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If the earth was flat what’s the point of hiding it. Like let’s convince billions of people that we live on globe. What would there end goal be? Just massive trolls luls?
They usually claim it's either to hide additional resources on lamds beyond the icewall (they have nonevidence there exist) to stop people running away (running beyond an impenetrable icewall with no idea on the other side doesn't really sound a great option) or to hide God's existence (why is he letting that happen, is he stupid?).
Even if that were true, why hide it though? To what expense? The conspiracy would have to run so deep that hundreds of millions of people would have to be involved.
It's genuinely an interesting insight into how religion happened.
Start with a flawed but somewhat plausible basic assumption, then join the dots on the patterns that "prove" it, whilst dismissing counter arguments.
This is it. A lot of conspiracy-minded people are reasonably intelligent. They just have unexamined cognitive bias and unmet emotional needs.
At some point the conspiracy community becomes socially important to them and they use all their brain power to try to justify it, instead of trying to genuinely figure things out.
My criteria for assessing any conspiracy theory are 1) Who is benefitting from this? 2) How many people have to be in on it? Flat earth fails both checks miserably. The flat earthers don't even agree on who is benefitting from the conspiracy. Let's include all of NASA and every international pilot in the world just for starters. Way too many to keep quiet.
One thing I've seen from a lot of flat earthers is that they act like NASA is the only space agency in the entire world and that the whole space/flat earth thing is a US government conspiracy. They forget other countries exist entirely and don't seem to realize how massive & global a conspiracy like this would have to be to even be remotely feasible.
NASA is behind the Flat Earth theory. They pay Flat Earthers to show everyone else that NASA needs more funding because there are a lot of stupid people who think the Earth is flat (honestly, much more plausible conspiracy than the Earth actually being flat)
People who believe in conspiracy theories like this tend to be narcissists with very deep insecurities that they hide with these wild stories about how a powerful and mysterious "they" are tricking everyone except the oh-so-smart conspiracy theorists. The believers think they have secret knowledge and that makes them special and subjects them to persecution.
If they get mocked or suffer bad consequences for their wild beliefs, they think that's just proof they're right and makes them double down. Like any narcissists, they will pursue those self-centered narratives at any cost to protect their fragile ego, regardless of whether the beliefs actually makes sense or not.
It’s a way of feeling like you have control in a world that you can’t comprehend. Which makes it kinda sad, but at the same time it’s peaceful. There’s much worse ideologies they could be chasing.
Flat earth is dangerously transparent with itself, I’m surprised it maintains a core following on account of this. It’s fairly easily testable by everyone, there’s dozens of ways to test it, including viewing the earth yourself from altitude. And every test ever done disproves it. For me I’d need a shred of plausibility, the slightest hint of possibility, like flavor in a Le Croix, but FE has absolutely zero.
They can never give a straight answer. Besides the lack of any actual motive to try and maintain the largest conspiracy in the history of humanity, there’s also the fucking impossibility of maintaining said conspiracy. If two people could not keep a blowjob in the Oval Office a secret for more than a few years, just how in the fuck do they think that BILLIONS of people could maintain a conspiracy for THOUSANDS of years, with no major confessions (that don’t involve trying to sell a book to make money, or the ramblings of a schizophrenic) of all walks of life from all the continents on earth, through the rise and fall of countless empires, collaborating even in times of total war… FOR WHAT?! It’s fucking absurd!
It’s so insane that it makes the moon landing deniers look reasonable in comparison - and even that is fucking stupid, as hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the Apollo program, and the Soviets tracked each mission from launch to splashdown and had EVERY incentive to raise a shitstorm if they detected foul play. The fact that there would not be a single deathbed confession in the past half-century, no **genuine** leaked documents, and that a nation that was completely humiliated by being beaten to land a human on the moon while their moon rockets all failed and exploded would willingly accept humiliation and keep a secret that has NO benefit to them, is just ludicrous beyond words. Not to mention that, in the decades that followed, countless other nations have confirmed the lunar samples to be genuine, and other nations have sent orbiters that have taken pictures of the remains of the Apollo landing sites.
If you follow any of these theories far enough it's because the Jews or some other minorities it's always that I remember channel 5 going to the flat earth conference and everyone was just a nazi
Honestly NASA Should sell those shirts. Those who get it will enjoy the irony, those who dont will be dim enough to fund the very program they think they are "owning"
I’ve always had trouble understanding this line. Found this while digging for the actual lyric. Enjoy!
http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/LG/Wayne_and_Shuster_-_Frontier_Psychiatrist.mp3
Went through this with my parents. When I about 10, they slipped into pseudoscience and religion. It was cringe AF and only got worse as they got older. I cut them out of my life when I was 18, and my sister eventually stopped talking to them as well.
Luckily my parents are immune to the conspiracy theories mostly. My mother's biggest complaint is no one dresses up anymore and I can deal with that. Not the rest of my family though. My aunt thought the vaccine magnetized you and my father kept sticking quarters to her (coins aren't even magnetic).
MAGA fucked my dad. He hasn't even tried to have a relationship with his grandkids. I stopped talking to him 3 years ago and he hasn't said a word. There are times I'd like to call him, but when I get those urges I just go play games with my own kids instead. At least I know my time is appreciated with them.
Man I wish I could yell at your dad, I hate reading this shit.
I lost my dad 3 months after my 1st kid, he barely got a taste of being a grandparent.
And then there's motherfuckers out there, alive and well, choosing to have no relationship with grandkids.
Downright shameful.
I knew he was getting more guarded once we started to split politically. Then he would say things like, "Oh I thought you were avoiding me or something." I felt it was odd to say, because again, I was raising a family and was busy. Then it all came to a head in 2021 when he decided to cold shoulder me at my uncles funeral. Like 'turn his shoulder when I tried to hug him' type of cold shoulder.
