities, to get the illusion of an experience (It's kind of the third generation of car advertisement. Back in the days it were utilitarian arguments, how efficient and safe is the car and so on, then came keeping up with the Joneses, cars as prestige object and now it is car as a vessel which helps you to dream. We don't evolve, we regress.) Modern life is so boring but if I wear this military stuff or drive this little monster truck I can pretend that I am in the jungle.
I don't mind it. To each his/her/its own. It's like back in the 90's when people wore stuff with Kente cloth.
This kind of reminds me of a Dave Berg "The Lighter Side Of" strip from Mad Magazine, where a college girl asks a fellow male student, who's wearing an all-camo outfit, if there's any significance or reason he's wearing it, and he says he just likes the fact that he can wear it for months on end without changing it, because the camo pattern hides stains.
Wouldn't that defeat the point of the camo? Anyway, it's been at least reasonably popular ever since I remember out in rural areas (and we're talking Northeastern Maryland too) so I suspect Kentucky would be far more prevalent. In 90% of the circumstances, I don't see the big deal either way. Although a friend of mine did go to a wedding in Kentucky (sensing the pattern?) where everyone on the groom's party wore camo. She, on the otherhand, had to buy an expensive red dress.
I saw people on college campus in the early 70s wearing camo, and not all of them were veterans. Even though Vietnam was an unpopular war, there were still a few imposters/poseurs/military buffs during it who wanted you to think they were ex-military.
When will people who wear camouflage get the message??? Fit in!!! Stop sticking out!!! Wait a minute - who's really wearing the camoflage here? ^Camouflage.
While it may serve a function in a military of hunting context, its also a pattern/design in a fashion sense no different than stripes, dots or paisley.