Just to give you an idea of some of the the beliefs that Flat Earthers subscribe to, here's a few:
1. Earth is flat
2. NASA, joined by all other countries' space agencies, is lying to us
3. Space is, at least the way we're taught to understand it, fake.
4. Antarctica is actually an ice wall surrounding all known continents.
That's a lot. The first question you might have will probably be, "How can they believe it's flat when we have pictures of Earth from space?" The answer to that, according to Brazillian jiu-jitsu instructor, Joe Rogan Experience regular, and known flat-earther Eddie Bravo, is that those pictures are all fake. "They're using CGI, man. It's all CGI."
What about space? We see space every night when the sun goes down, there's trillions of galaxies and literally a billion trillion stars in the OBSERVABLE universe (that's not even considering what's beyond what we can see). And what we see in the sky changes according to the rotation of a globular Earth. But according to flat-earth believers like Bravo, space is simply a projection in the sky to further trick us into believing that we live on a globe. They believe NASA is behind this huge conspiracy to keep us blind from the truth.
In all seriousness, why is it that so many people have just decided to believe in such an outlandish theory?
There are plenty of conspiracy theories that have plenty of evidence to support them (I'm a big conspiracy theorist myself), but the thing about the flat earth theory is that there is so much evidence to the contrary. There are weather balloons that go up with cameras to about 120,000 feet that can clearly see the curvature of Earth. The International Space Station has a live feed from onboard that you can tune into any time and watch our planet hurdle by before your very eyes, and from there it's very clear that there is a spherical shape to our home planet. Even military pilots and snipers are taught in training to take the curvature of Earth into account when they're flying at high altitudes or hitting far away targets. You can even see the curve of Earth with your own bare eyes, either by seeing the sun set from the sky, or a boat disappear over the horizon.
There it is clear as day. All of those wind turbines are the same size, by the way. And there are no camera tricks, no fish-eyed lens. Just a simple photograph, same way you'd see it with your own eyes.
But there's a simple reason the flat earthers believe what they do. In this day and age, we, collectively as a society, have been lied to since before we could walk and talk. Take Edward Snowden for example. If it wasn't for him, we would have never known that the NSA could spy on almost every single American citizen, as well as our enemies and allies. And our allies were in on it too. The Patriot Act essentially ended our right to privacy in the United States as we knew it. That's only one example. MKUltra, the CIA's alleged trafficking of crack cocaine in the '80s, invading Iraq for oil, suppressing information from the public, interfering in elections, giving an accused pedophile like Jeffery Epstein a sweetheart deal (and possibly killing him before his later arrest could bring anybody else to justice)... the list goes on and on.
We've been lied to time and time again. So, when it comes to flat earthers, I don't blame them for not believing what they've been taught or told. Who would? I wish they'd just do some proper research themselves.
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