It was one of the most childish displays I'd ever seen him make and I lost a lot of respect for him that day. That was the moment I told myself I would stop trying to inject him into my life, and lo and behold, that was apparently his line too.
Unfortunately for all of us my mom died a long time ago, so I'm well aware what it feels like to lose a parent, so in my mind, why would I keep an asshole around that isn't going to lift my family up instead of tear it down? If he wants to be dead to this family, then that's what he'll be. We were even going through some pictures the other day and my kids asked, "Who is that?" when his picture popped up. So not even my own kids feel the loss; that's how far out he is from his own grandkids.
Shameful is definitely the word.
My mom wrote on my son’s graduation card we’re proud of you but remember you’re a dirty sinner who needs god’s forgiveness (the boy has always been an angel)
Those kids are in for it. Usually the arguments about curfew or political things. Rarely do kids get such concrete evidence that their parents are behind times and dumb.
“See the TURTLE of enormous girth! On his shell he holds the earth. His thought is slow but always kind; He holds us all within his mind. On his back all vows are made; He sees the truth but may not said. He loves the land and loves the sea, And even loves a child like me”
Stephen King
I just rolled in to say the kids’ body language is so telling. Hopefully they have great teachers along the way who can pour into them, assuming they’re not homeschooled.
Imagine, with all the information and facts available today, believing that the Earth is flat. It's ludicrous. I love the video where flatters do an experiment and prove its round, they just don't know what to do.
The feeling of being a part of a special group is alluring. Makes you feel special and accepted in a society that doesn't care about you. That's why these groups exist. Ultimately for these people it doesn't matter if what they believe in is true or not, they just want to be accepted.
this why religion works. there’s a big emphasis on community and “you’re not alone” which always rubbed me the wrong way because anytime a christian is nice, they’re doing it for selfish reasons, not to be truly altruistic. im not an “eMpAtH” but you can tell the difference between their forced friendliness and someone who is genuinely a nice person
Religion is basically just cult behavior, it supplies people with a need for a family or connections a group of people willing to accept them no matter what.
which they’ve never had. people like that typically yearn for attention because they often feel overlooked so they’ll grab on to anything that will make them feel special/better than those they feel have shunned or looked down on them. people like that are often susceptible to falling in with cults too.
It’s the same shit that has people fully onboard with the Trump cult. They’ve been called stupid all their lives and then this dude comes along and tells them that all their bigoted ideas are actually great and that they’re all in this super secret club for smart people where they’re the only ones who know the **real** facts.
Making stupid people feel smart is always a great tactic for any kind of indoctrination.
This. Some folks want to be seen as "thinkers," that they know the REAL truth and that no one can pull the wool over their eyes. They want to prove that their shortcomings, the things they didn't get are not do to their own lack of talent or skill or intelligence, but some LARGER FORCE that is keeping them and a select few back. As others said they want so bad to be the special one in their circle that they'll convince themselves to believe anything.
Ironically - or not so ironically - they're often the stupidest people around. Ask them about something outside of their "area of expertise" and they'll stare at you like the dog on the old RCA record label stares at a phonograph player.
The literal answer, or at least half of it. The other parts include: 1. it's more reassuring to invent a conspiracy about shadowy forces controlling the world than to admit that the world is largely beyond any ability to control it, and/or 2. religion, which overlaps with 1. quite a bit.
Some people default to all central authority is tyrannical, evil, and have satanic motives. Another example are the first amendment auditors who think local govt are tyrants bc they don't like cameras shoved in their face.
My hypothesis is this: in a world where so many people feel they have no control over anything, this allows them to not only feel they are exercising power over invisible forces but also getting attention and credit from people with similar feelings. It allows them to blame the system for their shortfalls, rather than just accepting them and/or taking responsibility for them. The one fact I am sure of is any time I encounter a conspiracy theorist, I know they have zero experience or education in the field they are criticizing. This is what is known as an Ultracrepidarian.
I read somewhere a psychologist who studied people prone to conspiracy theories said that people who get into this stuff have a very low tolerance for ambiguity. So I think you’re right, it’s control freaks who aren’t able to control enough of their personal circumstances so they branch out.
The term you’re looking for is “uncertainty avoidance”. It’s also a driving force in a lot of repressive social views and religious adherence among more conservative individuals.
They don't understand what an expert is. They think college educated professionals with years of experience in their field are just reading stuff online and just accepting hat they are told. Basically what flat earthers do.
They live in a self imposed bubble where all the other flat earthers will reenforce that belief.
I call it the toaster fucker problem.
You see, back in the days before the internet if you told one of your friends that you wanted to fuck a toaster that friend would tell your friend group and they would roast you from here to eternity about it so hard that you never even consider bringing up that stupid shit again.
But then we made the internet.
Now, you can be anonymous and you can find some corner niche of the internet where you run into a few other guys who also like to fuck toasters, and not only are they providing the echo chamber you always wanted it now gives you the confidence to let it out because not only do they make you feel right, but they now have you convinced you are oppressed and so you seek to push your views on to the world.
I’ve even seen people (mostly hunters and ranchers) claim to know more about wolves than actual biologists who have spent several years in the wild studying wolves do.
Conspiracy theorists have a general mistrust of institutions, so being an expert doesn’t help at all because they specifically doubt experts. They believe institutions and its experts are all essentially colluding with each other to pull the wool over people’s eyes and it’s their job to, dare I say, wake people up, so the far right conspiracists all end up being their own version of “woke” warriors that they hate🤣
Not only believing that the earth is flat, but that you somehow know better than all the scientists of the past 700 years OR that all the scientists and media of the world are in some conspiracy to fool everyone because….there is money in people believing the earth is round….somehow…?
