I kind of feel like flat earth thing started out with people trolling, but a number of morons believed it to be true and now it’s just trolls leading the idiots.
That’s actually exactly how it started. 4chan started memeing about flat earth, pretending to take it seriously. But then the idiots found it, and Poe’s Law fused with the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
The idiots couldn’t tell it was sarcasm, and thought it was serious. Simultaneously, they thought they had stumbled into a huge conspiracy. So then the flat earth stuff took on a life of its own, and the conspiracy became self-sustaining as idiots began a positive feedback loop.
At that point, 4chan took a step back to watch, and just sort of let go of the reins. Because at a certain point, reality is more funny than any memes you can come up with, and this was the peak of entertainment for the people who started it as a joke. Seeing their joke take on a life of its own was better than anything they could have imagined.
It’s like the first kid who came up with the “Marilyn Manson had ribs removed so he could suck his own dick” lie, hearing it from someone from another school for the first time; The excitement would be unparalleled, as they realize just how large the joke has become.
Damn 4chan existed in 1956 when the Flat Earth Society was started? Is there anything 4channers won’t try to take credit for?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs#Flat_Earth_Society
I mean, it could still have been responsible for popularising it.
Isn’t that how Qanon happened too?
People would post ridiculous theories and see if anyone believed it. Sadly they did.
I clicked on the hyperlink with great anticipation to find a link to the Wikipedia page for Poe’s Law, the Dunning-Kruger effect, the history of the flat earth conspiracy, or an article about it. Didn’t expect what I got but I can’t say I was disappointed.
I hate that whenever I check in to see how flat earthers are doing they’ve somehow grown in size
Like… Why
They have to do all this shoddy crackhead troll math to prove how something like timezones can work on a flat earth but then it completely invalidates the shoddy crackhead troll math they did to prove how gravity works on a flat earth.
At the end of the day people love being in the “in” group that knows everyone else is blinded by falsehoods and they’re above it all and “in the know.” Religion has been that for a lot of people in the past as well as in current times, pretty much every high control group is developed due to this mentality as well.
People aren’t rational beings - we mostly operate on emotions, fueled by chemical reactions to certain events and sensations and experiences.
Most flat-earthers probably don’t care about any of the “facts” or “explanations” they hear or spread or study or come up with - first and foremost, it’s a community to them, a place where they feel like they belong and such. For their own reasons, they allow the obviously positive emotions they experience there to outweigh any of the absurd they may honestly recognize internally, but never admit or voice out or truly give in to.
I think I’ve seen several somewhat lengthy videos on YouTube on the matter, explaining how and why that happens. It’s a mechanism similar to other conspiracy theories and communities around them, as well as various cults - vulnerable, susceptible people are the ones to usually to end up in these because they’re reeled in one way or the other.
I’m not saying the theory isn’t nonsense, of course; only that the theory itself is probably only a facade for a way for some people to experience connection with others, a sense of belonging, some shared activities, something along these lines. That’s why you shouldn’t be surprised that their numbers grow or that they can easily ignore facts and science - it simply isn’t about facts or science, but emotions and feelings.
I’d argue this is at the root of all fringe theories and why they all seem to attract the same archetypes of people.
We are living in an era of history where long traditional societal norms are in rapid turnover. The “old ways of doing things” are dying off, and the new ways that replaced them are often a revolving door. Very little in the world at any given time feels stable and secure.
Institutional trust is breaking down. Interacting with the world in good faith is increasingly leaving you open to abuse by bad actors. Why trust anything, then? Trust is for rubes. You’re an intelligent, free, and independent thinker. You should question anything and everything that is simply handed down to you. Especially if it is unintuitive. To not do so is to be railroaded.
And it’s that last part in particular that identifies the most fertile candidates for a good conspiracy theory. Like, is the Earth round? It looks flat to me. Essentially all evidence you can throw at the notion falls either into at least one of, “I witnessed it, trust me bro”, “hope you like letters in your math equations” (people who can’t intuit math won’t be impressed by any proofs), or “you can do this experiment at home, you just need <esoteric setup>/<rare equipment> so you can watch for <nearly imperceptible effect>”. A depressing sum of people in the world will remain unconvinced by any demonstration that isn’t simple, intuitive, and of an overwhelmingly obvious magnitude. Complex answers or answers that observe tiny effects are scams.
And just like that, we’ve abandoned rational thought and replaced it with trust-averse thought. We’ve invented the notion that the world is a hostile place where anyone trying to hand you something is an agenda-pusher trying to extract something of value from you. All of the world’s major institutions are shams designed to keep you complacent in some sort of world order that is merely using you. To participate in it is to further your enslavement.
In that hellish headspace, conspiracy theories almost feel like a haven. Finally! A group of real thinkers who share your frustrations about the world! The underground movement working to free us all from the hostile system!
Except, no. At best it’s just a bunch of people who are wrong indulging in a little harmless escapism. At worst it’s a mass of people getting Immanuel Goldstien’d by the very kind of well-spoken swindler they’re breaking their collective backs bending over to avoid in the first place. Regardless the form it takes, my hypothesis remains: proliferation of conspiracy theories is merely a symptom of a lack of trust.
why
Because it’s a business, there are people out there profiting from it and so it keeps growing
That’s the usual explanation that’s given, but how do they even profit? What do you sell to those idiots? (I suppose that since they’re idiots you can just sell them pretty much anything)
Probably the YouTube views alone make for a pretty penny.
It allows stupid people to have a community where they feel smart, and that they know something most people don’t.
I bet that’s not something they are used to
Flat earthers ain’t never touched a globe out here like “yeah, Greenland is about the same size as the continental united states and most of northern Africa”
Everything of flat earth theories breaks down as soon as the southern hemisphere gets involved.
I’m willing to bet the reason it’s like that is because there isn’t a single flat earther outside the same map
That community doesn’t have any posts, what map is it?
Huh weird. It’s these maps. Random stuff that always results in the same distributions as if something underlying was driving the scores.
Mooooom, can I move to Canada?
Regardless of what the propaganda maps say it really isn’t that much better in Canada.
