Flat Earth Meme Say It Again but Slower

(CNN)"I don't want to be a apartment Earther," David Weiss says, his voice weary as he reflects on his personal awakening. "Would you wake up in the morning time and desire everyone to recall you lot're an idiot?"

But Weiss is a flat Earther. Ever since he tried and failed to find proof of the World'due south curve four years agone, he'southward believed with an evident passion that our planet is both flat and stationary -- and it'southward turned his world upside down.

"I absolutely freaked out," Weiss tells CNN in a telephone interview. "It literally whips the carpet out from underneath you."

Now, Weiss finds it tedious to associate with the majority of people -- though he "unfortunately" however has some friends who believe in a round Earth. "I have no problem with anybody that wants to believe we live on a ball. That's their pick," he says. "It's just not something I resonate with."

Weiss' preferred community is those who share his life-altering belief.

And that community is vast.

This week, the businessman attended the third annual Flat Earth International Briefing, held at an Embassy Suites hotel in suburban Dallas, Texas. Organizers told CNN that about 600 others went besides.

Previous conferences have taken place in Raleigh and Denver -- while Brazil, Britain and Italia have also held flat-Earth conventions in recent years.

The consequence's schedule resembled any corporate conference, with some adequately noticeable twists. Speakers gave presentations including "Space is Fake" and "Testing The Moon: A Earth Lie Perspective." Awards for the year'southward best flat Earth-related videos were handed out. And believers reveled in an opportunity to meet several of the motion's most influential minds.

"Nosotros've all been communicating online (just) this brings u.s.a. together and so we can milkshake hands and give each other hugs," says Weiss. "We can collaborate, we can make new friends. Because guess what, our former friends... we lost a lot of friends."

On a clear day, the curvature of the World can be seen from an airplane window. Merely remarkably, the hundreds of flat Earthers at the Dallas gathering were just a pocket-size portion of the movement.

People in every pocket of this spherical planet are rejecting science and spreading the word that the World is apartment.

At that place's no clear report indicating how many people take been convinced -- and apartment Earthers like Weiss volition tell you without evidence there are millions more in the closet anyway, including Hollywood A-listers and commercial airline pilots -- only online communities have hundreds of thousands of followers and YouTube is inundated with flat-World content creators, whose productions reach millions.

A YouGov survey of more than than eight,000 American adults suggested last year that every bit many every bit one in 6 Americans are non entirely sure the world is round, while a 2022 Datafolha Plant survey of more than than 2,000 Brazilian adults indicated that 7% of people in that state reject that concept, according to local media.

The apartment-Earth customs has its own celebrities, music, merchandise -- and a weighty catalog of pseudo-scientific theories. It'due south been the subject of a Netflix documentary and has been endorsed by figures including the rapper B.o.B.

Each twelvemonth, more flat-Earth events fill the calendar, organizers say.

"I've never seen anything grow this fast," says Robbie Davidson, the founder of the Dallas conference. "I would say that within 10 years, the numbers are going to be phenomenal... next yr, there's going to exist a conference in every major country in the world."

But experts are wondering if the movement is really harmless -- and whether we're even approaching the edge of its influence.

Falling off the edge

When Davidson first heard that people really practise believe in a flat Earth, "I only laughed and said, 'they've got to be the stupidest people ever.' Who in their right mind could believe something so dumb?"

A couple of years later, Davidson was setting up the first international flat Earth conference. Like most of the speakers at the event CNN spoke to, he was convinced after he decided he couldn't bear witness the Globe'southward roundness.

For Davidson, a born-again Christian, the most logical explanation for the conspiracy of the millennium goes like this: "Let's just say there is an adversary, there is a devil, there is a Satan. His whole job would be to try to convince the earth that God doesn't exist. He'south washed an incredible chore disarming people with the idea that we're but on a random speck in an infinite universe."

The reality, says Davidson, is that the flat Earth, sun, moon and stars are independent in a "Truman Evidence"-like dome. From there, pitfalls can be easily dismissed -- like photos of the Globe from space, which flat Earthers believe are photoshopped. "This all goes away if they put a 24/7 camera feed on the moon," he adds.

And Davidson chop-chop constitute a large online community believing the same thing. "I thought doing a conference would just take it to the next stage where the media and the world will await at information technology and say, 'wait a minute -- something must exist going on. This is non just some internet fad, or a bunch of crazy people online. They're now meeting in buildings.'"

He has a few things he wants to make articulate to a flat-Earth novice. Firstly, and most importantly -- "none of usa believe that nosotros're a flying pancake in space." The community merely believes that space does not exist, the earth sits notwithstanding and the moon landing was faked. The jury is out on gravity -- but as Davidson notes, no one has always seen it.

Secondly -- no, you lot won't fall off the border. While flat Earthers' views of the world vary, almost believe the planet is a round disk with Antarctica acting every bit an ice wall bulwark effectually the edge.

And thirdly, modern apartment Earthers have little in mutual with the Flat Earth Guild, a group that has existed for decades and has more than 200,000 followers on Facebook.

That organization, some speakers told CNN, is a government-controlled body designed to pump out misinformation and make the flat-Earth crusade sound far-fetched to curious minds. Davidson calls their theories "completely ridiculous."

The Apartment Earth Society told CNN: "We are not a authorities-controlled trunk. We're an organisation of Flat Earth theorists that long predates nigh of the FEIC newcomers to the scene."

