In honor of Earth Day, I watched a documentary about the Flat Earth movement last night.
It was challenging because my not being a scientist and, honestly, never having an interest in science or math, I discovered how susceptible I could be to the siren calls of YouTube charlatans. I could imagine choosing a rabbit hole online and then begin wandering about in the warrens of people who know just enough science to confuse the hell out of you.
The best advice I ever read online was to not get caught up in the comments of any online forum. First of all, the time sump you’re in becomes even more of a time sump. Secondly, your blood pressure is likely to skyrocket. And, last of all, the real trolls lurk within the comment sections hoping to bait and persuade you. And, if it’s not a real troll from a foreign troll farm, it’s your cousin’s friend’s knuckle headed brother who has an opinion on everything and likes to play at being both a troll, as well as an asshole.
So, I pass on that sage advice.
Don’t get sucked into the threads and comments on social media and don’t mindlessly follow the videos suggested for you by the almighty and unseen algorithms. Those are the La Brea tar pits of the internet. This advice is simple and hard at the same time. And essential, if you are someone like me, who is a science believer but not someone who could explain how a telephone works.
Washingtonians, you may not have realized it, but we are at the forefront of the growing Flat Earth movement. We prefer to believe all of the wing nuts come from places where they have drawls but we produce more than our fair share of certifiably wacky individuals. The main character in this documentary is an unassuming, affable 40, 50 or 60 something male, who could have been your high school wrestling coach and appears to be living with his mother on Whidbey Island.
(I know. Red flags everywhere.)
As a status quo, the earth-is-a-ball believer, he went down into the rabbit warrens of conspiracy theories for about eight months and emerged a convert and the Flat Earth movement’s greatest advocate. His name is Mark Sargent and he is now making his own YouTube videos and podcasts, while amplifying the subject so that a modest number of people can profit from the inevitable merchandise. The documentarians are kind to Mark Sargent and the other Flat Earthers because they never question or delve into their motives. They treat them as if they were Jehovah Witnesses or a newly discovered tribe in the Ecuadorian jungle.
And then, at one point, they film one of their actual scientist interviewees saying it does no good for science to belittle or actively refute Flat Earthers because that just plays to their conspiratorial suspicions and entrenches their view. I got the impression that the science fiction writer, the astrophysicist and the astronaut who was interviewed didn’t think it was worth their breath to argue.
Fortunately, there are a couple of scenes where these citizen scientists, quasi-scientists and backyard scientists, along with a few rabbit hole denizens, attempt to prove their theory and it fizzles spectacularly.
I said yesterday that I thought the belief in the world being flat was the least of our worries. I joked that the earth couldn’t possibly be flat because - if it was - cats would have shoved everything off the edges by now.
I’ve changed my mind.
These are the same pool of people who fantasize about QAnon and the Deep State.
The same pool of people who mindlessly follow radio demagogues.
The same pool of people who are convinced 5G will give them the coronavirus.
The same pool of people who say the coronavirus is a hoax, or sprung upon us by a deranged Bill Gates.
The same pool of people who gin up every conspiracy theory known to humankind on the internet.
And what made them more worrisome was how ‘normal’ most of them appeared to be at first glance. The internet is where they congregate and proliferate.
Watch out for those rabbit holes. They’ll lead you to warrens.
###
I meant for this to be an ode to Earth Day. Perhaps tomorrow. In the meantime, read this piece about how Earth Day got started.
Also, this live riff on coffee by John Craigie has absolutely nothing to do with Earth Day or the Flat Earth movement, but it was sent to me by my music-loving, philosophizing friend, Charley McCabe, who, by the way, got off his couch and went to Iowa this past February to canvass for Amy Klobuchar, which I interpret as a sign that people are fed up with the status quo and they intend to do something about it.
A toast to Charley, and everyone else, who is “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!”
Ach - now you made me watch that. Those people make my brain hurt. A lot.
Oi, take it easy there fella! . . . Warren's place isn't that bad. He just gets on your nerves sometimes.