Why do 1 million people believe the Earth is flat?

A silent, blue planet.

It has been 60 years since humans first viewed this planet from the sky with their naked eyes.

But on this spherical planet, there are still many people who stubbornly believe that the earth is actually flat, and that the spherical earth is a lie and an ulterior conspiracy.

According to survey data, there may be millions of Americans and perhaps tens of millions of Brazilians who believe in the flat earth, not to mention other countries - looking through the Flat Earth Society website, believers come from all over the world.

This is a new series from the Visual Perception Institute, The Conspiracy Theory Anatomy Project.

In the first issue, let’s study the Earth conspiracy in the eyes of flat-Earth believers.

Ancient humans had many imaginations about the earth. This is what the Chinese had:

This is from ancient India:

This is the ancient Russian:

After the navigator Magellan completed his circumnavigation of the world, the proof that the earth is a sphere was confirmed.

However, not everyone is superstitious about authority.

Samuel Rowbotham, a 19th century British doctor and inventor, was an interesting soul with many interests, and he invented this train carriage that never tipped over.

He also believed that he would never fail because his motto was: If you can't see it with your own eyes, you can't believe it.

It was this half-baked guy who single-handedly elevated the flat earth theory from ancient superstition to the level of modern obsession.

Because his philosophy is that you have to see it with your own eyes to believe it, he put forward the classic proposition of the modern flat Earth theory: unless you see a curve, don't believe that the earth is a sphere. We can abbreviate it as: Don't believe in the sphere unless you see the curve.

He claimed that he had done an experiment: looking at a ship in the distance on a canal in eastern England, if the earth was a sphere, the ship would not be visible when it went far away, but he could still see it after the ship sailed 6 miles, so the earth had no curve at all. But the actual situation was that this guy did not consider the refraction of the air on the water surface at all.

There is another theoretical basis for the theory of the earth being spherical, which was proposed by the ancient Greek scientist Eratosthenes. He found that in the southern city of Cyene, an upright wooden stick cast no shadow under the midday sun, while in the northern city of Alexandria, there was. There is only one truth: the earth is a sphere. He also calculated the diameter of the earth based on this, which is roughly the same as the number we calculated today.

Rowbotham strongly refuted this superstitious theory of the ancients and proposed: If the sun is very close to the earth, for example, only a few thousand miles away, wouldn't it also cause this phenomenon on a plane?

In short, Rowbotham laid the basic idea of ​​the flat Earth theory: the earth is a plate, the North Pole is the center of the plate, and the South Pole is the edge of the plate, towering high like an ice wall, preventing things on the earth, such as sea water, from leaking out.

As for the changes of day and night, the sun and the moon are like two big light bulbs, rotating alternately on the earth.

In 1849, he published a 16-page pamphlet, "Astronomical Exploration: The Earth is Not Spherical", which he later expanded into a monumental work, openly declaring war on the mainstream spherical theory. He spent decades traveling around Great Britain, giving speeches, debating with scientists, and telling people not to believe in the deceptions of reactionary scientists, but to trust their own eyes.

You should know that there are always many people who are unhappy with scientists. Who gives you the courage to point fingers at the masses just because you read a little more? At this time, someone says that you, an ordinary person, are the real wise man, and your eyes are more powerful than the research of scientists. Who wouldn't be flattered after hearing this?

Thus, Rowbotham succeeded in attracting a wave of followers.

A man named William Carpenter wrote "100 Evidences That the Earth Is Not a Sphere" in 1885.

In 1887, an American named MC Flanders debated with scientists in New York and invited five citizens to be referees. In the end, the five wise and fair referees unanimously ruled that Flanders won and that the scientists were all liars and scum.

The story of the flat earth movement has to do with an energetic woman, Mrs. Blunt. After Rowbotham's death, this big sister upgraded the flat earth movement, founded the "Cosmic Research Society" in 1893, and published the magazine "Review of the Non-Spherical Terrestrial Body", thus becoming the second generation of the flat earth theory.

By the 1950s, although the flat earth theory was still lingering in some religious communities, it was in imminent danger of collapse due to the advancement of science and technology and the popularization of the theory through education and the media.

The modern flat earth theory proposed by Robertson, the first generation of the flat earth theory, that if you don't see the curve, you don't believe in the ball, but it has also encountered severe challenges.

