There’s been a bit of excitement amongst the Flat Earthers over the past couple of days, as word spread that none other than Donald J. Trump had come out publicly as a Flat Earther, telling an Associated Press reporter that:
I fly a lot, and I mean a lot. No one flies more than me. Listen, I own a jet. I own a 757, beautiful plane, it’s the best plane! If the world were round, believe me, I would know!
Flat Earthers around the globe reacted with excitement to Trump’s apparent endorsement of their peculiar theory — forwarding the story to fellow Flat Earth conspiracy theories, posting comments on Flat Earth sites happily welcoming Trump into the fold. Internet-famous Flat Earth Youtuber Mark Sargent posted a video reporting the, er, “news” as if it were something that might have actually happened.
Responding to Sargent’s video on flatearthscience.org, one Flat Earther allowed himself to dream:
One year ago today, I learned about FE. What an October Surprise this could be. It seems likely to me, that he will have to address it. Trump has said that he will reveal the truth about 911, when he is elected. There is a lot of Truth in FE and ME. A wise man such as he, should be able to see it as easily as we do. A Globalist Trump is not, it would be a nice one year anniversary present to me, from the Goddess herself, if he was to call himself a Flat Earther. The Truth is very Powerful and will certainly set us Free as we were promised.
But despite being gullible enough to literally believe we live on a flat disc with a little snowglobe over it, that the moon and sun are basically big ceiling lamps, and that gravity is a hoax, many Flat Earthers thought the Trump news sounded a bit fishy.
“Wouldn’t that be something!” one commenter on flatearthscience.org declared. “But it sounds too good to be true.”
Another thought the “news story” in question was an attempt to make Flat Earthers look bad –by linking them to Trump:
This is to attach Flat Earthers to Trump (who says wildly outlandish things) … seems more like a discredit.
As it turned out, the obviously fake story had originated on an obviously fake news site crudely impersonating CNN and featuring only two other “news” stories in its archives, one of them headlined “World’s Biggest Starbucks Opening In Phoenix AZ [featuring] Roller Coaster, Underground Water Slide & Robot Baristas,” and written by a fellow who says his name is “Jimmy Rustling.”
The site’s “About” section, at the bottom of each page, makes a reference to “Fappy The Anti-Masturbation Dolphin” and encourages anyone with complaints to call a phone number that turns out to be the number of the Westboro Baptist Church.
So, yeah, fake story is fake.
But I am happy to report that the whole embarrassing spectacle did at least inspire a couple of crappy Trump-centric Flat Earth memes. I found these on Whotfetw.com, my go-to site for crappy Flat Earth memes.
But it’s not just political memes the Flat Earthers have trouble with. They do a pretty terrible job with cat memes, too.
In conclusion, this is the weirdest damn election year I’ve ever lived through.
This comment has nothing to do with the article or the rest of the comments (but excellent as always, Mr. Futrelle) but I’d just like to say that the ad that appears on my device at the bottom of the page is for a yaoi site, I’m pretty sure, and that amused me enough to point it out
http://67.media.tumblr.com/e4e18f563790f5ed1086ecc9e290664b/tumblr_o3olplRWAF1uk5pr5o10_540.gif
It’s the fuckin’ Bernstein Bears, goddamnit. I know this because I could never spell it right and the teacher chided me for it. I always used to switched the “ei” part, like in Frankenstein.
It’s not my fault a universe where it was spelt with “ei” and a universe it was spelt with “ai” collapse together! It’s what happens when people mess with timelines by “correcting” them!
By the way, I’m being completely sarcastic…although I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some books spelt “stein” instead of “stain” but that was also when I was a kid, so…
I see that I was beaten to the “egocentrism instead of geo/heliocentrism” joke. Dammit !
This is for you non-flat-earthers who know a bit of French : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbhbMBM_l5I
(actually even if you don’t know French, it’s pretty good anyway)
@authorialAlchemy
You underestimate them.
Then they’ll tell you the helmets are screens. VR-like. Until one of them takes off the helmet and their head splodes, they’ll also tell you that the whole pressure and density thing is a hoax – and maybe even after that, ’cause, y’know, HELMET SCREEN ! They were actually shot down by Mossad !
Seriously, you can’t prove anything to these folks. I’d still try though, because Schadenfreude. They’re funny when they disprove reality.
Well, my little scam has been rumbled.
I, and everyone else in astronomy, astrophysics, astrobiology, cosmology, stellar physics, rocketry and other assorted fields of space science, have been exposed as the charlatans that we are. For centuries we’ve been getting away with pretending that the entire universe is the consequence of mathematical equations as simple and beautiful as F = GMm/r^2. Fortunately, a group of courageous individualists have refused to be intimidated by our lab coats, and have dug deep into the matter to expose the truth.
I suppose I’ll have to go and get a proper job. This will be difficult since (as science is a lie and we’ve just been pretending to do equations and simulations all this time) I don’t actually have any of the maths skills I purport to have.
I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids.
(This is of course /s.)
…No wait, I was holding the idiot ball for a moment. The whole “buoyancy and density” thing still doesn’t work without some sort of reason why objects inherently move towards “down”.
Since I can’t stop overthinking this… Let’s assume that “buoyancy and density” means something different in flat-earth land. So… maybe say that gases strongly repel solids and liquids, and solids weakly repel liquids. This would result in a roughly spherical, mostly-water-covered planet which bounces around the inside of the shell which contains the sky.
…Nnnnope, that’s not it either.
In the Universe I was brought up in, it was the mandala effect.