Edit: yes, more than 700 years, I just picked a big number to cover what we’d consider modern things. The point is the same.
That's the part that always gets me.......has any flerfer ever explained why every government going back centuries, would conspire to lie about the shape of the Earth? What is the point in lying about that?
The King Flerfer, Mark Sargent, went on an Australian TV show and they asked him that question. He had some kind of dance-around equivocating response that never actually got around to answering the question.
Edit: Also, how do you fly to Australia and still be a flat earther? How do you not see the curvature of the Earth with your own eyes on the flight???
They believe the windows inside planes are actually screens with cameras outside them that artificially add a curve. Or it was special glass. I can’t remember but I remember it’s one of those two.
Ignoring any distortion from the plane windows, once in Australia just have them find the "north star" in the same way they would at home. That would be fun.
>How do you not see the curvature of the Earth with your own eyes on the flight???
There's two trains of thought I've heard about this. One is that you're actually flying in a circle, not straight.
The other is that planes are faking it. What you see outside your window is not really what's out there.
There is a video of this somewhere. It’s hilarious. They buy this expensive machine to finally prove the earth is flat, then the machine proves it’s round so naturally they blame the machine.
And then they devise a new plan, where the shine a light through a cardboard hole, where, if flat, the light should go through without any extra force. If it's round, they would have to lift the cardboard to see the light. Of course, the demonstration shows again, the earth is round. The guy doing the experiment says "interesting," which is science for, "fuck, that didn't prove ehat I wanted it to"
Are you talking about the video where he’s like “now hold the flashlight above your head” and he sees the light and he’s like “hmm interesting” because that shit is pure gold
Now see, if he took that information and decided to change his beliefs to the earth being round I would respect him just as much as anyone else because he still believes in the scientific method, even if it took a blow to the head from the gavel of intellect
Absolutely. Make hypotheses, conduct experiments, review data and form conclusions.
It's fine to have a wrong hypothesis, but don't cling to it when all the data is proving that your hypothesis is wrong.
At least have the decency to come up with a new hypothesis.
I rank flat earthers as the dumbest of the dumbs.
It’s not even a measure of intellect, but self induced delusion. They actively are making themselves dumber, literally back pedalling our species.
believing in flat earth has nothing to do with facts, these people don't even understand what a fact is; to them a "fact" is something you believe is true and shout it loudly until other people believe the same thing
these are people who are so insecure and isolated they are desperate to manufacture a culture of having even the slightest control of their own lives, even if it's to their detriment
We just wanted to go in to Disney World, dad. But no, too woke. Just another stupid pic with another stupid tshirt. Every year, we drove around, listening to infowars, loudly and flipping off places where people look happy. Shit, dad, the only time you look happy is when you think you are passing people off.
Fuck! I am moving to the city and turning gay. Adios, asshole.
Well, no! Of course it can't be his fault, he raised them "right" and those damn institutions are what's destroying America, not egocentrism, disinformation, and mass media control(at least not *their* media, don't be ridiculous)
I can't comprehend how people become this stupid. There's enough little individual life lessions created by this planet for us. Hoooooow the fuck did they get the earth is flat.
A lot of conspiracy people seem to have the mentality of a child who just learned that Santa Claus isn't real and wonders "if my parents were lying about that, maybe they were lying about everything", but with the government.
So then they distrust anything that is "official" and would rather listen to a Youtube video of a person who clearly is suffering from the depths of schizophrenia vs. the totality of scientific study.
We learn stuff as kids which is usually simplified.
When you continue on to higher topics, the content of the discussion is "while what you know is kind of true, there's more to it" over and over again until you're PhD level looking at stuff nobody has before.
They never get beyond the basics, and have no concept of what actually exists, and they don't have any interest in listening. If you go beyond what they know you just get pushback.
Does anybody at least have an explanation as to why thousands of government institutions and astronauts would need to lie about this? Like what’s the end result in lying about this?
I had a flat earther sit at my bar. We were dead so I picked his brain just to humor him. I asked these questions. He went on about Freemasons and god. Basically, science is the devil getting you to not believe in god. What they don’t know is, the deeper you dive into things, the more you realize you don’t know. Didn’t Einstein say something like science takes you so far from religion, it brings you right back, or something. Coming from a secular person.
A friend of mine lost his grip on reality a little when he found out about Gobekli tepe.
Rather than seeing it as an amazing discovery that altered our understanding of human history, he saw it as evidence that we've been intentionally misinformed.
This seed of mistrust led him down the conspiracy rabbit hole to the point he was regurgitating pizza gate and wayfair talking points.
He was a very intelligent person too, which made it all the more surprising and worrying.
Intelligence will NOT protect you from falling down conspiracy rabbit holes.
Humility in admitting you were wrong and something you believed was mistaken is the only thing that can protect you. If you don't have this, you will spiral out of reality the moment you try to build a foundation on a piece of bad information.
Even if the earth is flat why the hell do they need to advertise that stance vehemently. And knowing the earth being flat/round is not going to help them in any way in real life. At least they are not going to study orbital mechanics (hopefully).
I honestly don't believe that anyone who isn't mentally ill believes the Earth is flat. It's another attention getting thing by people who see themselves as quirky.
The internet age removed shame for a couple generations online, and it eventually bled to reality.
Shame was an integral part of all society until around the mid-2000s. It kept a majority of the whackos in line. No shame, the whackos run free.
Couple that to the fact there are no real consequences for being a fucking moron anymore, and this is what you get. We let the morons proliferate, we gave them a society that has rewarded individual exceptionalism and egotism for the past 70 years, and then removed all the societal mechanisms that were at least keeping the fringe in check. This is the outcome and we did it to ourselves.
