Indeed, and what I observed is even one step beyond this, to conclude that it is something like an Internet-propagated cult-like "movement". My understanding i

Indeed, and what I observed is even one step beyond this, to conclude that it is something like an Internet-propagated cult-like "movement". My understanding is that cult leaders teach their followers to be prepared for those trying to convince them of anything outside of the leader's teachings. The leader has carefully planned out all "teachings" such that when someone comes along to convince a member to leave the cult's teachings, the member already has a long series of prepared counter-arguments to every rejection of the teaching. No matter how carefully reasoned the rejections may be, the counter-arguments will defeat them, and, critically, the member will view anyone trying to convince them to leave the cult as a mortal enemy trying to harm them. Apply this to flat-earth and it is why I believe it to be cult-like. I really wish that someone who studies cults from a psychology perspective would take a very serious look at the flat-earth communities. My personal experience with someone I knew for over a decade was seeing this person felt that everything I thought I knew was actually a clever deception and that I and everyone else is out of touch with reality, and they are the few that have been able to see through the deception. It can make even casual discussion exceptionally difficult. When I have gone through YouTube videos "debunking" flat-earthers, what I usually see is the person or group making the video are not respectful of all claims being made, even on a scientific basis. For example, in one video a local group of flat-earthers was contacted for performing an experiment to test their theories. An agreement was made as to how to perform the experiment, and one of the items was the experiment must occur before a specific time in the morning. No surprise, the people who put the experiment together didn't show up to the experiment until several hours after the agreed upon time, invalidating the experiment. Of course, they proceeded to perform the experiment at the invalidated time and post a video disproving flat-earth theory, but the result of this is to embolden the flat-earther, because of course the reason for showing up late is to trick everyone into continuing to believe the deception. Nearly always, the people trying to disprove such theories will use this to show how crazy the flat-earthers are, and not see or publicly admit they have made the problem worse with their actions. Similar results are achieved with science-based videos put out by science or engineering-based YouTube channels, where the person making the video is, frankly, disrespectful to the flat-earthers. This never helps, but it does get the person making the video more than usual views for probably less than usual effort. Also, a lot of discussion and content will be in regards to the cult leaders. Part of the attraction to the leaders is they are the lone sane ones fighting against the hordes of crazies. Instead, people should ignore the leaders and focus on the members. You can never get a con-man to admit what they are.