4 ms·
Way back in the stumbleupon days I stumbled onto the flat earth society message boards. It was clear to me that everyone involved knew it was satire; just a ton
by mediocregopher 5y ago
Way back in the stumbleupon days I stumbled onto the flat earth society message boards. It was clear to me that everyone involved knew it was satire; just a tongue-in-cheek dig at the way any conspiracy theory, no matter how outrageous, could be made plausible if you throw enough crazy at it.
Fast forward 10+ years and people actually believe it. Someone recently launched themselves in a homemade rocket to prove with their own eyes the flatness of the earth (and died for their efforts).
I love birdsarentreal, but part of me isn't looking forward to finding out what happens to it as more people come across it.
- nvllsvm 5y agoExactly why I dislike some forms of sarcasm directed at an unknown audience.
- b3morales 5y agoIndeed; Umberto Eco dramatized this phenomenon in Foucault's Pendulum (even before the related Poe's Law was formulated). > People [...] sense instinctively that the [...] truths [...] don’t go together, that [the promoter is] not being logical, that [they're] not speaking in good faith. But they’ve been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. This tangles up with the appeal of being an "initiate", "on the inside", and knowing the secret truth, and the combination is powerful.