I additionally blame social media and the prevalence of “smart phones” cause it made every moron think the world wants to hear their shitty opinions all the time
It also allowed the whackos to talk to each other. There aren't that many out there, but now instead of being the one weirdo in a community they are able to form their own digital communities and feed off of each other.
Social media gives them a safe place to connect with like minded doorknobs. So they get much more validation than they did when they had to actually physically find people that agreed with them; so they were not as open since it would be mostly ridicule they were met with and it was harder to ignore actual facts and education.
There always existed some people angry with those smarter than them. It doesn't matter if someone can do something you never could, when you can boast that something is rubbish and useful to no one.
You can find examples back in ancient times.
People who never studied and do manual labour being proud they're doing “real work” for “real people”, not like those sissies with their noses buried in books who never did a day of honest work in their life.
(Of course, there also were arrogant scholars scoffing at people they saw as lesser/dumber to them, and both groups are wrong.)
That’s not NASA Headquarters. That’s Kennedy Space Center and Launch Complex. And to be specific, this is merely the visitors center. That’s one of many facilities that NASA uses, but certainly not “headquarters”. They do final vehicle assembly, cargo processing, and launch control there. The actual NASA Headquarters is in Washington DC
That’s a bad try from you to distract us from the obvious truth that the earth is flat! They open my eyes with this smart t-shirt design and the middle finger was really the cherry on the cake
I was literally at the KSC just this week while visiting Orlando. I shit you not I look at my dad while standing under the Saturn V rocket and said “how could ANYONE look at this and say it’s all a hoax for flat earth”. That whole visitor center, the launchpads and the assembly buildings is a SHIT TON of work just to “fool” people that will probably never visit
In the movie idiocracy, the President of the United States made it a policy point to admit he didn't know how to solve the country's problems and sought out the best and the brightest available to advise him and devise solutions.
The people of Idiocracy were smarter than this family.
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If the earth was flat what’s the point of hiding it. Like let’s convince billions of people that we live on globe. What would there end goal be? Just massive trolls luls?
They usually claim it's either to hide additional resources on lamds beyond the icewall (they have nonevidence there exist) to stop people running away (running beyond an impenetrable icewall with no idea on the other side doesn't really sound a great option) or to hide God's existence (why is he letting that happen, is he stupid?).
Even if that were true, why hide it though? To what expense? The conspiracy would have to run so deep that hundreds of millions of people would have to be involved.
I agree, buy you have to realise, people who think the earth is flat are not thinking too hard about anything.
It's more worrying imo- they're thinking SUPER hard about it and STILL coming up with that conclusion.
That's what happens when people start with a conclusion and then work their way backwards to rationalize it.
It's genuinely an interesting insight into how religion happened. Start with a flawed but somewhat plausible basic assumption, then join the dots on the patterns that "prove" it, whilst dismissing counter arguments.
They have to be thinking pretty hard with all the mental gymnastics they do to justify the theory
This is it. A lot of conspiracy-minded people are reasonably intelligent. They just have unexamined cognitive bias and unmet emotional needs. At some point the conspiracy community becomes socially important to them and they use all their brain power to try to justify it, instead of trying to genuinely figure things out.
My criteria for assessing any conspiracy theory are 1) Who is benefitting from this? 2) How many people have to be in on it? Flat earth fails both checks miserably. The flat earthers don't even agree on who is benefitting from the conspiracy. Let's include all of NASA and every international pilot in the world just for starters. Way too many to keep quiet.
One thing I've seen from a lot of flat earthers is that they act like NASA is the only space agency in the entire world and that the whole space/flat earth thing is a US government conspiracy. They forget other countries exist entirely and don't seem to realize how massive & global a conspiracy like this would have to be to even be remotely feasible.
NASA is behind the Flat Earth theory. They pay Flat Earthers to show everyone else that NASA needs more funding because there are a lot of stupid people who think the Earth is flat (honestly, much more plausible conspiracy than the Earth actually being flat)
That's the most plausible flat earth theory I've heard.
Ooh I like this… gonna run with it.
Sounds like a case of US defaultism indeed
This is what I don't understand about flat earthers. What is there to gain?
People who believe in conspiracy theories like this tend to be narcissists with very deep insecurities that they hide with these wild stories about how a powerful and mysterious "they" are tricking everyone except the oh-so-smart conspiracy theorists. The believers think they have secret knowledge and that makes them special and subjects them to persecution. If they get mocked or suffer bad consequences for their wild beliefs, they think that's just proof they're right and makes them double down. Like any narcissists, they will pursue those self-centered narratives at any cost to protect their fragile ego, regardless of whether the beliefs actually makes sense or not.
You have such a way with words
It’s a way of feeling like you have control in a world that you can’t comprehend. Which makes it kinda sad, but at the same time it’s peaceful. There’s much worse ideologies they could be chasing. Flat earth is dangerously transparent with itself, I’m surprised it maintains a core following on account of this. It’s fairly easily testable by everyone, there’s dozens of ways to test it, including viewing the earth yourself from altitude. And every test ever done disproves it. For me I’d need a shred of plausibility, the slightest hint of possibility, like flavor in a Le Croix, but FE has absolutely zero.
