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.
@ monkoto & brony
Thank you, that was quite fascinating.
I do some work with a charity that specialises with people on the more severe end of the ASD Spectrum and it’s interesting how some of the service users seem to have particular talents in all sorts of areas.
@ monkoto & brony
WordPress seems to hate me at the moment so I’ll just have another go at saying thank you!
Sure, why not… this in a day and age where we have stepped into space and taking frigging photos of our planet. I suppose “the devil” warps those images in order to make us believe the world is round? Or perhaps it is evil NASA scientists working for the devil and those photos are only CGI? (And damned good CGI back before CGI got good.)
I don’t want to be human anymore. This is embarrassing as an intelligent species; that which clearly resists its own intelligence.
As someone who is on a ship right now crossing the Pacific I can say with confidence the world is not flat. So far I have been on ships from SA to Europe Europe to aisa and aisa back to SA. All looks pretty round to me. Also mercator charts wouldn’t work if the earth was flat and they do so there’s that as well. Take it from me you won’t ever meey a sailor nowadays who thinks the earth is flat. That bullshit is clearly for the land dwellers and those less travelled. And for what it’s woth (I saw this on tumblr but still) mercator charts are not racist. It’s just the most practical projector for getting a round earth onto a flat piece of paper so you can plot positions on it. Gnomic charts also worl but for some reason it’s easier to plot a lat and long when the graticules are straight and not curved. Strange that *sarcasm* -_-
@ Valentine
Is the Mercator map the one that the Society of Cartographers for Social Equality was arguing against on that episode of The West Wing? (For as much as I love that episode, you’d think I could remember the map names.)
@ valentine & chesselwitt
We had a discussion about maps, including Mercator v Peters, a while ago. Not sure how you search for things on this site though.
Oh man, are we going to turn this into a map projection geekery thread? I’m a total Good homolosine person, myself. I also think Van der Grinten is stylish but not very practical in most cases.
Peters4lyfe, yo.
Peters people, I WILL FIGHT YOU. Maintaining shapes is of paramount importance.
Mercator is the easiest to explain/implement/demonstrate, but far from practical for a lot of purposes (eg. land use, planning long-distance travel). It minimises areas near the equator and overemphasises temperate regions (and often omits the poles altogether).
I favour the orange-peel projection. No, not like that, you’re peeling it all wrong.
I think the objection to Mercator is it highlights (and makes bigger) the northern hemisphere at the expense of the southern. You can of course now get southern orientated Mercator maps as any Australian will tell you (although they could probably make do with a sheet of sandpaper).
Geek mode: technically only the original medieval maps with East at the top can be ‘orientated’
Thank you so much, Futrelle, for actually acknowledging that B.O.B. is also an anti-Semitic asshole. Most news just focused on the flat earth thing and apparently didn’t find denying the Holocaust worth mentioning.
Mercator projection does not make the southern hemisphere smaller. It makes the latitudes close to the equator smaller and the ones further away larger. It is not possible to plot poles on it. But it is used throughout the maritime industry because it is the most practical way to get a round globe on a flat surface. For long distance we use something called Gnomic charts which if you draw a streigt line you get a great circle. Then you can make way points and put this onto your mercator charts. Where it will be a curve. For navigation an orange peel method does not really work. I’m not sure about land or air but for seafarers mercator is the best way.
@ valentine
Ah, thanks for that. So the whole Greenland being bigger than Africa thing is because Africa is equatorial? Does this mean that South America is also disproportionally enlarged on Mercator maps?
You might also be able to help me with another thing I’ve always been curious about. You know on old timey maps like you see in pirate movies, there’s lots and lots of lines everywhere that seem to intersect at random places? What’s all that about?
Mercator and its variants are the only projection that makes sense in a lot of contexts (local maps, Google maps, etc). But for display purposes, it’s unattractive and misleading.
And intentional or not, it does make the first world a ton bigger than the third world.
Stupid first world being more polar. That’s so much of the problem right there.
