this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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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.
Isn’t that how Qanon happened too?
People would post ridiculous theories and see if anyone believed it. Sadly they did.
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.
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"
Depending on how fast you can swim, it might even be faster to go through Mexico and up.
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.
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.
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.