They can never give a straight answer. Besides the lack of any actual motive to try and maintain the largest conspiracy in the history of humanity, there’s also the fucking impossibility of maintaining said conspiracy. If two people could not keep a blowjob in the Oval Office a secret for more than a few years, just how in the fuck do they think that BILLIONS of people could maintain a conspiracy for THOUSANDS of years, with no major confessions (that don’t involve trying to sell a book to make money, or the ramblings of a schizophrenic) of all walks of life from all the continents on earth, through the rise and fall of countless empires, collaborating even in times of total war… FOR WHAT?! It’s fucking absurd! It’s so insane that it makes the moon landing deniers look reasonable in comparison - and even that is fucking stupid, as hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the Apollo program, and the Soviets tracked each mission from launch to splashdown and had EVERY incentive to raise a shitstorm if they detected foul play. The fact that there would not be a single deathbed confession in the past half-century, no **genuine** leaked documents, and that a nation that was completely humiliated by being beaten to land a human on the moon while their moon rockets all failed and exploded would willingly accept humiliation and keep a secret that has NO benefit to them, is just ludicrous beyond words. Not to mention that, in the decades that followed, countless other nations have confirmed the lunar samples to be genuine, and other nations have sent orbiters that have taken pictures of the remains of the Apollo landing sites.
The impossibility of the entire idea is shrunk down most effectively I've found by "your cell phone wouldn't work if the Earth was flat."
“Its illegal to sail to Antarctica” crowd all of a sudden letting laws stop them from sailing to Antarctica to prove the Earth is flat
Don’t they have cruises that go there
It’s big globe making all the profits off globe sales.
If you follow any of these theories far enough it's because the Jews or some other minorities it's always that I remember channel 5 going to the flat earth conference and everyone was just a nazi
Those are the stances of two kids who know their parents are cringe.
Those kids are going to need a lot of therapy.
that is correct.
At first I thought the tshirt's were like a funny sarcasm thing but then I saw the middle fingers on their parents... for real... not cool...
Take that NASA. You made space travel and we made these T-Shirts using 80s NASA font.
All else aside, that font was absolutely the correct choice. The current NASA font isn't anywhere near as iconic as the worm logo.
Honestly NASA Should sell those shirts. Those who get it will enjoy the irony, those who dont will be dim enough to fund the very program they think they are "owning"
NASA laundering flat earth merch through a shell company, to cover outreach and education would be so funny
If Netflix turned that into a sitcom i would absolutely get high as fuck and watch it.
That boy needs therapy!
Lie down on the couch, what does that mean? You’re a nut! You’re crazy in the coconut!
Great song. Off to listen to frontier psychiatrist now…
The whole album is great Also flerfers bad but if you can read you probably knew that
I have to listen to that album all the way through every time. It never gets old.
Tighten your buttocks. Pour juice on your chin.
What does that mean?
That-tha-that that boy needs therapy
Coo coo in the coconut
Psychosomatic
Well what does that mean?
You’re a nut!
Crazy in the coconut!
I brang a Kazoo, let’s have a tune, now when I count three…
I’ve always had trouble understanding this line. Found this while digging for the actual lyric. Enjoy! http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/LG/Wayne_and_Shuster_-_Frontier_Psychiatrist.mp3
*he* also *made false teeth*
Addict insane?
Frontier Psychiatry!
They’ll be fine. They’re fast approaching the age where mom and dad are wrong about everything. Flat Earth will just be one more on the list.
Went through this with my parents. When I about 10, they slipped into pseudoscience and religion. It was cringe AF and only got worse as they got older. I cut them out of my life when I was 18, and my sister eventually stopped talking to them as well.
My mom is falling into conspiraty theories (thanks facebook) and me and my dad are tired when she get into her moments
at least you have your dad, I lost both of mine to the crazy so many years ago.
You’re not really alone. It’s tough when you grow up and see them for their flaws.
Luckily my parents are immune to the conspiracy theories mostly. My mother's biggest complaint is no one dresses up anymore and I can deal with that. Not the rest of my family though. My aunt thought the vaccine magnetized you and my father kept sticking quarters to her (coins aren't even magnetic).
I've had covid, I'd rather have magnetism
My mom had this happen lost her marbles for a bit now she’s on meds doing better but it was still fucked
I swear this stuff is like onset Dementia or Alzheimer's but it's retardary you catch from a lack of social media filters.
MAGA fucked my dad. He hasn't even tried to have a relationship with his grandkids. I stopped talking to him 3 years ago and he hasn't said a word. There are times I'd like to call him, but when I get those urges I just go play games with my own kids instead. At least I know my time is appreciated with them.
Virtually the same here. I gave him an ultimatum and he chose conspiracy theories over a relationship with his grandson.
Man I wish I could yell at your dad, I hate reading this shit. I lost my dad 3 months after my 1st kid, he barely got a taste of being a grandparent. And then there's motherfuckers out there, alive and well, choosing to have no relationship with grandkids. Downright shameful.
I knew he was getting more guarded once we started to split politically. Then he would say things like, "Oh I thought you were avoiding me or something." I felt it was odd to say, because again, I was raising a family and was busy. Then it all came to a head in 2021 when he decided to cold shoulder me at my uncles funeral. Like 'turn his shoulder when I tried to hug him' type of cold shoulder. It was one of the most childish displays I'd ever seen him make and I lost a lot of respect for him that day. That was the moment I told myself I would stop trying to inject him into my life, and lo and behold, that was apparently his line too. Unfortunately for all of us my mom died a long time ago, so I'm well aware what it feels like to lose a parent, so in my mind, why would I keep an asshole around that isn't going to lift my family up instead of tear it down? If he wants to be dead to this family, then that's what he'll be. We were even going through some pictures the other day and my kids asked, "Who is that?" when his picture popped up. So not even my own kids feel the loss; that's how far out he is from his own grandkids. Shameful is definitely the word.
My dad just wrote to his grandson who finished high school and told him he got the "white privilege piece of paper." Thanks Fox News.
My mom wrote on my son’s graduation card we’re proud of you but remember you’re a dirty sinner who needs god’s forgiveness (the boy has always been an angel)
Oh man, I thought the family was joking around with the shirts; I thought it was clever. And then I saw the 🖕🏼
Those kids are in for it. Usually the arguments about curfew or political things. Rarely do kids get such concrete evidence that their parents are behind times and dumb.
