Waif Error: Why the Wayfair Conspiracy Theory Took Off

Mike Rothschild4 Comments

Last week, America’s weekly conspiracy obsession shifted from “who’s giving away all those fireworks” to “wait, is Wayfair actually trafficking children through their website?”

Thanks to a few price anomalies that either made stuff look way more expensive than it actually was or just didn’t seem right, and some office cabinets anthropomorphized with human names; the Peaceful Researchers and Trafficking Experts of the internet determined that the furniture and decor clearinghouse was actually selling kids that had gone missing – disguising them in broad daylight as office cabinets and other furniture with the names of missing kids, and posting their prices for everyone to see.

And the internet went crazy.

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The Fireworks Conspiracy Theory is Ridiculous and Totally Unnecessary

Mike Rothschild16 Comments

If you live in any kind of major city, small city, suburb, or area that could in any way qualify as “urban,” you’ve been hearing them.

Booms. Loud, repetitive booms. Bone-ratting explosions, nerve-shredding pops that maybe could be gunshots and maybe aren’t. They start as soon as the sun goes down, and they stop hours later. They can turn any street into the Green Zone in 2004.

They’re fireworks. And since mid-May, they’ve been going off all over the country, in almost every neighborhood, almost every night. The uptick in fireworks happens pretty much every summer, since Americans love blowing stuff up to celebrate freedom. Even in past years, Americans have shot off hundreds of millions of pounds of fireworks to celebrate the holiday.

But it really, truly has been much louder and more intense this year with high-grade pyro that’s usually only seen at county fairs or baseball games getting launched in the middle of big residential clusters – sparking online complaining and endless calls to the police. Unlike so much of what I write about, this is not a conspiracy – it’s a thing that’s happening. Or as Slate put it on June 10, “Yes, You’re Hearing Way More Fireworks Than Usual.”

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George Floyd: Puzzling Questions, Obvious Answers

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

The killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd by a gang of roided-up goons pretending to be police officers kicked off a worldwide storm of protests, outrage, anger, rioting, and earnest calls to re-imagine the function of police in western society.

And conspiracy theories. So many conspiracy theories. Theories about George Floyd (that he’s a crisis actor, that he’s still alive, that Obama knew he was going to be killed), about the protests (that they’re funded by Soros, that they’re an ANTIFA invasion), and about the cops who did it (they’re crisis actors, it’s all a big scam, it was a targeted hit.)

One particular list of “puzzling questions” was thrust into my Twitter mentions with a demand that I “debunk this:”

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I Don’t Need to Watch “Plandemic” to Know “Plandemic” is Garbage

Mike Rothschild

If you’ve got corona-rattled relatives who spend too much time on Facebook, you’ve probably gotten asked about “Plandemic.” It’s the hot new viral video in conspiracy theory circles, supposedly blowing the lid off the “real story” of how COVID-19 was engineered by government scientists as a weapon against the useless eaters, with one of these former “government scientists” revealing everything that “they” don’t want you to know about coronavirus, diseases in general, and secret cures.

It’s slick enough to be watched by people who don’t watch YouTube videos, short enough to be digested in one sitting, and authoritative enough to seem true because it’s got a real, actual research scientist doing most of the talking, former HIV researcher turned anti-vaccine crank Judy Mikovits.

So naturally, it’s exploded in popularity. The 26 minute film (which is supposedly just a taster for a full length version to come) has become the “Loose Change” of the rona truther movement, but at warp speed. It’s gotten millions of views over multiple platforms, and has been pulled down by several – prompting misguided cries of “censorship,” which a private company enforcing its terms of service isn’t.

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4517 Frenzy!

Mike Rothschild

Since returning to posting on the rickety 8chan copy 8kun, QAnon’s drops have been both less frequent and less interesting. The first 8kun posts went up in early November, and Q has only made about 500 drops since then – mostly tweets, links to news stories, memes, and even carbon copies of old posts.

Conspiracy theory researchers and Q watchers have mocked these new drops for how low effort and cheap they are. While there’s no such thing as a good Q drop, the old ones at least told interesting stories and spun an entertaining mythology. Remember the “Air Force One almost shot down by a missile” drops? Or the “Trump cut a secret deal with Kim Jong Un, who’s actually a CIA puppet?” Good times.

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