Like a lot of people, I was a bit gobsmacked a couple of months ago when rapper B.O.B. came out as a literal Flat Earther, as in, someone who literally believes that the earth is a disk, not a sphere.
Having something of a professional interest in bad ideas and the people who hold them, I’ve been poking around in the FlatEarthosphere ever since. Turns out they have a lot in common with the bad-idea-believers that I’ve been writing about daily since I started this blog.
Like the internet’s innumerable antifeminists, the Flat Earthers love making interminably long videos in which they ramble incoherently about their beliefs.
Happily for those of us with shorter attention spans, they also like making memes, many of which are strikingly similar to antifeminist memes not only in their often inept design but in the fundamental dishonesty of many of their “arguments.”
Consider, for example, the way that Flat Earth mememakers have given science dude Neil deGrasse Tyson the Anita Sarkeesian treatment.
The Flat Earthers hate Tyson, who took down B.O.B. and his Flat Earth beliefs on Twitter in a literal mic-dropping moment on the Larry Wilmore show and even by making a cameo in a diss track aimed at the rapper.
While not inundating Tyson with death and rape threats, as far as I know, the Flatties have pored over his past writings and public appearances looking for things they can go after him about — much as Gamergaters did with Sarkeesian.
And, as Gamergaters have done many times with Sarkeesian, the Flatties have taken innocuous remarks from Tyson and misrepresented them so thoroughly that, to them at least, they look like a “gotcha!”
You may recall how Gamergaters seized upon Sarkeesian’s statement that “everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic.” The comment, taken out of context from a talk she once gave, became the subject of endless jokes and indignant blog posts and even a music video.
And there were of course memes:
Sarkeesian was pretty clearly just pointing out that sexism (and racism, and homophobia) permeate almost every nook and cranny of our culture. Which is true. But Gamergaters assumed (or pretended) that she thought plants and birds and rocks and things were all sexist somehow.
The Flatties have done the same thing with some comments from Tyson on the not-quite-perfectly-spherical shape of the earth.
Earth is not only oblate — wider at the equator than pole-to-pole, but pear shaped — slightly wider just south of the equator
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) September 19, 2014
He gave a slightly longer explanation of this at an event in 2007. It’s not something that he made up; it’s true. The centrifugal force from the rotation of the earth has made the earth ever so slightly chubby. (Why it’s chubbiest slightly south of the equator I don’t quite know.)
Obviously, Tyson isn’t saying that the earth is literally the shape of a pear. He’s saying that it deviates an eensy teensy weensy bit from a perfectly spherical shape. Indeed, in the 2007 event he made clear that the earth is only very very slightly pear-shaped; that “cosmically speaking, we’re a practically a perfect sphere.”
None of this is really very hard to grasp. I’m utterly baffled by dark matter and string theory and most other things that astrophysicists spend their lives pondering, but I understand centrifugal force. Everyone who’s ever been on a merry-go-round understands centrifugal force.
But Tyson said “pear-shaped,” and the Flat Earth mememakers aren’t going to ever let him forget that.
Other Flat Earth mememakers find the word “oblate” funnier than “pear.”
There are more Neil deGrasse Tyson pear-shaped-earth memes out there — many many many more.
But I’m not sure anyone will ever be able to top this one.
Such is the state of Flat Earth memery today.
And after all this, the Flatties have so little self-awareness that they attack him for making jokes about them.
Jeez, Flat Earthers, so sensitive about a joke? Grow a pear.
You’re probably just moving in sync with the sun. Until night.
Or in other words: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@dlouwe
Burn those heretics! Everyone knows that every word of the Discworld series is literally true and there’s no icewall in there.
That’s why our prophet Terry Pratchett faked his death. He didn’t really have alzheimers, he just faked it to throw THEM off his trail. Soon he will return with a hundred more discworld books and lead us to the Truth.
Then why not get as close as they can and send a drone as far as possible beyond that, to take pictures of the ice wall, or at least the conditions that would begin to prevail the closer one gets to the ice wall?
…or is that what they think Antarctica is? The natural consequence of a giant 0K ice wall surrounding the Earth? Even so, a drone should be able to get farther than any human expedition and Skype back some pictures of phenomena that have never been witnessed before.
What I really don’t get, though, is the emotional appeal of Flat Earthism. I can understand why people might prefer creationism to evolution by natural selection. I can even understand why they might prefer geocentrism. But what makes a flat Earth more appealing than a spherical (or oblate, slightly pear-shaped) one?
