Hey! Remember that time when a bunch of people seriously believed that Wayfair was involved in child sex trafficking due to a bunch of overpriced cabinets? Well, that bullshit is back. Sort of. Except for how these same people think that people are selling the children on Etsy along with other handmade crafts.
From what I can tell, this latest nonsense originated with one-time Wonkette favorite Liz Crokin, of Pizzagate fame. I actually backed off on writing about Crokin for a long time after finding out that much of her wackiness appears to have started after a bout of meningitis that caused significant brain damage.
I don’t like making fun of someone in that situation, but now that she’s back on Twitter, the harm she’s causing is an issue regardless of what’s causing it — and not everyone who believes her has actual brain damage as an excuse. A post on this latest theory was shared 12,000 times. Sure, a lot of those shares are probably bought or bots, but a whole lot of them are actual people who read a long diatribe about how she believes that child sex-traffickers are selling children on Etsy and thought “Hey, this makes sense and is probably true.”
The theory, more or less, is that people are selling very expensive pictures of pizza on Etsy and that what people are paying for is actually sex-trafficked children or child pornography.
For example, there is a “picture of a pizza” listed for sale for $9,000 and the listing reads “delivery instant download.” In that photo, there is also a cell phone strategically placed in the pizza box. (See below along with other suspicious listings.)
It’s been well-established that pizza is a pedophile code — via the FBI, DOJ, other law enforcement documents and mainstream media articles such as the Wall Street Journal report from earlier this year — which makes these listings extra alarming. Also, authorities have been able to bust many pedophiles because they used pizza as a pedophile code in an attempt to arrange to rape a child or to exchange child porn.
There are a lot of obviously ridiculously overpriced things on Etsy — some done as a placeholder for an item that is sold out or coming soon, some as NFTs and some as obvious jokes, like these $12,500 slip on shoes, described as “Women’s Slip On Canvas Shoes, The Most Expensive Shoes On Etsy, Marble Print – Not Made With Marble, Only One Set Will Ever Be Made”
It only costs 20 cents to list something on Etsy, which means that some 4Chan-type troll could have very easily put these up as a prank. This seems to be the most likely scenario.
For the record, many people like and enjoy pizza without being child sex traffickers, and frankly I consider the implication that everything on earth referencing pizza has something to do with child molestation to be anti-Italian discrimination.
Crokin is also very concerned about the fact that trans designer Erik Carnell is allowed to sell on Etsy, as she thinks that should be illegal for some reason.
Earlier this year, Eric Carnell, who is the British designer behind Abprallen, the LGBTQ brand that sells Satanic-themed T-shirts, sweaters, bags and badges, announced on his Instagram page that Target removed all his products. However, Etsy still allowed him to have a store where he sold products that have statements like “Satan Respects Pronouns”.
Why wouldn’t they? Etsy will let people sell almost anything (not children) that says anything so long as it’s not explicitly hateful.
Unfortunately, I have seen many suspicious listings like this on multiple e-commerce sites. Since President Trump’s Department of Justice took down Backpage, the child sex traffickers and pedophiles had to relocate their online businesses somewhere. So keep that in mind!
I don’t know how to put this since I think FOSTA was very, very bad, but it seems worth pointing out that Kamala Harris, a member of the Biden administration, was a co-sponsor of that legislation and instrumental in getting it passed. And yet Crokin seems to believe that the Biden administration is trying to discredit nonsense conspiracy theories about child sex trafficking because they are literally running a child sex trafficking ring. Sure, that’s definitely something they all have time to do.
Crokin also complained about Etsy taking her page down and supposedly not allowing her to sell her “Child Lives Matter” products.
On a personal note, my store was banned from Etsy years ago, and they would not even allow me to sell “Child Lives Matter” merchandise on their site.
Hey Etsy! — I would like an explanation for these suspicious posts, and I still would like an explanation for why I’m not allowed to sell “Child Lives Matter” products while you approve products that promote Satan!
Wow, that’s so sad. After all, what does the world need more than Liz Crokin’s handcrafted “Child Lives Matter” needlepoint pillows? Or Michael Flynn’s, because for some reason that is the quote he used when he quote tweeted Crokin’s rant.
Alas, it’s also not true. There are, actually, a bunch of right-wing “_____ Lives Matter” products for sale on the site, including one that explicitly says “Children’s Lives Matter,” right beneath another that says “Old Lives Matter.”
We’re going to assume that Crokin, who has been kicked off of practically every mainstream social media site at one point or another, was banned for things other than innocently proclaiming that “Child Lives Matter.” The site explicitly banned QAnon-themed merchandise three years ago.
I’d love to be able to say that Liz Crokin, herself, does not matter — but this kind of bullshit and magical thinking is far from harmless.
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