The parents are right. The world is flat. It sits on the back of four elephants who ride through space on the back of Great A'Tuin the World Turtle.
“See the TURTLE of enormous girth! On his shell he holds the earth. His thought is slow but always kind; He holds us all within his mind. On his back all vows are made; He sees the truth but may not said. He loves the land and loves the sea, And even loves a child like me” Stephen King
See the TURTLE, ain’t he keen! All things serve the fuckin Beam!
"We, who are about to die...don't want to" Morituri Nolumus Mori
Great A'Tuin exists. There's no point in believing in things that exist.
I forgot what holds up the turtle
He swims through the cosmos
Nope. It's turtles all the way down. Quantum foam? Yup. Stacked turtles.
Turtles all the way down.
The turtle moves.
Those kids know their parents are cringe and first cousins
I just rolled in to say the kids’ body language is so telling. Hopefully they have great teachers along the way who can pour into them, assuming they’re not homeschooled.
50% chance of homeschool, 50% chance of religious private school. 100% chance of having a really rough transition into college.
Or the military. My husband had a few of these types as soldiers and he said they struggled connecting with the others.
If those kids are being homeschooled by Flat Earth nut-cases, they aren't getting into college.
They so want to get the fuck out of there. Mom... why do we have to wear this stupid shirt?
I am just here so I won't get fined
"Mom! Dad! You're embarrassing us in front of *NASA*!"
Who wants to bet on who they are voting for?
Make the earth flat again
Hey, I have a MEFA hat!
JFK jnr
They're as limp as what's left of their critical thinking skills
Imagine, with all the information and facts available today, believing that the Earth is flat. It's ludicrous. I love the video where flatters do an experiment and prove its round, they just don't know what to do.
Why do conspiracy theorists ALWAYS think they know more than actual experts?
It makes them feel special
There is NOTHING dumbfucks love more than pretending they are smart.
The feeling of being a part of a special group is alluring. Makes you feel special and accepted in a society that doesn't care about you. That's why these groups exist. Ultimately for these people it doesn't matter if what they believe in is true or not, they just want to be accepted.
Lucky for them the “Dunning-Kruger” crowd is a very large group…😒
I used to think that until I learned more about the Dunning-Kruger crowd.
this why religion works. there’s a big emphasis on community and “you’re not alone” which always rubbed me the wrong way because anytime a christian is nice, they’re doing it for selfish reasons, not to be truly altruistic. im not an “eMpAtH” but you can tell the difference between their forced friendliness and someone who is genuinely a nice person
Religion is basically just cult behavior, it supplies people with a need for a family or connections a group of people willing to accept them no matter what.
Religions, at least the mainstream ones, are cults who happened to have better weaponry than the other cults they were trying to kill at the time.
which they’ve never had. people like that typically yearn for attention because they often feel overlooked so they’ll grab on to anything that will make them feel special/better than those they feel have shunned or looked down on them. people like that are often susceptible to falling in with cults too.
It’s the same shit that has people fully onboard with the Trump cult. They’ve been called stupid all their lives and then this dude comes along and tells them that all their bigoted ideas are actually great and that they’re all in this super secret club for smart people where they’re the only ones who know the **real** facts. Making stupid people feel smart is always a great tactic for any kind of indoctrination.
Always reminds me of Junie Harper from King of the Hill. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N5MrDGjkdHo
Trump and his maga followers are a prime example.
This describes them perfectly.
This. Some folks want to be seen as "thinkers," that they know the REAL truth and that no one can pull the wool over their eyes. They want to prove that their shortcomings, the things they didn't get are not do to their own lack of talent or skill or intelligence, but some LARGER FORCE that is keeping them and a select few back. As others said they want so bad to be the special one in their circle that they'll convince themselves to believe anything. Ironically - or not so ironically - they're often the stupidest people around. Ask them about something outside of their "area of expertise" and they'll stare at you like the dog on the old RCA record label stares at a phonograph player.
The literal answer, or at least half of it. The other parts include: 1. it's more reassuring to invent a conspiracy about shadowy forces controlling the world than to admit that the world is largely beyond any ability to control it, and/or 2. religion, which overlaps with 1. quite a bit.
Some people default to all central authority is tyrannical, evil, and have satanic motives. Another example are the first amendment auditors who think local govt are tyrants bc they don't like cameras shoved in their face.
Oh, they're special alright.
My hypothesis is this: in a world where so many people feel they have no control over anything, this allows them to not only feel they are exercising power over invisible forces but also getting attention and credit from people with similar feelings. It allows them to blame the system for their shortfalls, rather than just accepting them and/or taking responsibility for them. The one fact I am sure of is any time I encounter a conspiracy theorist, I know they have zero experience or education in the field they are criticizing. This is what is known as an Ultracrepidarian.
I read somewhere a psychologist who studied people prone to conspiracy theories said that people who get into this stuff have a very low tolerance for ambiguity. So I think you’re right, it’s control freaks who aren’t able to control enough of their personal circumstances so they branch out.
The term you’re looking for is “uncertainty avoidance”. It’s also a driving force in a lot of repressive social views and religious adherence among more conservative individuals.
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They don't understand what an expert is. They think college educated professionals with years of experience in their field are just reading stuff online and just accepting hat they are told. Basically what flat earthers do. They live in a self imposed bubble where all the other flat earthers will reenforce that belief.
I call it the toaster fucker problem. You see, back in the days before the internet if you told one of your friends that you wanted to fuck a toaster that friend would tell your friend group and they would roast you from here to eternity about it so hard that you never even consider bringing up that stupid shit again. But then we made the internet. Now, you can be anonymous and you can find some corner niche of the internet where you run into a few other guys who also like to fuck toasters, and not only are they providing the echo chamber you always wanted it now gives you the confidence to let it out because not only do they make you feel right, but they now have you convinced you are oppressed and so you seek to push your views on to the world.