In case the obvious has not already been said…
someone SO needs to make a “No Flatties” meme.
@ Karalora
Because we brave Chelonists are freedom fighters who will drag the world kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat! Down with the Omnian empire that secretly controls the world! The Turtle Moves!
I should clarify. I understand perfectly well the appeal of a flat world as a fantasy setting, a la Discworld or Narnia or the one I invented a while back that had all kinds of hostile terrain around the edges, not just ice walls. What I don’t get is why anyone would prefer to believe that we literally live on one. Why is that more emotionally satisfying than the truth?
Yeah, I haven’t found a good explanation there. Basically, they can explain away lack of evidence of the edge because it’s impossible to get there. But I haven’t found any explanation of why there’s no evidence of a boundary to what we can explore. Like, I think it would be a pretty big topic if there was a region on earth that naturally approached 0K and we would have a big body of knowledge about that, even if it wasn’t the literal edge of the flat earth.
Some of them do think that’s what Antarctica is, but some think Antarctica is a real continent. That’s a big problem with these sorts of theories: there isn’t a consistent model or belief, because there’s no measurable evidence. It’s basically taking the exact opposite lesson as you should from Russel’s Teapot. Since they can “reasonably” refute any evidence to the contrary with a jumble of ad hoc theories, they take that as positive support of their claim. They sincerely believe in the teapot.
@Karalora
I was serious. The appeal I think comes from seeing oneself as the possessor of secret knowledge, the only one smart enough to have figured out the real Truth. A flat earth is as good as anything else for this. It becomes a role playing game of sorts where someone gets to be the brave, rule breaking rebel without having to actually do anything, hence why they’re making memes attacking Tyson instead of going to the Ice Wall.
PS if you don’t mind my asking, there’s a forum called Avatar Spirit for the show Avatar the Last Airbender, and there was a user there also named Karalora back in the day. I was wondering if you were the same person.
IIRC, the reason the earth is pear shaped (wider at the southern pole) is because of the tilt of the earth’s axis relative to the sun.
The bottom half of the globe is *slightly* more angled towards the sun as the earth orbits, thus gets a tiny tiny tiny fraction more gravitational pull.
I mean… it’s really really tiny.
but again, I’d have to check that using googlefu.
I think it has more to do with narcissism myself.
I could easily imagine Drumpf spreading this meme, for example.
meh… I think I too do not really understand where the pear shape comes from.
the maths go over my head… something about harmonics as the earth spins and the moon goes around it…
um… yeah.. that.
Ignore the flat Earth heretics! The Earth is hollow, not flat! John Cleve Symmes Jr was the great thinker, not Tyson or Mr smarty – pants Copernicus!
Hollow, I say!
The Earth is Hollow, and we’re on the inside!
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cellular_cosmogony
There is one big difference between the manosphere memes and the flat earth memes.
I found the sheep one kinda cute. :3
I am. 🙂 The nice thing about a unique nym like mine is that I can use it anywhere. I drifted away from ASN after the show ended. There just wasn’t too much to talk about anymore, and then Legend of Korra underwhelmed me and I never found a reason to go back.
^Yeah the communitys kind dead these days, but still it’s cool to see you around again. Small Internet.
I wasn’t a big fan of Legend of Korra either. It started out with some good ideas but the writing quality was never on the same level.
Yeah that’s pretty much literally what some of them believe. The sun is a big old flashlight moving around in a circle over the disc of the earth.
http://i.imgur.com/sJddKRe.png
Flat earthers are amazing.
Also, they didn’t use the word “cuck” at all!
I wish we could do that. It would cure a lot of them of their delusions of grandeur, among other things…
Ehh they would just say it’s fake and they’re really on a sound stage or something.
@ Fabe
At which point, I’d be tempted to invite them to take a walk outside the observation lounge. I wouldn’t push ’em out there, just give them the freedom to prove themselves wrong.
@hugseverycat:
Wait, if the sun and the moon are both on the same side of the disc, how do they explain lunar eclipses?
And if they did other flat earthers would say you murdered them to prevent them from telling every one else how fake their moon trip was.
@ Lkeke35
I don’t know if there are any ScarJo clones, but there’s a robot with a suspicious resemblance.
https://youtu.be/FL_tZxRqIys
Sweet dreams, everybody!
About ScarJo being everywhere: it reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s Upon the Dull Earth story.
Maybe someone should make it into a movie. 😀