A few year back, there was a Netflix documentary about flat earther. They’ve done a couple of experiment to prove that the earth is flat which (Spoiler alert) demonstrated that the earth is round.
So now that these persons have demonstrated scientifically that the earth is round. How are they doing ? Still flat-earther ? or did they give up with the amount of evidence they collected ?
I know a guy who was involved in some of those “experiments” and spent a considerable amount of time and money on them. He still is very adamant that it just proves that there is some other unknown confounding variable that just proves that the experiment was valid and that the designers of the flat earth already expected the experiments. It’s really depressing. I used to really respect him when I was younger.
Appreciate the spoiler alert
It came out in 2018…
Very important question! Did they do the mind acrobat tango and still believe it’s flat or did they just go to the next conspiracy theory?
No idea, but the greatest predictor of whether someone will believe a conspiracy theory is if they already believe another conspiracy theory.
It’s not specifically about those same individuals, but I want to mention Dan Olsen’s documentary In Search of a Flat Earth, which touches more on the ideology of the flat earth movement, and how it’s developed in recent years. No spoilers, peeps!
It’s been a while since I saw it, but I remember most people thought something was wrong with the experiment setup or equipment.
The documentary was called “Behind the Curve” and featured Bob Knodel. Unfortunately he passed away this year. https://www.robertsfhsc.com/obituary/RobertBob-Knodel
It looks like you still believed in the theory though. He had a YouTube channel that was devoted to flat Earth conspiracy.
Most probbably just doubled down and made excuses. The main takeaway of the documentary was a lot of those people are just lost/lonely and being part of that club gave them a sense of belonging to a group of similar people.
There was a short segment on 60 Minutes (maybe?) back in 2020 before the elections where they interviewed someone who had deprogrammed himself from Qanon.
It was the same story. He had no friends IRL, no social support, he had turned his mom onto Qanon and she was still down the rabbit hole.
He said that was the part that kept him in it for so long, even once he started questioning things. All his “friends” and close relations were part of the cult and he would have to cut ties with everyone or worse, they would turn on him and attack him as a traitor.
It would be sad if these online-cults weren’t so damaging to society.
Yup. Eerily similar with what people getting out of MLMs experience.
Going to suggest the folding ideas YouTube channel on the same topic.
https://youtu.be/JTfhYyTuT44?si=m2b1gAkCOlDOnCle
Spoiler: his hypothesis, well supported in my opinion, is that a large proportion of those formerly in flat earth are now neck deep in qanon, and since the film was made many are now into other conspiracy stuff. The election was fake etc.
Also, his video of minnewanka lake is just perfect flat earth debunking.
The film that is the subject of the question is called “Behind the Curve:” https://www.behindthecurvefilm.com/
… And it’s rather quite… interesting… how long this has been going on…
Did you watch the movie? Because the experiments showed that the earth was round, they decided that there must have been something wrong with the experiments.
There is not a lot to laugh about with flat earthers. The theory stems from Christian fundamentalism, and it is tightly connected to the christofascist movements trying to coup the USA at the moment.
And no, they are not going to give up their beliefs, because they didn’t come by them through rational thought, so rational thought isn’t going to disprove it for them.
Just to piggyback off this for the uninitiated:
If the Earth is round, then that means Earth is just like any other planet; one in a trillion.
Flat Earthers are convinced “space” is an illusion, all the celestial bodies are there to trick us into feeling insignificant.
If the Earth is flat, then we are special.
Truth is: we aren’t, not in any cosmic sense.
The movie is called Behind the Curve, and imo is a great move.
It doesn’t try to ridicule the people in it. Instead it tries to make a point that if a group like the flat earth society is being made fun of rather than engaged in discussions, then the gap just gets larger and the problem worse. (If everyone else makes fun of you, you avoid them and stay in the community that supports you.)
As far as I can tell, Mark Sargent is still believing in those theories and continues doing his part in it. This doesn’t surprise me, he’s quite prominent in that community and I guess if he stopped, he’d lose quite a lot of his personal achievements, friends, hobbies, etc.
I don’t know about the others who were in the movie, it would be interesting to know. Especially about those who were directly doing the experiments, yeah.
