“Clearly, the moon is fake and gay”

This is a Triumph.

Birbs aren’t real.

But then how do we get delicious cheese ?

Can’t land on a lie.

I wonder are there flat earthers who are also simultaneously NOT moon landing deniers? Or is that like a prerequisite.

One thing that gave me a different perspective on this is that conspiracy theorists tend to believe a whole load of conspiracy theories. And the conspiracy theories that people believe follow certain patterns: they can be falsifiable, but not so easily falsifiable you can’t come up with some arguments that take real work to debunk. And while they obviously contradict mainstream beliefs, this combination alone is not enough. Basically, someone needs to plant the idea for it to spread: most people aren’t deciding for themselves that everyone is lying about the Earth being round, they get it from someone else.

I think all this tells us that it’s not really about the facts. There’s a cognitive bias at play here which engenders belief in things which enable the believer to feel like they’re in on a secret and are therefore one above the common person.

Probably for some of them (e.g. the one making videos). Definitely not all of them.

Believing something wrong is not really a reason to hate someone though. We all have varying degrees of wrong beliefs - if anyone thinks they don’t, well … that’s an excellent example.

Do not underestimate a human’s ability to delude themselves or, more importantly in this case (in my opinion) buy into being part of a social group. Flat earthers have a pretty active social community going online and some people will absolutely buy into the things they say just to be a part of it. And this isn’t some ‘I’ll just pretend to so they’ll talk to me’ thing, they will convince themselves they’re true believers. The belief in a flat earth is often downwind from the belief in other conspiracies, things that may be pretty benign or just outright true (Tuskegee experiment, MKultra etc), putting Flat Earth on a path from the benign to the deeply harmful, like Pizzagate or raging antisemitism.

In all this, community is extremely important. If a person loses this access to the community, their beliefs may turn somewhat more mainstream. We see this with cults too, though I’m not saying Flat Earthers are a cult by any means.

Anyway, there are Flat Earth books, podcasts, YouTube channels, conferences, you name it. There’s a real dedication to showing everyone in the community just how much you bought into the thing. I think approaching this from the standpoint of ‘this is a personal failure for the one believer’ doesn’t provide us with any answers about the ‘why’ of it all, nor will it necessarily help anyone with leaving such a worldview.

Anyway. My two cents. The best way to make sure someone leaves a cult or a toxic worldview is to allow them to be part of communities that aren’t that cult or that worldview. The more insular you force them to be, the more insular they will become. Within reason of course and especially with cults, within what’s safe for everyone.

Sorry, long ass post. Tl:dr, they don’t necessarily believe the earth is flat, they believe that they believe it because that allows them to join a social group.

There are of course moon landing deniers who legit believe that. Where would you put them on the spectrum of stupid belief systems when compared to say flat earthers or sovereign citizens?

Moon landing denial predates the internet, whereas the others I don’t think so. (Unless in the case of flat earth you go back far enough and count the illiterate and uneducated masses.)

You can also add JFK and 9/11 conspiracies to that spectrum. Though I’d say those are much more “mainstream” as conspiracy theories go.

If engagement farming is diverting profits from a big tech corporation, is that actually a grift or is it based?

(I suppose it stirs up distrust in anyone who sees it - dumb people stop trusting their education and smart people stop trusting other people)

My favorite part about their map is that, among the many other ways to test the Earth is round, they could just fly from Joburg to Perth or Sydney on a private charter plane, and when the flight time isn’t 37 hours, it would only be possible on a globe.

Oh it is explained, though, but not consistently. I have heard explanations of that the light refraction makes the sun look lower when it moves away, to a point where its visibility is hidden by the horizon, like a mirrage of the sky. Another explanation is that the surface of the earth isn’t flat, but bulges slightly, like a dome, making the sun disappear behind the dome every day. I’m sure there are more explanations as well.

The thing about flat earth theories is that they always have an answer for whatever you throw at them. They are so committed to their idea, that they will invent reasonings on the spot which become more and more convoluted - often in conflict with other parts of their theory.

I saw an animation once where the sun sort of dipped and peaked above and below the world disc horizon. Total mental gymnastics

It’s called perspective and the vanishing point /s

I’ve also heard a fucking flat rectangle theory.

The explanation is that light is affected by gravity to a much greater degree than in conventional physics.

How do they explain the polar night at the North Pole then?

And the Wall of course blocking us sheeple from all the great lands beyond. How would they know? Easy, pulled it right out of their unwashed (because washing your behind is so gay) arses.

The moon is hollow, we know this because it rings like a bell when you hit it. There is no other possible explanation for this, certainly not one that’s actually more interesting than my unfounded assertion about the moon being made by aliens or whatever