In 1935, the U.S. military used a balloon to rise to an altitude of 22 kilometers and photographed the curved outline of the earth.

In 1949, a partial photo of the Earth was taken from space for the first time using a rocket.

Every beautiful curve was slapping Robbotham in the face across time and space.

The Flat Earth movement called for a new generation of heroes, and a hero emerged: Samuel Shenton.

He initially suspected that the curve of the earth was not a curve at all, but a deformation caused by the lens. This kind of deformation is common in early optical lenses, but today, even mobile phone lenses have been solved through good optical design and algorithm correction, such as the latest release of... Hehe, there are no ads.

In short, the question of lens deformation is not very strong, because the public is not interested in scientific terms such as optics, and it is also difficult to explain. So Shenton threw out a brief and crude question 2.0: This is all fabricated by the US authorities in order to cover up the fact that the earth is flat!

At this point, the flat earth theory has moved beyond the low-level interest of spitting at scientists and has officially been upgraded to the conspiracy theory stage.

Taking advantage of this wave of theoretical innovation, Shenton founded the International Flat Earth Society in 1956, and deservedly became the third-generation theoretical leader of the flat Earth theory.

During this period, the United States and the Soviet Union launched a space race, and photos of the earth were upgraded from various parts to various angles, and from close-up shots to distant views of the moon.

Faced with overwhelming evidence, flat-Earthers have no choice but to claim that this was all fabricated by the US and the Soviet Union, and that there is an ulterior conspiracy behind it. Although we don't know what the purpose of this lie that even the Cold War enemies joined forces to create is, it is using lies to oppress people's minds. Think about it, if you believe that the earth is a ball, then you believe whatever the government says? Do you still have the law? Do you still have reason?

Not only are the photos of the earth fake, the space program is also fake, the moon landing is fake, and the video was shot in a studio. These are all "scientific conspiracies to deceive the public." Leaders of all countries in the world know that the earth is flat, but they are collectively concealing it.

If you don’t believe me, just look at the UN logo which is irrefutable evidence of the flat earth truth.

Well, the Flat Earth theory has developed to such a point that even scientists would be defeated if they were to take a look at it. The only problem is that there are so many issues to debate back and forth that believers will get tired of it.

So by the beginning of this century, the Flat Earth Society was on its way out, just like the belief that one can receive cosmic energy by placing an aluminum pot on one's head, and it became a joke buried in the garbage dump of human idiocy.

However, suddenly, like a spring breeze, social networks came to the believers of the flat earth theory.

Since 2015, a large number of videos promoting the flat earth theory and earth conspiracy theories have appeared on YouTube. "Horizon: Under the Dome", "200 Proofs that the Earth Is Not a Rotating Sphere", "The Truth About the Flat Earth Preached by Pastors"... When these sensational and bizarre videos attract your attention, the recommendation mechanism starts: the more videos you watch, the more similar videos will be bombarded in front of you. The more you watch, the more similar content will be recommended to you.

This recommendation mechanism quickly creates an information illusion for a person, making him believe that there are indeed many conspiracies about the earth and that there is indeed a lot of evidence that the earth is flat. This person is shrouded in a web of similar information, that is, trapped in an information cocoon.

Moreover, conspiracy theories give them a particularly strong skill point: being unconvincing.

One believer said that after he began to believe in the Earth conspiracy theory, his friends tried to make him realize that he was wrong, "but every piece of evidence they presented I thought was fake and part of a conspiracy. I felt that my friends were not smart enough to understand that they were wrong."

As a result, the number of conspiracy theorists began to surge.

Well-known flat-Earth UP hosts we can see on Youtube today include Mark Sargent, a famous flat-Earth UP, with 100,000 subscribers. His first video about the flat Earth has 1.19 million views. So far this year, he has updated more than 300 episodes of the "Horizon" series alone. Rob Skiba has over 200,000 subscribers. Celebrate Truth has 140,000 subscribers...

In 2017, a Public Policy Polling survey showed that about 1% of Americans believed that the earth is flat. 1% of 300 million people means 1 million people. In 2018, a YouGov survey of young people aged 18 to 24 in the United States was even more worrying. Only two-thirds of people were certain that the earth was round, and 2% firmly believed that the earth was flat.

Moreover, Flat Earth believers also claim that there are still many people who have not come out of the closet and publicly express their "beliefs."

