Titel : Internet Gutter: Welcome to the Flat Earth
Link : Internet Gutter: Welcome to the Flat Earth
Internet Gutter: Welcome to the Flat Earth
The internet is a strange and terrifying place. It’s enabled us to connect with one another, advance the causes of science and culture, and unite the world with a glowing net of data. It’s also enabled people with very… particular interests to find each other. In this new ongoing series, we’ll be dipping into the Internet Gutter – the strange subcultures and weird worlds lurking in the dark pockets of the World Wide Web.
Flat Earthers
If you ask a smart scientist about the concept of “proof,” they’ll always end up hedging you. We can’t 100% prove anything, really – just assemble enough data to support a hypothesis over other hypotheses. That’s how Aristotle came to the realization that the Earth is a sphere floating in space and not a flat plane around 330 BC.
One would think that the intervening 2300 years or so – in which we, you know, went outside the Earth’s atmosphere and saw it for ourselves – would have put the nail in that particular coffin.
But for every piece of science there must be a skeptic, and it shouldn’t surprise you that Flat Earthers are alive and well on the Internet. This devoted group of truthers mandate that all of the so-called “evidence” we’ve seen of the planet’s rotundity was either misinterpreted or faked. And they’re really into making YouTube videos to tell you all about it.
Flat earth truthers got a big boost in early 2016 when Georgia rapper B.o.B. went on a frankly flabbergasting Twitter rampage proclaiming his belief in the theory. He was joined by internet model and professional lunatic Tila Tequila.
The cities in the background are approx. 16miles apart… where is the curve ? please explain this pic.twitter.com/YCJVBdOWX7
— B.o.B (@bobatl) January 25, 2016
His arguments – that if the planet was truly curved, we wouldn’t be able to see cities on the horizon, for example – were easily debunked, notably by Neil deGrasse Tyson – but it brought Flat Earth theory out into the light, and we realized exactly how many people actually believe it.
The primary proponents of the anti-sphere hypothesis are the Flat Earth Society, wich was founded in 1956 by British songwriter Samuel Shenton. The group went online in the late 1990s and their site now hosts a bustling discussion forum where believers perform experiments that “prove” the planet is flat – or, at best, shaped like a contact lens. MSPaint diagrams abound, of course.
As we’ve noticed before, niche interests on the Internet tend to overlap. If you believe one crazy thing, chances are you’ll believe a few others just to keep it interesting. Flat Earthers are no exception.
The most common overlap is, of course, with NASA truthers. All of those gorgeous shots of the planet from the International Space Station are fakes, along with the moon landings. Everything was shot on a soundstage in Hollywood and worked over by the best special effects artists Hollywood can buy. This was an easier argument to make in the 1960s when grainy footage of the Moon landing was all we had, but when we have things like Felix Baumgartner’s record-setting jump from 24 miles above the planet’s surface and a space station in constant orbit, it’s a little harder.
That doesn’t mean they don’t try, though. The Baumgartner jump gets flat Earthers to take one of two positions: either the entire thing was fake and didn’t happen, or they purposefully shot it using a fish-eye lens to make everything look curved.
There’s also a fairly sizable white supremacist faction in the Flat Earth community. The connection here is a little harder to divine, but I suspect that it links back to traditional Nordic and Pagan religions, which were – to be charitable – anti-science. A fascinating article was published at racist site Renegade Tribune called Flat Earth Nationalism (now deleted), claiming that “ball-earth is the key vulnerability of the Jewish Death Star” – essentially that by claiming the planet is round, anti-White forces keep honkies distracted so they can do their dirty business. We never said it made sense.
There are even counter-truther campaigns by other conspiracy theorists claiming that “Flat Earth” is a completely made up thing devised by the U.S. government to discredit them. The general gist is that by positioning something so obviously fake as common belief around certain circles, all of the other things they believe (like the 9/11 attacks being fake) will also be seen as implausible. It’s a given in these circles that if you dig deep enough, everything will be a false flag or a counter-operation, and Flat Earth is no different.
When you look at the coalition of Flat Earth believers, it’s kind of ironic how diverse they are – million-selling rappers and white supremacists happily unite under the umbrella of a wafer world, floating in space, with the Sun spinning around it. It’d be heartwarming if it wasn’t completely insane.
0 Response to "Internet Gutter: Welcome to the Flat Earth"
Post a Comment