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Reports of Unsolicited seeds being shipped from China

BringBackSonics

BringBackSonics

Member
Oct 27, 2017
45,217
Seattle
Is anyone else hearing this from their local agriculture departments? Apparently people are getting sent seeds that they did not order advertised as jewelry. According to the USDA, these seeds could be invasive and harm our local plants and animals. Any concerns about ecological sabotage?

www.facebook.com

Washington State Department of Agriculture

UPDATED to reflect new reporting instructions! https://agr.wa.gov/about-wsda/news-and-media-relations/news-releases?article=31411 Today we received reports of people receiving seeds in the mail from...
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com

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stumblebee

stumblebee

The Fallen
Jan 22, 2018
2,504
This is probably brushing. It's a friendlier scam where a company uses your name and address to leave a fake 5-star review for their online stores, and they send you some worthless shit.
 
jph139

jph139

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,379
My guess is that it lines up with "random junk items" that people get sometimes, particularly after they've purchased something overseas - occasionally you'll get stuff like, I dunno, sunglasses, cheap watches, that sort of thing, from Chinese companies. The logic being that they can report it as a "sale" even if you haven't bought any thing, and use that to pump up their metrics. Same logic as magazines continuing to ship to you after you cancel - your value as a subscriber is higher than the monetary cost of sending you the item.

The fact it's biomatter and not, you know, actual cheap fake jewelry is weird, though.
 
Speevy

Speevy

Member
Oct 26, 2017
19,352
The only way to be sure that they are safe is to have Donald Trump ingest them.
 
kubev

kubev

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,533
California
Well, as long as they're not red and don't reference a "trick" to get them to sprout, I'm not too creeped out just yet.
 
Charpunk

Charpunk

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,628
The best buy I worked at did this to another best buy, only it was hundreds of copies of destiny on PS4.
 
nampad

nampad

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,238
Hope the state department can clarify this soon and report back.
We'll probably never hear what this was about though.
 
OP
OP
BringBackSonics

BringBackSonics

Member
Oct 27, 2017
45,217
Seattle
I know when I used to travel to Korea and back you couldn't bring in seeds or plants from Asia due to concerns of it being invasive and fucking with our plants, but this would be some strange new form of sabotage.
 
Tagyhag

Tagyhag

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,500
jph139 said:
My guess is that it lines up with "random junk items" that people get sometimes, particularly after they've purchased something overseas - occasionally you'll get stuff like, I dunno, sunglasses, cheap watches, that sort of thing, from Chinese companies. The logic being that they can report it as a "sale" even if you haven't bought any thing, and use that to pump up their metrics. Same logic as magazines continuing to ship to you after you cancel - your value as a subscriber is higher than the monetary cost of sending you the item.

The fact it's biomatter and not, you know, actual cheap fake jewelry is weird, though.
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This is my guess as well.

If it was biological warfare, they wouldn't give it to random ass americans. They'd give it to agents that they have here, come on people. We Americans are stupid but we are also nosy and will post about these seeds in social media.
 
Prison_mike

Prison_mike

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,433
If I received mystery seeds I would 100% plant them... this thread has shown me that i'm in the minority on that one
 
HammerOfThor

HammerOfThor

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,860
Unless this is widespread, this seems more like a scam where someone ordered something, and the person in China shipped random junk to a random address just to get past any PayPal holdings and show tracking.
 
davepoobond

davepoobond

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,611
www.squackle.com
Titik

Titik

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,490
This is similar to you cumming in a plastic bag and sending it randomly to people. Lol.
 
Titik

Titik

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,490
Also more people are also home gardening now. My local garden shop has a two hour wait to get in, all day everyday. Granted it's one of the more famous ones that stocks rare houseplants at affordable prices.
 
Orb

Orb

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,465
USA
HammerOfThor said:
Unless this is widespread, this seems more like a scam where someone ordered something, and the person in China shipped random junk to a random address just to get past any PayPal holdings and show tracking.
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Please stop with your reasonable explanations. It has Chinese writing on it so it's definitely ecological terrorism.
 
Xaszatm

Xaszatm

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,903
This...ok this thread feels like straight up racial panic. It feels like racism against the Chinese by fearmongering the idea that China is doing biological warfare against Americans. As someone who is Asian (Burmese) this thread makes me extremely uncomfortable.
 
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