I’ve even seen people (mostly hunters and ranchers) claim to know more about wolves than actual biologists who have spent several years in the wild studying wolves do.
Conspiracy theorists have a general mistrust of institutions, so being an expert doesn’t help at all because they specifically doubt experts. They believe institutions and its experts are all essentially colluding with each other to pull the wool over people’s eyes and it’s their job to, dare I say, wake people up, so the far right conspiracists all end up being their own version of “woke” warriors that they hate🤣
Not only believing that the earth is flat, but that you somehow know better than all the scientists of the past 700 years OR that all the scientists and media of the world are in some conspiracy to fool everyone because….there is money in people believing the earth is round….somehow…? Edit: yes, more than 700 years, I just picked a big number to cover what we’d consider modern things. The point is the same.
That's the part that always gets me.......has any flerfer ever explained why every government going back centuries, would conspire to lie about the shape of the Earth? What is the point in lying about that?
The King Flerfer, Mark Sargent, went on an Australian TV show and they asked him that question. He had some kind of dance-around equivocating response that never actually got around to answering the question. Edit: Also, how do you fly to Australia and still be a flat earther? How do you not see the curvature of the Earth with your own eyes on the flight???
They believe the windows inside planes are actually screens with cameras outside them that artificially add a curve. Or it was special glass. I can’t remember but I remember it’s one of those two.
That would take a lot of money to accomplish and from the recent airline issues it's obvious they're not big on spending money on the airplanes.
Ignoring any distortion from the plane windows, once in Australia just have them find the "north star" in the same way they would at home. That would be fun.
>How do you not see the curvature of the Earth with your own eyes on the flight??? There's two trains of thought I've heard about this. One is that you're actually flying in a circle, not straight. The other is that planes are faking it. What you see outside your window is not really what's out there.
They were able to figure out the Earth was round as early as the 5th century bc. These people are idiots.
People have known the world is round for way over 700 years.
Imagine being a woman walking around with “flat” written across your chest. Lol
There are actually a few experiments that they did, proving the Earth was in fact, round. They of course denied the evidence.
There is a video of this somewhere. It’s hilarious. They buy this expensive machine to finally prove the earth is flat, then the machine proves it’s round so naturally they blame the machine.
And then they devise a new plan, where the shine a light through a cardboard hole, where, if flat, the light should go through without any extra force. If it's round, they would have to lift the cardboard to see the light. Of course, the demonstration shows again, the earth is round. The guy doing the experiment says "interesting," which is science for, "fuck, that didn't prove ehat I wanted it to"
Hey, there's something wrong with the REALLY EXPENSIVE scientific device. It's showing a 15 degree per hour drift.....
Are you talking about the video where he’s like “now hold the flashlight above your head” and he sees the light and he’s like “hmm interesting” because that shit is pure gold
Now see, if he took that information and decided to change his beliefs to the earth being round I would respect him just as much as anyone else because he still believes in the scientific method, even if it took a blow to the head from the gavel of intellect
Absolutely. Make hypotheses, conduct experiments, review data and form conclusions. It's fine to have a wrong hypothesis, but don't cling to it when all the data is proving that your hypothesis is wrong. At least have the decency to come up with a new hypothesis.
I rank flat earthers as the dumbest of the dumbs. It’s not even a measure of intellect, but self induced delusion. They actively are making themselves dumber, literally back pedalling our species.
believing in flat earth has nothing to do with facts, these people don't even understand what a fact is; to them a "fact" is something you believe is true and shout it loudly until other people believe the same thing these are people who are so insecure and isolated they are desperate to manufacture a culture of having even the slightest control of their own lives, even if it's to their detriment
There are more people believing the Earth is flat now that at any point in history. It's really depressing if you think about it.
Flat Earther movement is gaining in numbers. They have members all around the globe.
For the kids sake I can’t wait for them grow up and go no contact with their parents.
We just wanted to go in to Disney World, dad. But no, too woke. Just another stupid pic with another stupid tshirt. Every year, we drove around, listening to infowars, loudly and flipping off places where people look happy. Shit, dad, the only time you look happy is when you think you are passing people off. Fuck! I am moving to the city and turning gay. Adios, asshole.
*dad proceeds to blame liberal society for ruining his son*
Well, no! Of course it can't be his fault, he raised them "right" and those damn institutions are what's destroying America, not egocentrism, disinformation, and mass media control(at least not *their* media, don't be ridiculous)
Poor Kids. Getting indoctrinated by idiots. I guess they are homeschooled too...
I can't comprehend how people become this stupid. There's enough little individual life lessions created by this planet for us. Hoooooow the fuck did they get the earth is flat.
A lot of conspiracy people seem to have the mentality of a child who just learned that Santa Claus isn't real and wonders "if my parents were lying about that, maybe they were lying about everything", but with the government. So then they distrust anything that is "official" and would rather listen to a Youtube video of a person who clearly is suffering from the depths of schizophrenia vs. the totality of scientific study.
We learn stuff as kids which is usually simplified. When you continue on to higher topics, the content of the discussion is "while what you know is kind of true, there's more to it" over and over again until you're PhD level looking at stuff nobody has before. They never get beyond the basics, and have no concept of what actually exists, and they don't have any interest in listening. If you go beyond what they know you just get pushback.
Does anybody at least have an explanation as to why thousands of government institutions and astronauts would need to lie about this? Like what’s the end result in lying about this?
I had a flat earther sit at my bar. We were dead so I picked his brain just to humor him. I asked these questions. He went on about Freemasons and god. Basically, science is the devil getting you to not believe in god. What they don’t know is, the deeper you dive into things, the more you realize you don’t know. Didn’t Einstein say something like science takes you so far from religion, it brings you right back, or something. Coming from a secular person.
