I’m fascinated by flat-earthers. Of all the wacky conspiracy-theory things out there (apart, possibly, from the “moon landings were faked” crew), it seems the most pointless.
Specifically: ultimately, does it matter? If the government are eating children in the basement of a pizza parlour, that’s terrible. If they’re polluting the skies with mind-altering chemicals in trails behind planes, that’s a scandal. And if they’re making up some nonsense about the world getting hotter to try to get us to drive electric cars or something, well that’s awful too. 😉
But I’m struggling to see why it matters if Australia is, in reality, actually about 40,000km from Chile instead of 12,000km. How does this cause anyone harm? Antarctica is a fictional place… does it matter? How does it make my life worse that people are faking up amazing documentaries about life there? There just doesn’t seem to be any downside of us actually living on a flat earth where there’s a massive global conspiracy to convince us we live on a globe.
Consider: if I told you that you’ve got to today years old but your whole life you’ve been lied to and it turns out that kiwis don’t really exist – that they’re an invention of the New Zealand tourist board and there’s a global conspiracy to convince you they’re real, including animatronic ones in zoos, fake ones in museums and so on – would you be upset? I think I’d be impressed. I would wonder what else I’d been successfully duped about, but since I’m already pretty certain that the number of things that’s true about is probably quite high I can’t see the need to be worried. The non-existence of kiwis doesn’t give me existential angst, and frankly if the earth is flat… OK, whatever. It’s not like there’s any particular action I take every day or even every year that depends on the earth being a globe particularly.
It just seems a spectacularly pointless thing to obsess about.
If I were more focussed, I’d be working on a way to separate people who fall for it from their money.
The purpose of Internet flat-earthers is rather simple: to add more utter nonsense to online public discourse, and thus undermine people’s ability to trust the Internet as a source of reliable information. This is just another facet of Steve Bannon’s stated strategy to “flood the system with shit.” If the flat-earthers manage to convince a few people, that’s a few more people sucked into backward anti-rational insanity; and if they don’t, that’s more people thinking you can’t trust the information you get on the Internet. Either way, it’s a win for backward bigoted reactionary obscurantists.
@Sonofrojblake – you’d have to break into an already-running grift
I think Hbomberguys’ closing point was a good one – a lot of these people have probably figured out that something is wrong in the world, they just came to the wrong conclusion as to what that is.
I think it’s worth a little concern, because it can pull people away from the real problems, and because that lack of a point that you mention – the absence of a reason why everyone’s being lied to about the shape of the planet, seems to lead people to antisemitism
Also – what Raging Bee said
dangerousbeanssays
There’s definitely a stream of flat earthers/geocentrists who are rejecting the idea that the earth isn’t special, and rejecting ideas of relativity. Look up Dan Olsen’s (Folding Ideas) videos on flat earth.
A flat earth established the earth as a special place in the universe, and therefore that humans are somehow important.
This is why there is an over prevalence of fundamentalists and traditional Catholics compared to what you would expect if it was just some pointless internet noise
When considering why someone believes something it’s always a good idea to ask what emotional need the belief satisfies for them/you. Eg, i want to understand the world and be able to predict it, to see how the world fits into the systems that govern the universe, and also be right. Therefore round Earth
I’m fascinated by flat-earthers. Of all the wacky conspiracy-theory things out there (apart, possibly, from the “moon landings were faked” crew), it seems the most pointless.
Specifically: ultimately, does it matter? If the government are eating children in the basement of a pizza parlour, that’s terrible. If they’re polluting the skies with mind-altering chemicals in trails behind planes, that’s a scandal. And if they’re making up some nonsense about the world getting hotter to try to get us to drive electric cars or something, well that’s awful too. 😉
But I’m struggling to see why it matters if Australia is, in reality, actually about 40,000km from Chile instead of 12,000km. How does this cause anyone harm? Antarctica is a fictional place… does it matter? How does it make my life worse that people are faking up amazing documentaries about life there? There just doesn’t seem to be any downside of us actually living on a flat earth where there’s a massive global conspiracy to convince us we live on a globe.
Consider: if I told you that you’ve got to today years old but your whole life you’ve been lied to and it turns out that kiwis don’t really exist – that they’re an invention of the New Zealand tourist board and there’s a global conspiracy to convince you they’re real, including animatronic ones in zoos, fake ones in museums and so on – would you be upset? I think I’d be impressed. I would wonder what else I’d been successfully duped about, but since I’m already pretty certain that the number of things that’s true about is probably quite high I can’t see the need to be worried. The non-existence of kiwis doesn’t give me existential angst, and frankly if the earth is flat… OK, whatever. It’s not like there’s any particular action I take every day or even every year that depends on the earth being a globe particularly.
It just seems a spectacularly pointless thing to obsess about.
If I were more focussed, I’d be working on a way to separate people who fall for it from their money.
The purpose of Internet flat-earthers is rather simple: to add more utter nonsense to online public discourse, and thus undermine people’s ability to trust the Internet as a source of reliable information. This is just another facet of Steve Bannon’s stated strategy to “flood the system with shit.” If the flat-earthers manage to convince a few people, that’s a few more people sucked into backward anti-rational insanity; and if they don’t, that’s more people thinking you can’t trust the information you get on the Internet. Either way, it’s a win for backward bigoted reactionary obscurantists.
@Sonofrojblake – you’d have to break into an already-running grift
I think Hbomberguys’ closing point was a good one – a lot of these people have probably figured out that something is wrong in the world, they just came to the wrong conclusion as to what that is.
I think it’s worth a little concern, because it can pull people away from the real problems, and because that lack of a point that you mention – the absence of a reason why everyone’s being lied to about the shape of the planet, seems to lead people to antisemitism
Also – what Raging Bee said
There’s definitely a stream of flat earthers/geocentrists who are rejecting the idea that the earth isn’t special, and rejecting ideas of relativity. Look up Dan Olsen’s (Folding Ideas) videos on flat earth.
A flat earth established the earth as a special place in the universe, and therefore that humans are somehow important.
This is why there is an over prevalence of fundamentalists and traditional Catholics compared to what you would expect if it was just some pointless internet noise
When considering why someone believes something it’s always a good idea to ask what emotional need the belief satisfies for them/you. Eg, i want to understand the world and be able to predict it, to see how the world fits into the systems that govern the universe, and also be right. Therefore round Earth