![]() Why do you think people are so invested in this specific conspiracy theory? It seems like such a strange hill to die on. This Church Promised to Save Their Souls. And that theory has stuck around for the next 160 years or so, fairly unchanged. They’d show up to his lectures to to try and debate him, and he was a pretty good debater so he could make a spectacle of it. But he published these fabricated findings, started releasing books, started going on a lecture circuit and people were really taken by this theory, either in earnest or they thought it was funny. ![]() If you do any basic scientific work, any rudimentary measurements, you’re going to find that Earth is round and you can observe this with the naked eye or with the telescope. He published his findings - effectively, he lied. Because this canal was super long and straight, it really did sort of look like a Flat earth if you were only observing that with the naked eye. But where he really struck gold was when he started proposing the Earth was flat based on some observations he’d made while hanging out in this canal when he should have been running his commune. He pivoted into selling snake oil, and that kind of got him some moderate success. He is a really interesting figure, a former leader of this failed socialist commune that didn’t work out. We’ve known for thousands of years the Earth was round, but Flat Earth came roaring back in the mid-1800s. So some background info: people tend to think that Flat Earth is a really long held belief, that Columbus thought he might go over the edge of the flat Earth when he was exploring. On this week’s episode of Don’t Let This Flop, Rolling Stone‘s podcast about TikTok and internet culture, co-hosts Ej Dickson and Brittany Spanos talked with Kelly Weill, a journalist at the Daily Beast and author of the recent book Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything. In the following interview, as transcribed from the episode, Weill talks about the roots of Flat Earth in a Nineteenth-century utopian community the overlap between Flat Earth and more insidious conspiracy theories, such as the anti-vaccine movement and how platforms like YouTube and, more recently, TikTok, have allowed the community to mushroom.Ĭan you explain what the roots of this theory are, as outlined in your book?Ībsolutely. ![]() And in light of the pandemic, which has led to a proliferation of conspiratorial thinking in general, there’s growing concern among those who study extremism and misinformation that believing in Flat Earth theory can lead one down even darker rabbit holes. But in recent years, thanks to the advent of social media, Flat Earth theory has gained increasing prominence, and has even been espoused by prominent figures like NBA star Kyrie Irving. The archaic belief that the earth is flat and not a globe, as centuries of research have determined, may seem like a silly and fringe belief. Of all the conspiracy theories in history - QAnon, the faked moon landing, the belief that Katy Perry is somehow JonBenet Ramsey - perhaps none is as ridiculous, as outright outlandish, as Flat Earth theory.
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