this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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Weird News - Things that make you go 'hmmm'
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How did this dumb-assery even begin? Does anyone know? I mean who woke up one day, decided they knew better than generations of scientific research and discovery, and proceeded to start infecting others?
It's like the dumbest thing ever, especially when it's so easily provable.
Apparently, at least part of the modern version was an early discussion forum online. It was used as a fun, stupid method to train debating skills. Unfortunately, idiots stumbled in and assumed it was real. The debaters either got bored, or weirded out, and went elsewhere. The remaining people were the idiots.
It's an idea that seems to pop up a lot however. It's """Obvious""" to those who don't understand science properly.
Yeah, a joke taken too far
See Trumpism
From what I recall, a group of 4channers started the Flat Earth Society as a joke. As the joke grew and became more popular, it started to attract the real loonies. When enough loonies came together, it sort of stopped being a joke and they took over.
Reality is a team sport, to some people. They have no objective means for evaluating claims. In their worldview, that is not what claims are for. In a very real sense they do not believe in the concept of truth. There is only trust, and trust is a matter of interpersonal loyalty.
I remember once as a teenager thinking what if atoms aren't real like what if everything is like solid, and just what you see?
A little interrogation of the concept and it fell apart pretty quickly (maybe ten minutes of internal monologue back and forth), but I still remember the moment the initial thought clapped me on the temple, and in that moment it felt profound.
I wonder if that's what being a credulous fool is like all the time. It was intoxicating.
4chan started memeing about how funny it would be if modern people believed the earth was flat. So they founded the flat earth society, and started satirically posting about the earth being flat. And then idiots (who weren’t in on the joke, and completely missed the satire) took it as gospel and ran with it. And at that point, 4chan thought it was fucking hilarious and sat back to watch the idiots play. At a certain point, it had grown beyond even 4chan’s expectations, and there was nothing they could do to stop it even if they wanted to.
The old joke is that Reddit is where stupid people go to act smart, and 4chan is where smart people go to act stupid. And the latter part of that joke is really exemplified by the flat earth society.
It seems to be a human thing for a certain percentage of us to neglect scientific knowledge and believe in something completely random, far-fetched and borderline bizarre. We had that with deities thousands of years ago and now it's being replaced with flat earth, computer gnomes, tiny sugar balls or perhaps at some point bitcoin. A man can still dream.