"Information technology probably goes without saying that we observe no joy in this sectarianism, or the elevated emotions that environs some of our disagreements," the group added in response to criticism from speakers at the conference. "We wish the Flat Globe International Conference organizers all the all-time, but we remain steadfast in our own convictions."

Merely apartment Earthers don't pretend to accept all the answers. "People don't really know 100% what (the Earth) is, we're only questioning what nosotros're existence told it is," Davidson explains.

Several members of the customs take carried out their ain experiments, like bringing spirit levels onto airplanes, that have supposedly proved their thesis.

They haven't. To be absolutely clear, the Earth is non apartment -- as NASA explains in a fact canvass aimed at 5th to 8th graders.

But most adherents say they're simply curious, as all good scientific minds should exist. "Nosotros beloved scientific discipline," Davidson insists.

'It'southward difficult to interruption out of that mindset'

Even so, most adherents demonstrate enough of anti-scientific tendencies. Information technology's hard to notice a apartment Earther who doesn't believe nigh other conspiracies under the sun; a flat-Globe conference is invariably also a gathering of anti-vaxxers, 9/xi truthers and Illuminati subscribers, to name a few.

Information technology's that hyper-skeptical mindset that helps flat earthers answer the big questions -- like who'south hiding the truthful shape of the planet from united states?

"The ruling elite, from the royal family to the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds ... all of those groups that run the world, they're in on it," says Weiss.

Simply "once you become into apartment earth, the other (conspiracy theories) go knocked downwardly into another tier," says Mark Sargent, a filmmaker and stalwart of the movement who was featured in the 2022 Netflix documentary "Behind the Curve."

"Everybody hither, they've got their top 20 conspiracies -- and you could walk around door to door and those top 20 would differ from person to person. Merely everybody'southward number 1 is always apartment Earth," he tells CNN.

It helps that the grouping has a mutual target. "Virtually of our ire is pointed towards NASA. That'due south our bread and butter," Sargent says of the agency flat Earthers believe is ultimately behind the conspiracy.

Simply why, and how, could people believe a conspiracy theory so out of this universe?

"People, in essence, are just trying to understand the globe," says Daniel Jolley, a senior lecturer in the psychology of conspiracy theories at the UK's Northumbria University. "And they're looking at the globe in a gaze where they're biased in their thinking."

"They may have distrust towards powerful people or groups, which could be the government or NASA, and when they wait towards testify that makes sense to them ... this world view (is) endorsed," he says. "It'south difficult to break out of that mindset."

Scientists have likewise noted that a social motive draws people to conspiracy theories -- the desire to "maintain a positive view of the cocky and the groups we belong to," as social psychologist Karen Douglas of the University of Kent says.

And few groups have as strong a community every bit apartment Earthers.

"This (conference) is an outlet for a lot of people that might otherwise become ostracized by friends and family and co-workers. When they come here, they know it'southward absolutely a safe space," Sargent says of this week'south event.

But perhaps the virtually important driver is an underlying need for power and control. "People want to feel safe and secure in the globe," Douglas says. And power comes from knowledge -- no thing how questionable information technology may be.

"When you detect out the Globe is apartment ... and then you become empowered," Weiss says.

That feeling helps believers to understand the world better, every bit they run into information technology. "Y'all feel like you've got a ameliorate handle on life and the universe. Information technology's now more manageable," adds Sargent.

'Information technology's not going to harm anyone'

Sargent could arguably be regarded equally the godfather of the modernistic flat-Earth motility. "If you got into apartment Earth, there's a actually high hazard yous read into my stuff showtime," he tells CNN.

Only he had assist -- it was the appearance of YouTube that gave him a platform to spread his own views, which he says the movement "wouldn't exist without."

"Apartment Earth was a binge lookout on YouTube," he adds, aided by algorithms and personalized recommendations that turned flat globe inquiry into a never-catastrophe rabbit hole.

Earlier this year, YouTube started burying those videos and reducing recommendations of "borderline content," merely video makers similar Sargent experience it no longer makes much difference. "Annihilation on social media is always going to be helpful if information technology goes viral, right?" adds Davidson. "Well flat Earth has gone viral."

CNN has contacted YouTube for comment.

Only the alleged rapid growth of a movement so enthusiastically rejecting fundamental scientific beliefs does have some worried.

"It seems that increasingly, people don't trust scientists and experts, or their motives," Douglas says. "More than research needs to be done in this expanse, and I'm sure at that place are some positive consequences to believing in conspiracy theories, only early on indications suggests that they are more than harm than help."

"I don't say this often, simply look -- in that location is a downside," admits Sargent, reflecting on the movement he helped encourage. "There's a side effect to flat Globe ... once you go into it, you automatically revisit any of your old skepticism."

"I don't think they're merely linked," Sargent says of flat Earthers and populists. "They kind of feed each other ... information technology's a glace slope when yous think that the government has been hiding these things. Suddenly, you become one of those people that's like, 'tin you trust anything on mainstream media?'"

For Davidson, the next stage is to debate leading members of the scientific customs, but "they just laugh at us and say, 'you guys are dumb.'"

But he's not deterred.

"It'south touching everyone ... it's non going away, and it's not going to ho-hum down," Davidson says of the movement. "This thing is out of the tin."

This story has been updated to include a response from the Flat World Club.

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/16/us/flat-earth-conference-conspiracy-theories-scli-intl/index.html

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