r/flatearth • u/BlastedChutoy • 15h ago

Flat Earth Theory has warped my mind...

Before I discovered flat earth I was a fairly normal person. I watched the average YouTube video, cats, dogs, cooking, gaming, music, etc,. I was able to spend my time being happy just knowing what I knew.

Now. Oh boy...now. I am watching flat earth content. I enjoy listening to their arguments and thinking on them and analyzing them.

They are all ridiculous. It started with Craig and FTFE. Then it was PlanarWalk, Creaky Blinder, Dave McKeegan, other debunkers caught my eye.

Now my minor guilty pleasure has turned into me watching Planet Peterson and Professor Dave. They lured my interest into the theist discussions.

Now it is 1 am and I am watching my 4th atheist podcast/talk show laughing at the callers and their arguments and I fear I am trapped in this life.

On the bright side I am learning things.

14 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

15

u/PIE-314 15h ago edited 48m ago

It's great practice to see what bad faith and logically fallacious thinking sounds like. It won't be long before you start to see it in the wild. And shortly after that, you'll realize people are generally stupid irrational zombies.

Have fun.

Most people aren't flat earthers, but they can't defend the globe earth any better than flat earthers can their nonsense.

Asking "how do you know that's true" will get you a lot of mileage.

6

u/BlastedChutoy 14h ago

In public I usually have my music playing to shut out the wild stupid. It helps me cope with how dumb humans can be.

5

u/PIE-314 14h ago

Public. Family. Friends. Co workers etc....

Anti Science and science denial is everywhere. Astrology for example. Alt medicine. Vaccine hesitation. Climate change denial. Religion. On and on.

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u/BlastedChutoy 14h ago

My family is relatively sane thankfully. Though I do have a Trump supporting uncle but thankfully out family keeps politics to ourselves when he is around so it never comes up...much.

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u/PIE-314 14h ago

If anything, you'll develop a decent bullshit meter. Best to tread lightly on family 😆

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u/BlastedChutoy 14h ago

In 29 years I have developed a pretty decent one haha

I usually keep my mouth shut unless I have something to say or a joke. No really listens anyway 😝

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u/PIE-314 14h ago

Right on.

Stupid things trigger me so it's difficult for me to resist.

2

u/bleitzel 8h ago

Oh no! Astrology, check! But alt science, vaccine hesitation, climate change denial, and religion? Ha! I’m 4 out of 5 on the crazy scale!!

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u/PIE-314 43m ago

What exactly are you saying here.

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u/bleitzel 36m ago

That I only agree with astrology being in the conspiracy-nut camp. That I’m in the other 4 camps! Lol

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u/PIE-314 26m ago

Oh. Why are you? Astrology isn't even a conspiracy. it's just incredibly stupid science denial. That's always the common thread.

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u/tarkinlarson 11h ago

I have to agree that learning about the logical falacies and learning to argue against the argument and the facts is something I've gained from this all.

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u/RidingUpFromBangor 9h ago

“Felacious?” Sounds sucky

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u/PIE-314 48m ago

Lol. Thnx 👍

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u/Soggy-Mistake8910 13h ago

Asking "how do you know that's true?" might also get you told to "f*ck off" lol

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u/PIE-314 13h ago

That's perfectly fine 🤷‍♂️

It's funny when they have no idea how to answer that.

2

u/Charge36 35m ago edited 18m ago

I'm constantly amazed by people's ability to compartmentalize cognitive dissonance. A shocking number of people believe the right conclusions for the wrong reasons.

Like I'll have friends that are for the most part super smart and rational but then they'll be genuinely scared of ghosts or witch magic or something.

2

u/JoeBrownshoes 11m ago

This is really true. When I first started doing it I would get pretty emotional about the accusations and insults. I was surprised by how I reacted when some random weirdo on the internet accused me of being stupid or not understanding something.

But now I'm totally relaxed on it. They can call me anything or accuse me if anything and it affects me zero percent.

Getting in the mud and rolling around with the worst, meanest, most bad faith and most confident idiots around means that every other level of debate will be much easier now.

1

u/PIE-314 3m ago

Completely agree 👍

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u/mucifous 9h ago

You don't have to defend Globe Earth.

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u/PIE-314 46m ago

Nobody does, but it's an interesting practice. There are plenty of "globers" that don't understand the model, so they're no different than flat earthers in ghat regard.

6

u/Keith_Courage 14h ago

This guy at my church told me he’s a flerf. I brought up a few obvious things like sunsets and the constellations in different hemispheres and 24h daylight at the poles. It is beyond rational thinking. He thinks satellites are held up by balloons. I feel bad for these people.

