So yesterday I fell into an internet hole watching “flat earth” videos on YouTube.
In case you haven’t heard, the ancient idea that the world we live on is flat, stationary, and perhaps the center of the universe has been having a bizarre revival lately.
The topic jumped off the internet and into the mainstream media last month when rapper/producer B.O.B. started Tweeting about his newfound faith in flatness, ultimately getting into a sort of rap battle with everyone’s favorite astrophysicist Neal deGrasse Tyson.
It turns out it’s not only B.O.B. who has decided that the globe is a lie. Over the past year, a sort of flat-earth counterculture has blown up online. On Youtube, a small battalion of flat earth “truthers” spread the new gospel to hundreds of thousands of fans in videos that range from the charmingly amateurish to the surprisingly slick.
The new flat earthers don’t just reject the idea of the earth as a spinning ball; they reject the concept of gravity itself (suggesting that things fall to earth simply because they’re denser than air, which, what?), not to mention evolution and pretty much most of modern science.
Many of them see the Bible as a better source of information about the earth than science, and rail against what they see as a vast conspiracy to keep the supposed truth about the flat earth from the public. Naturally, it’s all the fault of the freemasons and the Jews. (It’s telling that B.O.B. is not only a flat earther but also, apparently, a Holocaust denier who referenced the discredited historian David Irving in a dis track aimed at Tyson.)
One of the reasons I’ve been so obsessed with MRAs and other misogynists over the past five years or so is that I think they offer an instructive case study in the cultural and intellectual history of bad ideas, and the subcultures that nurture them. Obviously the flat earthers do as well.
The similarities between the “manosphere” and the flat earthers are considerable, and not just because both groups have found their ideal audiences on Youtube; like their MRA and MGTOW counterparts, popular flat earth Youtubers have tens of thousands of subscribers, and their most popular videos get hundreds of thousands of views.
Members of both subcultures not only have their own interpretations of the world but an array of shared “facts” as well, which they cling to with the misguided arrogance of the fanatical autodidacts they are: MRAs insist that domestic violence “isn’t gendered”; flat earthers insist that there are no direct flights from Australia to South America. (No, really.)
I may return to this topic in more detail later but I thought you’d find the following charts from Google Trends to be of some interest, since they show that the public’s newfound interest in flat earthery has evidently eclipsed its interest in Men’s Rights, MGTOW, and pickup artistry combined.
Not only is “flat earth” way more interesting to people than all that manosphere stuff but interest in Men’s Rights, pickup artistry, and MGTOW has been declining. Have they all peaked?
This isn’t a perfect representation of interest in these topics. People searching for “pua” might actually be interested in retired soccer star Víctor Púa; people searching for MRA might be interested in Magnetic Resonance Angiography. Alternately, people interested in any of these topics may have used different terms — though when I searched for ‘men’s rights” there were almost no searches for that term.
Hey, let’s add feminism to the mix.
D’oh! “Flat Earth” beats feminism, too! But, hey, at least feminism is still doing better than “men’s rights,” and it’s been on an upswing.
Let’s swap out feminism for “gamergate.”
No surprise it’s been on the decline, but I would have expected a lot more interest at its peak.
Now let’s put all this in perspective.
POOP BEATS EVERYTHING!
But I am a little puzzled by poop’s declining poopularity.
I’m going to keep watching the flat earthers, and will report any interesting findings. If I find an explanation for the poop conundrum I will share that as well.
@Imaginary Petal,
I mostly lurk here so I’ll understand if you don’t feel you can recommend me, but my minecraft name is MempoManiac and I’d like to try out your server! It looks pretty cool!
I think I have to:
Q: Why did the astrophysicist cross the road?
A: You’re still thinking Cartesianally. If you work it out in polar coordinates you’ll see it’s just inertia.
Why did the chicken cross the Moebius Loop?
Why did the RedPiller cross the road?
Because cave-pedestrians, wolves, and Brad Pitt also cross roads, so we’d better follow along and do it too or women won’t see how dominant we are.
Q: Why did Theodore “Vox Day” Beale cross the road?
A: In the good old days, everyone used to cross the road. It’s John Scalzi’s fault that people are questioning it now, and it’ll lead to everyone becoming Muslims!
Q: Why did Carl “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin cross the road?
A: ::aggrieved sigh:: I never said I crossed the road. You’re misquoting me! I said I didn’t cross the road. I’ve never claimed to have crossed the road. Only feminists and other idiots cross roads at all…
…hang on…
…I mean I did cross the road, and I never said anything different. Stop saying that I ever said anything different.
Dear Flat-Earth Enthusiasts.
We have all wished we could be on Discworld. It’s nice to see you taking such an interest in it. However they have something we don’t. And that’s magic. Fancifying scientific processes won’t make them be magic. So we have to be grown ups here and accept that we won’t be running with Vimes in Ankh-Morpork or helping Granny Weatherwax with a jump start.
