Think You’ve Heard the Stupidest Thing Ever? I Disagree. Witness the Woke’s New Condemnation of Ikea

So there you are, thinking you’ve heard of the stupidest thing possible. But then I swoop in with this.

Do you appreciate affordable, well-designed furniture? Are you a fan of modern, minimalist decor? Do you hanker for a hunka Ikea?

Well, your favorite Swedish slinger of Lingonberry soda is in trouble.

In fact, its worse than you may imagine. The assembly-required home goods haven recently had the nerve to…**Trigger Warning**…serve peas.

Yes — it’s that horrible.

Peas, I said.

Calm yourself…

It all started when the backer of the Billy Bookcase decided to be a jerk and serve similar chicken.

Jerk chicken, in case you didn’t know, is a marinated Caribbean dish, and the maker of your favorite fake-fur rug paired it with white rice and the aforementioned panic-inducing spherical seeds.

You see, Ikea should be sensitive to the fact that the Scotch-bonnet-peppered meat isn’t traditionally teamed with dadgum green peas! It’s supposed to be kidney beans in coconut milk, ya neanderthals:

This is IKEA’s jerk chicken and rice and peas and no I’m not eating it pic.twitter.com/BFPJ1CWBmR

— . (@Themlotsdad) September 9, 2019

Shame on Ikea for feigning a penchant for diversity.

Let the outrage begin!

This was as simple as Googling a pic, but pretending to be a diverse company was more important than getting it right. https://t.co/7tkk65GI9i

— BeingBDub (@bebe4121) September 15, 2019

Yet another example of a brand with no diversity around the table. IKEA…….. https://t.co/ukOU8aTLKX

— Sonia Meggie (@SoniaMeggie) September 16, 2019

It’s shameful cultural appropriation, and they didn’t even hire any Caribbeans to guide them in their theft:

It’s literally white rice and garden peas @IKEA did you even Google it?!

If you were confused, beans are called peas in the Caribbean.

This is what happens when you try and cash in on a culture with no input from that culture whatsoever.https://t.co/Ste2tLFs6l

— Eleanor Langford (@eleanormia) September 14, 2019

As you can see above, the store’s repented.

How could those white people have ever thought this was okay??

Someone please tell me why ikea thought it was ok to make “jerk chicken and rice and peas”. Dear white people: SEE CARIBBEAN PEOPLE TINGS AND LEAVE IT ALONE

— Moonchild Jae (@jaerobinit) September 19, 2019

At least one person defended the home of the Klippan loveseat, Färgrik mug, Riktig Ögla curtain rings, Flärdfull candle, Knutstorp chair, and Ödmjuk teapot:

Extremely problematic take: Ikea should be able to serve something they call “jerk chicken” without getting canceled for it, even if that dish is bad https://t.co/Mk6w1Y5SjQ

— Kevin Glass (@KevinWGlass) September 16, 2019

The store can use the support; it just can’t seem to catch a break with the Painfully Conscious — Ikea even made CheatSheet’s list of “5 Stores Where You Should Not Buy Furniture.”

The SuperWoke list excoriated the furniture retailer for having the nerve to:

• Use wood
• Not be located as pervasively as McDonalds

See for yourself:

However, the larger concerns around Ikea have more to do with environmental and other costs, not necessarily the furniture itself. “Can we afford to keep shopping at places where an item’s price reflects only a fraction of its societal costs?” one Atlantic column asked in 2009.

Seven years and counting after the article was published, it appears we can. But it doesn’t necessarily mean we should. For one, IKEA has pushed many transportation costs onto the consumers themselves, likely without them even thinking about it. The average consumer drives 50 miles round trip to make it to the assembly-required mecca, often far away from city centers so the business can avoid higher taxes. At the time the article was written, the retailer was also the third-largest consumer of wood, used in the particleboard now ubiquitous with the brand.

But the bigger issue, as the Atlantic points out, is that the cheaper furniture invites us not to invest or repair the items. When a bookcase breaks or a dresser becomes unusable, we throw it away instead of repairing it, like we would an heirloom armoire. It might get recycled, or it might not. Either way, we’re using more natural resources without adding lasting value. For those reasons, “IKEA is the least sustainable retailer on the planet,” said Wig Zamore, a Massachusetts environmental activist who worked with IKEA and supports some of the company’s regional green initiatives.

Did the person who wrote that article stop to think that perhaps people drive far to get to Ikea because they love it so much?

Perhaps the author could’ve also considered that if you open a store in New Jersey, it’ far from New York; if you open one in New York, it’s far from New Jersey.

All places are close to some things and far from others.

Oh well, who needs reason when you’ve got an outrageous signaling of virtue at hand?

I’m keen on the Swedist store, evil Nazi peas notwithstanding.

The next time you’re there, take my advice: getcha a softserve vanilla cone. Those things are delicious.

-ALEX

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