R/conspiracy never sleeps, every day on the internet is a zombie march through a waking nightmare, and as a result, there is a new Pizzagate. The elements: home furnishing e-commerce platform Wayfair, exorbitantly-priced cabinets, a human trafficking theory, and a string of letters you should never type into Yandex. This morning, less than 24 hours after the Reddit post, Wayfair was trending on Twitter in the United States and was canonized by Know Your Meme.
Yesterday, redditor PrincessPeach1987 posted a screenshot of four creepy, poorly-photographed cabinets by asking:
Is it possible Wayfair involved in Human trafficking with their WFX Utility collection? Or are these just extremely overpriced cabinets? (Note the names of the cabinets) this makes me sick to my stomach if it’s true :(
Let’s hear it out. What the fuck else are we doing on a Friday night. God damn it.
The cabinets, named “Neriah,” “Yaritza,” “Samiyah,” and “Alyvia,” cost an average of roughly $13,000 each and come from the Wayfair-trademarked WFX Utility store, where a professionally-photographed nine-piece full kitchen cabinet set is going for $1,430. According to Redditor Forsaken-Clock, who claims to have been onto the conspiracy earlier, the cabinets disappeared from Wayfair.com shortly after they reported them to the human trafficking hotline. (They still appear in Google cache.)
“I can not believe my eyes that they’ve deleted those cabinets off the site,” one redditor wrote. “It’s from a private seller on Wayfair,” another replied. The Wayfair cabinets only show up under the Wayfair-trademarked store WFX Utility. We don’t know who’s selling them, basically. And Wayfair did not respond to a request for comment.
Another redditor pointed out that Wayfair had furnished a migrant detention camp and that there have been “ongoing issues with tracking where all these kids are ending up.”
Best to stop at the cabinets, because the Reddit thread then leads to a certifiable closet of horrors: a user noticed that if you type in the SKU code after “src us,” images suggesting child abuse appear. I will not confirm this and suggest you tread lightly because you could inadvertently violate the law. But one Redditor pointed out that “src us” alone pulls up the images because of a horrific Russian image hosting website which ends in src.ru. Another user pointed out that simply typing “young” into Yandex only pulls up images of young girls “in revealing clothing.”
Departing entirely from the cabinets, someone noticed a Russian site for models called SRC, with a subsection for “kids,” which very suspiciously doesn’t pull up any photos, only the message “Nothing found,” in Russian, and a search bar.
Twitter users ran with the conspiracy. Various accounts, including “Q the Wake Up” found that names of missing children match up with cabinets as well as a $9,999 zodiac pillow (now removed from the site). Another person claimed to have screengrabbed the pillow on sale with a significantly reduced price seconds after refreshing the page. A $10,000 cactus (which was online this afternoon and now appears to be removed) is pictured next to books about the Kennedys and the Clintons!!
Some shit is certainly up with Wayfair’s vast catalog of overpriced items: a $16,699.99 outdoor umbrella, a $14,199 metal-and-glass chandelier, a $13,999 wall-mounted space heater, $3,549.99 bean bag replacement fill.
But practically every throw pillow and accent chair has a human name attached, and outrageously overpriced items do not a child trafficking scandal make. Redditor forestein proposed two equally plausible theories. “Wayfair is a drop shipping company, so the least nefarious explanation is likely that particular sellers on wayfair are overpricing items, simply bc they can. The other explanation, in my mind, is that these overpriced items are being used to launder money (which makes a bit more sense to me, because who in their right mind would fall for a drop shipping scam of buying a $45k zodiac pillow that looks like it’s worth $2?).”
Various users pointed out that a description for a $99,999 cactus includes the phrase “No passport required,” which sounds damning, before reading the description for the shop: “With bold, Old-World influence, Bungalow Rose lends a faraway feel to any space. (No passport required!)”
Earlier today, a Wayfair representative told Fox Business News that “There is, of course, no truth to these claims. The products in question are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately priced.”
The Wikipedia has been updated. The legend is immortal. The internet will not rest.