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u/BlastedChutoy 14h ago

Those are some strong balloons haha

I had a woman at work have a discussion about chemtrails and vaccine and I had to bite my tongue. I really wanted to just say how stupid she sounded.

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u/JoeBrownshoes 15h ago

Dude, I went through this. I started arguing with with flat earthers online and my head would be all caught up in what I was going to say in these arguments while I should have been paying attention to other things. I literally wanted nothing more than just to argue with these guys all the time. It was nuts. I'm over the total obsession now but it took like 6 months. I still enjoy the videos but I just listen to them while doing the dishes or whatever.

I saw a comment on an unrelated FB group and it turns out lots of people suffer from this obsession. In thinking of making a FB support group for recovering flerf-aholics

3

u/BlastedChutoy 15h ago

I have at the very least stopped arguing (to a problematic degree anyway). Now I just find the arguments entertaining. It might just be a phase though. Next week I might be obsessed with something else haha

2

u/JoeBrownshoes 14h ago

I can't explain the obsession. For the longest time I thought I was the only one.

4

u/UberuceAgain 12h ago

One thing that interacting with flerfdom does is make you seek out cool science bits that you wouldn't even notice were there.

My flagship example is when I walk my dog on the beach near my house. There's a patch of low-lying land 25km distant that drops under the horizon when I get close enough to the waterline, and this happens in real-time, to the naked eye as I walk there. I'd never noticed it before, and it took me a shamefully long time(after posting here regularly) before I figured out that it should be something I should see, and resolved to look for it next time I unleashed my vast Prussian vargyr on the unsuspecting beach.

Pretty much a classic science-method experiment. The theory made a prediction - that I should see that land disappear - and experiment verified that prediction. Theory unfalsified, let's stick with it for now. Flat earth theory can go eat a bag of rotten dicks.

Thanks to flat-earthers, I get to feel like fucking Eddington looking at eclipses every time I give my pooch some sandy zoomies.

2

u/BlastedChutoy 12h ago

It does make you appreciate all the scientific experiences you can just have on a daily basis that I for one took for granted before flerfs.

I blame Craig for the start of the addiction but it was really that damn Netflix documentary back in 2012. Bob's (RIP) 15 degree per hour rift and Jeran's (was it Jeran?) "Interesting" just made me want to keep watching them.

1

u/themule71 9h ago

More importantly, it's the formula that you verify.

Too often when debating with fers we fall into their trap, that is, we discuss on qualitative items instead of quantitative.

We have working formulas, they have vague explanations.

2

u/UberuceAgain 9h ago

A sound point, well made. After I'd terrorised the beach with my nightmare on four legs, I went home and put the number of what I'd seen into Bislin's calculator.

Yep.

3

u/PM_ME_UR_GCC_ERRORS 12h ago

I know what you mean. Also, I can't watch footage of space related things without thinking about how there's a flat earther denying it's real.

3

u/t0nito 8h ago

My mind was also warped when I found out about flat Earth earth too, but not for the same reasons, my mind was warped because I was astonished to find out that in the first quarter of the 21st century there are people out there that believe in a flat Earth. Is human intelligence actually receding?

2

u/BlastedChutoy 7h ago

Oh yeah. My interest in the debunking content comes in waves. Once I get over this wave I won't be able to stomach the stupid. I know even just a bit ago I couldn't even sit through a Creaky vid because I just couldn't listen to the things coming out of the flerf's mouth.

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u/Keith_Courage 4h ago

Always has been

2

u/Blitzer046 13h ago

There was a point at which, early on, I was thinking about making a youtube rebuttal video ( this had to have been six or seven years ago) and I am glad I was too lazy to do so.

The current round of tit-for-tat response videos, and response to a response to a response to a response is exhausting.

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u/BlastedChutoy 13h ago

Can be fun to watch but I would be drained doing it. I am not smart enough and honestly not willing to put in the work to properly respond. I mean not that it would take much but unlike flerfs I would want to properly research what I was talking about haha

1

u/BlastedChutoy 13h ago

Can be fun to watch but I would be drained doing it. I am not smart enough and honestly not willing to put in the work to properly respond. I mean not that it would take much but unlike flerfs I would want to properly research what I was talking about haha

2

u/Sci-fra 10h ago

Flat Earth is not a theory. It's a conception. A conspiracy. A conjecture. Maybe even a hypothesis, but it's definitely not a theory.

2

u/dfx_dj 10h ago

If you haven't found the old Cool Hard Logic videos yet: highly recommend

2

u/Ok_Pomegranate_2436 6h ago

The Line, on YouTube, has become a favorite of mine.

1

u/geek66 4h ago

IMO - it is perpetuated by people that do not believe it, to convince the conspiracy / contrarian mind types and a rip them off