If I can do it. (Albeit with many tears shed.) Then you can too. We live on a spherical world……. (Sigh).
Why did Peter-Andrew: Nolan(c) cross the road?
To get away from the Romanian wild dogs.
Why did the alt-righter cross the road?
Actually he didn’t. The tar the roads are made with is black. What do you take him for? A white genocidal cuckservative?
@EJ:
Did I read that abstract right? Is that paper claiming that under the right circumstances, a collapsing star will stop collapsing for a while before becoming a black hole?
What would that even look like?
And I’m a spherical girl.
@Gaelbolga:
You read it correctly, and nobody has any idea what it means. This is a situation where General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (that is, the physics of the very large and the very small) do not match up at all, leading to huge contradictions. If you had asked me last year whether it was the most interesting thing that would happen all decade, I’d have said yes.
And then gravity waves happened.
ETA: It doesn’t mean that collapsing stars will pause for a while before becoming black holes, so much that collapsing stars won’t become black holes at all; implying that black holes must come from something else.
Q: Why did the MGTOW cross the road?
A: I am crossing the road! See! I’m crossing the road! Really! It might look like I’m still standing here, but I’m crossing the road! God, I hate this freaking road! This road is an affront to feet! And I’m crossing it! Just you wait, that road is going to be sorry when I’m gone and not around to cross it anymore! Stupid road! I crossed it! Really! C*nt!
My apologies for the last bit, but its use seems to be an essential characteristic of an actual MGTOW….
@Katz
Dammit! I have Madonna stuck in my head now…… Well played Katz…..Or should I say Professor Katz!!! Your secret is finally out!!!
@ EJ:
Wow. Thanks for making my day!
@Gaelbolga:
You’re very welcome. Anyone whose day is made by puzzles like that is my friend.
How can anyone believe that the world is flat?! Have you seen how much mountains stick up?!
…Okay, more seriously, if I were completely ignorant about quite a lot of things, and encountered it for the first time, I might buy geocentrism. But there’s no way that I’d buy flat-earthism. Granted, if I were supremely ignorant, it would be a case of being right for the wrong reasons. For example, how long would it take for the world to hit the bottom of existence, and what would happen when it did? (This is based on the assumption that if there was an objective “down”, then the world is falling too, albeit more slowly because of… whatever the hell causes flat things to fall more slowly, assuming I didn’t know that either.) If there is no end to existence, why would [insert creator here] make an infinite universe which is empty aside from the very, very tiny corner which things exist in? Why don’t we notice that the world is falling? And so on. That’s not even getting into the fact that I’ve been high on mountains (the first time was age 5) and even higher on airplanes (first time age 14) and can see the actual curve of the earth. Even if it were not a sphere, there’s no way in hell that it’s flat.
Alan, that wasn’t boring at all. That was fascinating, actually!
I love the way Eratosthenes figured out the Earth’s circumference. Light down a well, length of a shadow…brilliant. (Fun factoid: His detractors insulted him as a “beta”. Really!)
And I’m not surprised The Flat Earth is more popular than all the manosphere (heh) combined. It’s a positively brilliant Thomas Dolby album. And the title track is lovely.
BTW, poop is getting a raw deal. There are women actually doing it for the first time! Really!
Why did the MGTOW cross the road?
He hasn’t yet. But soon, roadbots will be coming, and they’ll make roads obsolete!
Also:
Q. Why did the MGTOW cross the road?
A. To go his own way from all the women, so they’ll know what they’re missing. Whenever he finally manages to cross that road…any day now…
Q. Why did the MRA cross the road?
A. COMPASSION FOR MEN AND BOYS. AND IT’S MHRA, YOU FEMINIST BITCH!!!
(And on the other side, a $58 silver commemorative coin with a weirdly disembodied hand = profit$$$.)
Q. Why did the PUA cross the road?
A. PUAs don’t cross roads, the HB8 crosses them if they neg her from the other side hard enough.
Q. Why did the TeRPer cross the road?
A. Confirmation bias is on the other side, you Blue Pill sheeple!
Surely at this point, not only is “people used to think the earth was flat” an urban legend, but “people think people used to think the earth was flat” is, too. I mean, that’s pretty common knowledge, isn’t it?
“It’s a bit of a myth that flat earth was a common belief in ancient times”
Just because a scientist figured it out back then isn’t proof that it was common knowledge.
I doubt that serfs and uneducated people knew about Erastothenes.
…but when people thinking people thinking people thought the earth was felt becomes an urban legend, will it finally be rabbit holes all the way down?
I sense I’m quickly going to regret posing that question.
People, the Earth is not spherical! It’s called a ‘geoid’ shape (although understandably, the real shape of the Earth differs slightly from the mathematical model).
So what you’re saying, MovieBuff, is that the Earth is Earth-shaped?
I don’t know, man. Sounds pretty far-fetched.