Although most lay believers have a low level of education, there are also entrepreneurs and scholars, and well-known figures include singer BoB, basketball player Kyrie Irving, model Tila Tequila, football player Sammy Watkins, etc. There is even a doctor from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, geophysicist Afonso de Vasconcelos.

What’s interesting is that while Flat Earthers were using the Internet to expand their territory, they never expected that someone would be using magic to fight magic from within.

Here we have to talk about Robbie Davidson, the founder of the Flat Earth Congress, who is also the founder of the "Celebrate Truth" YouTube account we mentioned earlier.

In 2017, he founded the first International Flat Earth Congress.

Although both believe in the flat earth, Davidson said: We are different from the Flat Earth Society. The Flat Earth Society is controlled by the government. They are the enemy who has infiltrated the Flat Earth movement and are dedicated to outputting false information, making the Flat Earth movement more and more absurd and outrageous, so that the people will not believe us.

The historic Flat Earth Society has no way of defending itself against this accusation. After all, the creed of Flat Earthers is to believe in nothing.

How far will this obsession of doubting everything develop?

The aforementioned Flat Earth celebrity, Sutterkin, had a girlfriend named Patricia (the last three letters of Patricia are highlighted). Hey, CIA, this is irrefutable evidence that they are the running dogs of the US government.

Finally, let’s talk about the people who are truly dedicated to the flat-Earth belief.

In 2016, an adventurer named Crazy Mike, who once set a Guinness World Record for speeding a car, began to believe in the Flat Earth theory. He raised money through the Flat Earth Society, built a rocket using primitive methods, and announced that he would fly to an altitude of 1,500 meters to prove that the earth is a plate. If that didn't work, he would fly to an altitude of 120 kilometers.

In 2018, in the California desert, a homemade rocket successfully...crashed.

In February 2020, another attempt was made, but the arrow failed and the man died.

They still uphold the spirit of Rowbotham, the father of modern flat earth theory, who believed that he would not believe in the ball unless he saw the curve.

There is also a group of flat-Earthers who are planning to find another piece of evidence for a flat Earth, which is the ice wall surrounding the Earth. This great voyage is scheduled for 2020, but today we searched the Internet and could not find any further information about this matter. We only saw an article published by a website that focuses on using fake news for satire and entertainment purposes:

“

One day in November 2020, the flat earth expert Drake da Gama (there is a Portuguese navigator named Vasco da Gama) led a three-person expedition team on a fishing boat and finally reached what they called the ice wall. But, unfortunately, none of them wore masks, so they couldn't go to the souvenir shop to buy souvenirs as proof.

”

Well, this is the story of flat earthers, or earth conspiracy theories. You will find that they have fallen into an extreme skepticism, completely denying all existing human knowledge, and only believing in naked eye and intuitive observation. When observation conflicts with the existing knowledge system, they do not try to understand more advanced cognitive tools such as observation methods and mathematical calculations, but instead say that all of this is a conspiracy that cannot be proven or disproven.

Finally, the targeted feeding of information on social networks has caused the continued spread of this conspiracy theory.

This is the first issue in the series of conspiracy theory dissection attempts by the Visual Knowledge Institute. Follow us, like and collect it, and we will update the next issue as soon as possible.

References:

[1]Flat Earthers, and the Rise of Science Denial in America, Newsweek

[2]Inside the Flat Earth Conference, Where the World's Oldest Conspiracy Theory Is Hot Again, The Daily Beast

[3]We went to a flat-Earth convention and found a lesson about the future of post-truth life, The Colorado Sun

[4]The flat-Earth conspiracy is spreading around the globe. Does it hide a darker core?CNN

[5]Only Two-Thirds Of American Millennials Believe The Earth Is Round, Forbes

[6]To 11 million Brazilians, the Earth is flat, AFP

[7]Flat-earther blasts off in homemade rocket in bid to reassure himself world is shaped 'like a Frisbee', Independent

[8]Dear doubters, BoB wants to prove the Earth is flat once and for all, CNN

[9]Flat earthers finally reach fabled 'Ice Wall' at edge of planet but unable to enter gift shop without face masks, The News Elepant

[10] Mick West, A Brief History of Conspiracy, April 2020, Beijing United Publishing House

[11] Flat Earth Conference website: https://flatearthconference.com/

[12] Flat Earth Society website: https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/

Source: Vision TV