world · 2 min read
200 countries, 9,015 cities, and one college town in Texas
In 90 days orders went out to virtually every country that exists. The third biggest country here is not Germany or the UK. It is Malaysia.
by Arthur
published September 21, 2026
Every fake order has a real destination. You type your city, we geocode it, and an imaginary parcel leaves China heading for that dot on the map, complete with delays, customs, and a courier who occasionally gets lost. That leaves a by-product: a map of where wanting shows up, country by country.
Over the last 90 days that came to 200 countries and 9,015 distinct cities. Two hundred is essentially the whole list of countries on the planet, and we only speak 14 languages.
The third place nobody predicted
| Country | Orders |
|---|---|
| 🇺🇸 United States | 7,921 |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil | 4,638 |
| 🇲🇾 Malaysia | 1,126 |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | 958 |
| 🇹🇼 Taiwan | 845 |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 843 |
| 🇨🇳 China | 684 |
| 🇮🇳 India | 656 |
| 🇨🇦 Canada | 654 |
| 🇲🇽 Mexico | 638 |
Base: orders with a geocoded destination, 90 days to September 20, 2026.
Malaysia has 34 million people and sits ahead of Germany, the UK and Canada. Taiwan, with 23 million, ties the UK. Those two have something in common: they were the last languages we shipped, Malay and traditional Chinese. Speaking someone's language did not just add comfort, it added volume.
And then there is College Station
| City | Orders |
|---|---|
| New York | 3,595 |
| São Paulo | 1,148 |
| College Station, Texas | 535 |
| Hong Kong | 457 |
| Rio de Janeiro | 247 |
| Taipei | 211 |
| Kuala Lumpur | 207 |
| Singapore | 183 |
New York shows up another 329 times under a second spelling, because the geocoder returns the name in the buyer's language. We did not merge the two rows.
New York and São Paulo make sense. The third city on the list has 120,000 residents and is home to Texas A&M. A mid-sized college town in Texas sends more orders than Hong Kong, Taipei or Kuala Lumpur.
Fake shopping is not a big-city habit. It is a habit of bored people with good internet, and a university is the densest supply of both.
It is the same explanation at both ends of the map. The top is where the people are, and the middle of the table is where somebody dropped the link in the right group chat. One campus finding the site in a single week beats an entire country finding it slowly.
The part we still cannot answer is the tail: 200 countries means orders are coming from places none of our languages get close to. If you ordered from one of them, write and tell us how you found this. That is literally the missing data point.