I mean, Alaska really is about twice the size of Texas, but we aren’t the size of the entire continental US!
But the high latitudes get expanded.
In the southern hemisphere, it’s less apparent because the thing that gets skewed the most is ocean basins.
@alan
Ne problema 😉 as for the pirate thing I have no idea. It could be graticules they are the lat and long grids. Or it could be that they are plotting ranges and bearings from objects. There’s a thing called loran-c that has maps covered in parabola lines but I don’t think old timey pirates had electronic navigation methods 😉
As far as mercator goes it just so happens most land is in the north hemisphere. The southern high lats are also just as extended but no one complains about that. Weird eh 😉
But on a serious note the charts we use are published by admiralty (as in uk admiralty hydrographic office) so if you’re going to get annoyed about something get annoyed about the British manpopuly on cartography!
Only small scale charts really show the distortion so if you want a chart of the world it is much better getting a globe. For nav we use large scale where it is very difficult to see the distortion unless you are using a planning chart (which is for, you guessed, planning not nav). Mercator also has a double more important use which is that it tabulate the globe meaning that distances between two lats and longs can be calculated using something called meridianal parts of the terrestrial spheroid. I won’t bore you with more but basically it is a way of doing spherical trigonometry for the world. Cos obviously THE WORLD IS ROUND.
And there we have it. Or something anyway.
(Occasional lurker, first time poster … I think.)
Re: geocentrism: Tycho Brahe, whose data led Kepler to create the most accurate heliocentric model up to that point, had a “compromise theory” in which the Sun orbited the Earth but all planets orbited the Sun, with the “spheres” for Mars and beyond surrounding the Earth. Like the “hollow earth” theory in which the rest of the universe is a really tiny bit at the center that just *acts* like it’s really far away, Brahe’s compromise wasn’t popular with purists.
Analogies with other attempts to meet fanatics halfway are left as an exercise for the reader.
Well, this is an interesting bit of information on a ridiculous and delusional group of people, but it absolutely pales in comparison to the type of people this site caters to! Holy crap! After reading just the comments policy I think I’ll take flat-earthers instead, please and thank you.
@Tyler johnson: the idea of being decent to people, and respecting the wishes of minority groups is too much for you?
Well, i’m glad you left a comment telling us that. Perhaps thinking on why you dislike the idea of being civil to people so much would be a good excersise.
9_____9
Thank you for reading the comments policy before posting, i suppose.
After enduring yet another season of right wingers having shit fits over the horror of hearing “happy holidays” and reading the news yesterday about Bo Bice claiming to be the victim of racism because a Popeye’s employee called him “white boy” I’m getting a little sick of the over sensitive SJW claims. At least we’re concerned with real oppressions instead of imaginary ones.
I’m getting mental images of
MarkTyler walking through the wrong door into a busy store just to loudly announce “I NEED TO TAKE A SHIT.”And 2017 opens with a troll breaking one of the most sacred troll laws (“never read the comments policy”)… is this a good sign or a bad sign?
Lol! Hi Mark. What did you object to? Did you object to the fact that MGTOWs and MRAs are allowed to post here? Or that David curates this space by requiring a first-time moderation? Or maybe one of the specific guidelines?
– no bigotry?
– no threats or violent comments?
– no gratuitously nasty personal attacks?
– no doxxing?
– no rape apologia or victim blaming?
– don’t misgender people?
– don’t attack people for their sexual preferences, and don’t overshare?
– don’t attack people for their religious beliefs?
– don’t be a ‘splainer
– don’t make everything all about you?
– no sockpuppets?
– don’t pile on?
Which of these is so over-the-top offensive to you that you can’t even?
(It’s the rule against sockpuppets, isn’t it?)
Seeya next time, Mark.
I’m guessing it’s the not making everything about you.
http://66.media.tumblr.com/4c0befb0d4f0bea4d7f44badd9083837/tumblr_inline_odij5mgc3E1t7580h_500.png