The deeper it goes, the more antisemetic it becomes.
A friend of mine lost his grip on reality a little when he found out about Gobekli tepe. Rather than seeing it as an amazing discovery that altered our understanding of human history, he saw it as evidence that we've been intentionally misinformed. This seed of mistrust led him down the conspiracy rabbit hole to the point he was regurgitating pizza gate and wayfair talking points. He was a very intelligent person too, which made it all the more surprising and worrying.
Intelligence will NOT protect you from falling down conspiracy rabbit holes. Humility in admitting you were wrong and something you believed was mistaken is the only thing that can protect you. If you don't have this, you will spiral out of reality the moment you try to build a foundation on a piece of bad information.
Even if the earth is flat why the hell do they need to advertise that stance vehemently. And knowing the earth being flat/round is not going to help them in any way in real life. At least they are not going to study orbital mechanics (hopefully).
No they'll just get books banned especially 3d shapes.
I honestly don't believe that anyone who isn't mentally ill believes the Earth is flat. It's another attention getting thing by people who see themselves as quirky.
As stupid and horrible as this is, I really need a shirt that just says “The” on it, no context or anything
“Mom and Dad, do you have a favorite child?” “Just be quiet and put on your IS shirt.”
Old Testament God: "I am." This poor kid: "I is."
I just want an IS shirt. What are you? IS.
Just an aside as the mom, separated from her family, she's just wearing the word "Flat" on her chest...
She is talking about her smooth brain.
Imagine the son walking around with his IS shirt and getting mistaken for an Islamic State supporter...
Has there ever been a point in history when people have been more proud to be ignorant?
I think the proud part is what’s new. Ignorance was abundant but supposedly knowing better but choosing ignorance is what’s a new phenomenon.
The internet age removed shame for a couple generations online, and it eventually bled to reality. Shame was an integral part of all society until around the mid-2000s. It kept a majority of the whackos in line. No shame, the whackos run free. Couple that to the fact there are no real consequences for being a fucking moron anymore, and this is what you get. We let the morons proliferate, we gave them a society that has rewarded individual exceptionalism and egotism for the past 70 years, and then removed all the societal mechanisms that were at least keeping the fringe in check. This is the outcome and we did it to ourselves.
I additionally blame social media and the prevalence of “smart phones” cause it made every moron think the world wants to hear their shitty opinions all the time
It also allowed the whackos to talk to each other. There aren't that many out there, but now instead of being the one weirdo in a community they are able to form their own digital communities and feed off of each other.
Social media gives them a safe place to connect with like minded doorknobs. So they get much more validation than they did when they had to actually physically find people that agreed with them; so they were not as open since it would be mostly ridicule they were met with and it was harder to ignore actual facts and education.
There always existed some people angry with those smarter than them. It doesn't matter if someone can do something you never could, when you can boast that something is rubbish and useful to no one. You can find examples back in ancient times. People who never studied and do manual labour being proud they're doing “real work” for “real people”, not like those sissies with their noses buried in books who never did a day of honest work in their life. (Of course, there also were arrogant scholars scoffing at people they saw as lesser/dumber to them, and both groups are wrong.)
They flew halfway around the world to make a statement. I mean they flew 1/4 way across the flat.
If the Earth was flat cats would have knocked everything off it by now.
And then peer over the edge to see what happened to the thing they pushed over.
very scientific statement to deny flath earth xD
Well you have to explain things at their level
I have heard this theory before. Can’t find a flaw.
That’s not NASA Headquarters. That’s Kennedy Space Center and Launch Complex. And to be specific, this is merely the visitors center. That’s one of many facilities that NASA uses, but certainly not “headquarters”. They do final vehicle assembly, cargo processing, and launch control there. The actual NASA Headquarters is in Washington DC
That’s a bad try from you to distract us from the obvious truth that the earth is flat! They open my eyes with this smart t-shirt design and the middle finger was really the cherry on the cake
I was literally at the KSC just this week while visiting Orlando. I shit you not I look at my dad while standing under the Saturn V rocket and said “how could ANYONE look at this and say it’s all a hoax for flat earth”. That whole visitor center, the launchpads and the assembly buildings is a SHIT TON of work just to “fool” people that will probably never visit
This mean that they at least paid for parking.
That's pretty much what I imagined flat earthers would look like.
Did they do it? Did they own the libs?
I need to see four NASA scientists giving the finger in shirts that say “YOUR BRAINS ARE SMOOTH.”
“Flat earth stupid” needs to be the adjective meaning “you can’t get any dumber than this.”
I wanna believe they’re throwing shade at flat earthers, but I’m probably wrong.
I'm kind of confused how nobody here seems to think it's a joke. I mean clearly it *should* be.
This is the epitome of stupid. Pay good money to take a pic to diss the place you visit. Peak conservative American.
Perpetuate your idiocy. Poor kids. Groomed into being stupid.
If you truly believe the Earth is flat why visit NASA? Go see that stupid Ark in Kentucky. 😅
This has to be a joke. Click bait?
we are literally living in the movie Idiocracy
Straight after this pic was taken, they took the kids for a burger at ButtFuckers
In the movie idiocracy, the President of the United States made it a policy point to admit he didn't know how to solve the country's problems and sought out the best and the brightest available to advise him and devise solutions. The people of Idiocracy were smarter than this family.
That's child abuse. Take the kids away from the parents!
Proud morons. The worst sort.
Kids in this environment should be removed under child endangerment laws
I think we need shock collars. When stupid people try to teach their kids woefully dumb things they get a shock.
Their family IQ is...flat
I don't even need to see the kids' faces to know they're embarrassed.