Even if you had Google Mapped your way to Roberta's,?????? ?????? ??????? ??????? a famous pizza restaurant in Brooklyn, it makes sense that you'd miss it on first pass. The place looks like any old storefront, just a wall and a door, nothing special. There are no giant signs that let you know some of the best pizza in New York City can be found right inside.
In other words, it's a restaurant in Brooklyn. I live in Brooklyn and, let me tell you, I have walked by many a place wondering why in the hell they can't just put a damn sign out front with huge letters so I don't spend five minutes standing outside, making sure I'm not about to barge into the wrong place and scan for my friends who are actually down the street.
SEE ALSO: 'Pizzagate' — The deranged conspiracy theory that jumped from hashtag to IRL violenceThis kind of facade is so typical of Brooklyn eateries that it's become something of a cliche, and yet this "evidence" has been repeated again and again by people convinced it is a sign that Roberta's is part of a child-trafficking cult tied to Hillary Clinton, a discredited story that's been dubbed "pizzagate."
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These wild theories are being thrown around on the Reddit-like site, Voat, where "pizzagate" truthers have migrated since Reddit banned their thread on its platform in late November.
The people who have gathered there to discuss Roberta's have definitely not spent much time around hipsters and Brooklyn aesthetics, clearly not used to the juxtaposition of an ordinary front with good food and nice-looking cutlery.
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"The prices and everything else lead one to believe it's an 'elegant' establishment...and yet. Not," wrote one person.
"Could you imagine that highly influent, powerful politician go to a restaurant with such an entrance?," wrote another.
Yet another person went on a short little sarcastic rant in which he seems to believe himself clever: "If you're just a regular person trying to make a living by running a pizzeria, it makes perfect sense to have the outside of your building look like a crack den, and then have a menu geared towards upscale clientele."
To this person's credit, he seemed to rethink his sarcasm after someone replied to his outburst by explaining a bit about hipster Brooklyn and saying, "you guys aren't new yorkers."
Which, I mean, neither am I, really. Neither are many people who live in Brooklyn. But most people (let us hope) don't walk by a place such as Roberta's and immediately leap from "that place looks shabby" to "that place is part of a child-trafficking ring." Yet this is the type of "evidence" that's run amok with pizzagate, and has spilled into the physical world in frightening ways.
Pizzagate truthers have recently threatened Roberta's employees with phone calls during which one person said "You are going to bleed and be tortured," and police have increased patrols around the neighborhood, according to DNAinfo.
And Roberta's is not the first pizza joint to find itself faced with a real threat spawned from a very baseless story. Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., was visited by a gunman on Sunday who fired at least one shot into the restaurant's floor. The man, following his arrest, said he'd driven to the restaurant from North Carolina after reading about Comet's alleged (and untrue) involvement in a child sex slave ring tied to the Clinton campaign, a claim that originally stemmed from communication between Clinton officials and restaurant employees about a fundraising event. Thinking he was going to rescue suffering children, he instead wound up somewhat disillusioned with his fruitless pursuit, telling The New York Timesthat he regrets "how I handled the situation."
Maybe the spillover from online conspiracies to real-world threats ends there, but pizzagate truthers have already begun to name other restaurants as their modern witch hunt continues, putting those restaurants just a few dozen up-votes away from experiencing a very real life threat.