The IKEA Underground
January 28th, 2021
Starring: A & B
A and B sit together somewhere. Maybe in a home, a restaurant, a park. They’re both on their phones. B looks up and holds their phone out to A.
B
Have you seen this?
A
Bring it closer, it’s too small…
B
Hold on, I’ll send it.
B texts it to A. A scans and reads for a moment:
A
Oh come on.
Someone in his cabinet was a Russian spy?
That can’t be real.
B
I know it’s weird, but think—
A
It’s Twitter conspiracy.
B
Some real publications have followed it—
A
That doesn’t make me more convinced.
B
But if you think about it, it’s entirely plausible. Maybe not that extreme, but they probably had some involvement. Something had to have gone down.
A
Okay, fine. They’re foreign competition, they probably did. But not that—
B
I don’t know...they’re pretty nefarious. They want us infighting.
It wouldn’t surprise me, is what I’m saying.
A
Yeah. Maybe.
There’s crazier stuff than that though.
B
Really?
A
For sure. And more proven.
B
Like what?
A
I mean...you’ve heard about The IKEA Underground, right?
...
B
IKEA Underground?
A
Oh, you’re gonna like this. This is some crazy-ass shit.
There’s chatter going around that IKEA stores are being used as secret bases for the far-right.
B
...what?
A
Yeah. They’ve found surveillance footage of people coming in and out of IKEAs around the country through loading dock entrances. And also there’s videos of certain customers coming in near closing hours, and never coming out.
B
What does that have to do with alt-right?
A
Well they’ve been able to identify some of those people on the videos, and they can trace their affiliations through social media and message boards and stuff. And a lot of these extremist groups’ biggest public demonstrations have been in close radius to IKEA stores.
B
So...what are they doing?
A
Nobody knows. But they’re thinking the stores are hubs for these movements. Like they’re allowing them to use their basements to meet, organize, store merchandise, hide weapons.
B
Shit.
A
I know. Pretty wild.
And another reason IKEA fits is that their original founder was a member of the Swedish Nazi party.
B
No—
A
Oh yeah, look it up.
B looks it up.
B
Shit
He actually was.
A
I know he was.
Look I’m not saying I buy it 100%. But there’s shreds of evidence. And if that’s happening, that’s way more of a threat than anything going on with Russia.
B
And the mainstream media wouldn’t print it—
A
No way. Think about all the IKEA ads you get on those websites. They don’t want to ruffle those feathers.
B
Totally.
Damn.
You wouldn’t think that’s real, but it kind of fits.
A
It’s not real. I just made the whole thing up.
…
B
That was fucked up.
A
I’m just proving how easy it is to start something. Pull together the right things, anything starts to fit. We could blast out #IKEAUnderground right now, and we could get a ton of reasonable people to believe it. Maybe even provoke a multinational, megabillions corporation into making a statement. Without going anywhere. On a Thursday morning.
Now that’s real.
…
…
I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to make you sound dumb.
B
Still hurts to feel gullible.
A
I know.
…
Not gonna lie, it was kind of fun to make up though.
B
Yeah it was pretty fire.
…
Would you actually wanna do it?
A
What?
B
Start it. We could put the conspiracy out there.
…
A
...why?
B
For like a social experiment. Research, or something.
A just stares.
B
It was a joke.
…
I was joking.
…
Nevermind.
B goes back to their phone. A stays looking at B for a second, then back to their phone.