In early July 10, a new conspiracy theory began spreading on social media related to the American furniture store Wayfair. The conspiracy theory states that some of the closets on Wayfair’s online page were used for human trafficking because they were indexed at maximum costs and many had strange names. To be clear, there is no evidence of the conspiracy theory and Wayfair has firmly rejected the accusations.
Wayfair told Heavy in an email statement: “Of course, there is no fact in those statements. The products in question are industrial grade cabinets with exact prices. The company explained why the parts in question had been removed from the site:
Recognizing that the images and descriptions provided through the supplier did not adequately reach the maximum price, we temporarily disposed of the products on the site to rename them and provide a more detailed description and images that, as it should be, describe the product to explain the price. Point.
The conspiracy theory seems to come from sub-repertoire/r/conspiracy when a user named PrincessPeach1987 stated that the cabinets indexed in Wayfair through the WFX Utility provider charge more than $10,000 and bear unique names like “Yaritza” or “Samiyah”. The user reported that these names can be spaces reserved for humans and human trafficking.
A Twitter user with the nickname @edmmariluna posted an article about the plot on Twitter and since then its post has gained more than 215,000 likes and 87,000 retweets. Another user posted on Twitter a series of appearance-to-look sideboard images with press articles about the lack of young people with the same name as sideboards. However, as Snopes noted, “while this might seem suspicious to those looking for a model, it should be noted that around 800,000 young people are missing each year” and that some of the names of young people they lack are related to this theory. They’ve already been solved.
One user responded to reddit’s original post and said that he had contacted the human trafficking hotline and that a case was opening. Heavy contacted Polaris, the organization guilty of the national anti-trafficking hotline, who said that, for reasons of confidentiality, they may simply not provide additional data or verify whether they had won a recommendation on the plot.
The Reddit user who first posted about the plot spoke anonymously with Newsweek and said he was “involved in a local organization that is helping those suffering from human trafficking,” meaning they are “the ultimate suspect of the moment.” However, they stated that they did not directly accuse the brand, but only sought to express their concerns.
Many others have turned to Twitter for a percentage of their disbelief in the plot. Journalist Ben Collins wrote:
The other people at Pizzagate/QAnon have the Wayfair trend today. They falsely claim that the valuable disorders in the garage boxes turn out that the company is dealing with young people. This took off due to an article published in Reddit’s r/conspiracy sub-repertoire, which serves as a means of exchange for unnamed paranoia. We live in a moment of satanic panic, deeper and more politically important. This time, everyone agrees. People will seek coincidences as narrow and stupid as valuable disorders on furniture sites as “proof” that a global clique eats young people and controls the world.
Journalist Aaron Gouveia wrote: QAnon and Pizzagate are doing overtime today claiming that Wayfair deals with young people based on the high costs of oversized closets online. I’m not shitting them. There are other people who do that. Ignorance is the ultimate worry about the disease. Another user posted:
– Victoria Brownworth #MasksSaveLives (@VABVOX) July 10, 2020
The message reads:
So the latest conspiracy is that #Wayfair is selling trafficked children in armoires off its website. You all never bought anything from Wayfair, did you? Everything arrives in 500 pieces with directions in Chinese to build it yourself. You’d have to build the kid, too. This is just implacably ridiculous. No one is delivering huge boxes of live children to you from China. (97% of #Wayfair products come from China.) Find better hobbies, folks. If you are worried about child trafficking, the Trump admin has been doing it at the border since 2017.
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