Hell yes, it’s tin foil hat time again! Conspiracy theories getting really popular really quickly isn’t a new phenomenon, but the fact that Flat Earthers are still gaining numbers despite being around for a few years now is pretty wild.
The third annual Flat Earth International Conference was held last week in Dallas, Texas. It was set up like any other business conference, but the schedule included fun events like Space is Fake, The War Between Good & Evil, and “Science” or the True Creation – complete with suspicious quotation marks.
The founder of the Dallas conference, Robbie Davidson, reckons it’s spreading like weeds.
“I’ve never seen anything grow this fast,” he said. “I would say that within 10 years, the numbers are going to be astounding… next year, there’s going to be a conference in every major country in the world.”
He might actually be right.
In the USA, a recent survey shows that about 1 in 6 Americans aren’t sure the Earth is round, and rising. There haven’t been any similar surveys done here in Australia, so I don’t know exactly how many flat earthers we have – but it probably doesn’t matter seeing as they reckon Australia doesn’t exist anyway.
Look, I’m always down for a good conspiracy. Cryptids, Men In Black, Louis Tomlinson’s fake baby, I’m all over it. But sometimes conspiracy theories are just plain dumb. We have more than enough evidence that the earth is round, people. NASA have tons of actual science showing us that it’s round, people have known it’s round for 2000 years, and it’s not changing shape any time soon.
The sooner everybody gives up on the whole flat earth thing and moves on to something less scientifically wrong, the better. But with more and more people joining the flat earth movement for reasons I don’t understand, it might be a lot to ask for. I live in hope though, I want to believe (that humans aren’t that dumb).