What we can learn from people who take the Flat Earth theory seriously

Flat Earth is so outlandish and so wrong on its face, that, unlike some other conspiracy theories, it doesn’t have as much of a kernel of truth in the objective sense.

There’s an emotional truth to Flat Earth. People come to it when they feel like the world is very broadly wrong. They feel as if the explanations they’ve been given just don’t align in any sense with the universe that they inhabit.

Flat Earth doesn’t necessarily [purport] to be a religious belief. You can adopt it purely as an alt-geographical model. But most people  are quite religious, and it’s always been that way.

Samuel Rowbotham, the theory’s inventor, used a lot of biblical tools in his writing, saying that the globe model conflicted with a round Earth.

A lot of modern Flat Earthers will use the theory to get into other alternative Christian beliefs. A lot of them are creationists.

There’s a tendency to think of conspiracy theorists as tinfoil hatters, as crazy people. But the processes are really ones that we’re all susceptible to. Everybody does have a conspiratorial streak. It’s something that we turn to when we feel like we don’t have enough information, or we don’t want to believe the information in front of us.

When we try to get people out of conspiracy theories, to go into it with the understanding that this is a normal thought process. Maybe we can bring that empathy to those conversations and use that as a basis for bringing people back to reality.