@skybison I’ve always thought that Trump was an incarnation of C’Hulligan
The problem with the “buoyancy and density” argument is that it is a wrong argument made by wrong people who are wrong.
In buoyancy calculations, objects don’t all rise and fall at the same speed: a very dense object falls quickly and a very buoyant object rises quickly, whereas something similar to its medium moves slower. You can see this yourself if you hold a ping-pong ball underwater and then let it go.
Iron has a density of 8, stone a density of around 2 (depending on the type of stone) and ice a density of slightly below 1. Does ice fall half as fast as stone? Does iron fall four times as fast as stone? Try this yourself and see! For scientific rigor, make sure you use identically sized and shaped lumps which are painted so you can’t tell which is which during the experiment. Also, make sure you have a Cuba Libre at hand (dark rum, white rum, lime juice, Coca-Cola, salt.) It is vital for the scientific process.
Ironically, this sort of experiment was devised by Galileo.
@EJ
I do all my science with grog. Guess it depends on the field ?
@ EJ
In all the parallel universes with better builders the leaning tower of Pisa doesn’t lean (it’s just called the Tower of Pisa there) so Gallieleio wasn’t able to perform his gravity experiments.
So in those universes things fall at different rates depending on how heavy they are and you need a constant force to keep something in motion at the same speed. If you think space travel is expensive here you should see what it costs in those places.
I still can’t find a way to make it work within the framework they appear to be using. Assuming I’m not missing anything, their hypotheses don’t even work within their already not even wrong worldview. That’s like fractally wrong timecubed. 😉
That’s pretty much the very definition of Flat Earth.
Their whole shtick is about finding more wrong to prove their wrong premise. And when has that ever worked ?
Satire is dead.
Hello.
I will stick with not Ian answer about ME. In one of the answer of a flatearther, she-he speaks about “the Goddess”, so Mother Earth would fill this appellation.
> Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack
Well, at least Trump and Giorgio Tsoukalos share one thing. No, not the aliens. The fancy hair.
Have a nice day.
Annnnnd I’ve caught up.
I just don’t understand, I mean literally my brain gets stuck into “does not compute” mode when I try to comprehend why anyone would believe still that the earth is flat. With other conspiracy type theories I can at least spot something real (albeit twisted as hell and reinterpreted as something sinister) as a basis for it. But this? My flabber is well and truly ghasted.
@occasional reader
Actually, the hair is an alien parasite.
@ sinkable john
Maybe it’s a Tribble?
Aside from how painfully wrong it is, one thing I’ve never understood about the sudden uptick of flat earth:
Let’s suppose that somehow, the flat earth thing is magically true. The government and scientific community have been colluding to keep us in the dark. Gravity is a hoax. Etc.
What in the blue-blazes is the point?
As much as I cringe at the 9/11 and moon landing conspiracy theories, I can at least grok what people are afraid the government is trying to do. They’re still agonizingly incorrect, but at least they allege the government to be doing something that resonates on this plane of reality.
Deceiving centuries’ worth of people about the shape of the earth, though? Why? How does that affect anything so much that the elite would dump millions upon millions of dollars into the cover-up? Why would anyone bother inventing a wrong reason that we don’t float off the planet surface?
I’m usually pretty good at grasping the other person’s point of view, but I’m competently lost on this one.
Conspiracy theorists are people for whom one of the most important factors in evaluating a truth claim is “how does this make me feel about myself?” (they enjoy feeling that they’re one of the select few who are smart enough not to be deceived, and brave enough to challenge the conspiracy). The actual details of the claim are less important, which is why a conspiracy theorist will usually believe multiple CTs – even when they are mutually incompatible. It feels really alien to me, but I think cognitive features involved are present in all of us, to a less extreme degree. Firstly, we all compartmentalise our beliefs, erecting walls between beliefs which would interfere with one another. Secondly, we all use motivated reasoning when we have an emotional stake in the conclusions: we’re not Vulcans. Conspiracy theorists just turn these dials to eleven.
It would be interesting to know whether conspiracist thinking is linked to religious thinking.
@Kat
I’m continuing to improve, thank you.
@Moggie:
Darwin, Neave and Holmes found a correlation between conspiranoia and what they identified as “paranormal belief”, a mix of magical thinking, supernatural belief and religious belief.
I’m not a social scientist so I can’t speak as to the quality of their scholarship. It was done on 120 undergraduates, divided equally by gender but not otherwise stratified. I have no idea whether that’s normal or not in their field.
Michael Shermer identified a link between religiosity and conspiranoia via what he referred to as “agenticity”, the belief that things are happening via conscious decisions on someone’s part rather than random chance. People who desire an explanation of the world which has high agenticity are likely to be drawn into both.
(On the other hand, Shermer also claimed not to be a rapist, so maybe his views should be taken with a grain of salt.)
For those wondering why, the answer is simple: Satan. The overwhelming majority of Flat Earthers are anti-evolutionists on steroids. As far as they’re concerned, it’s all part of a big conspiracy to steal their souls by making them doubt the literal truth of The Bible.
Re: ‘agenticity’
“There is a lot of truth in FE and ME”
FE = flat earth but ME? English is not my first language and I keep reading “Middle Eart” (how cool would it be?)
I’ve seen at least some Flat Earthers – presumably a different school than the hardcore creationists – say that the underlying reason for the conspiracy is to funnel off, for nefarious purposes, all the funds that nominally go to space exploration, satellite launches, astrophysics, telescope polish, novelty spaceman memorabilia, &c. Naturally, this large-scale money-laundering operation is spearheaded by NASA – presumably during the time they’re not dedicating to corrupting climate data, as Senator Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul, reliably informs us.