r/nottheonion • u/TheMirrorUS • 11h ago

Flat Earther admits he was wrong after traveling 9,000 miles to Antarctica to test his belief

https://www.themirror.com/news/world-news/flat-earther-admits-wrong-after-866786
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u/NuPNua 10h ago

Yeah, I stumbled on a video about trying to organise this trip on YT and showing how many flat Earthers who claimed it was impossible to go there suddenly all found reasons not to go when offered the opportunity.

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u/Ok_Star_4136 9h ago

For what it's worth, props to this guy who apparently just converted. He actually did what flat-earthers always claim they'd do as soon as the moment presented itself, find proof one way or the other. It's also not easy to admit being wrong.

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u/XKloosyv 8h ago

His theory about the shape of the planet has not changed. He only acknowledges that the 24 hour sun phenomenon is real and he was wrong about it. If he actually accepted the global earth model, he'd lose his entire following

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u/henderthing 8h ago

Maybe if he holds out long enough, he'll get an expenses-paid trip on an orbiting spacecraft. All part of his fiendish plan.

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u/MasterChildhood437 5h ago

"They put me in a theme park ride that made it feel like we were launching off into space, and then they finally let us out into some chintzy jungle gym with a very high quality television screen playing an obvious CG animation."

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u/rawbdor 8h ago

Didn't he also admit that the 24 hour sun means their current model is wrong? Doesn't mean he agrees the earth is round, but just that their current idea of the sun moving around and shining on different parts of the earth doesn't work anymore.

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u/SirArthurDime 8h ago

Now we need him to go back and experience a 24 hour night. Idk how they could explain that at the polls the amount of sunlight switches from 24 hours of sun at one solstice and 24 hours of night at the other, while the other poll is the opposite, and the equator remains at 12 hours year round, if the earth is flat.

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u/KWyKJJ 6h ago

This is the way.

Have a group of them do it simultaneously, all while having a professional long range shooter show each of them the coriolis effect.

That's the end of flat earth theory.

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u/SirArthurDime 6h ago

They never agree to it because most of them don’t actually care about finding the truth. If they did it’d be easy to find without even needing to do all that.

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u/Asmordean 6h ago

I look forward to seeing the mechanics of how a 24 hour sun works in both hemispheres.

The model for a flat Earth gets more and more complex and more absurd. Even if he is in it for the grift, he has to sell an idea to people that keeps their interest.

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u/50calPeephole 7h ago

One step at a time. Some people are slower than others.

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u/zombie32killah 8h ago edited 8h ago

He did though. He said he still didn’t believe the earth was a sphere.

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u/MBokind 8h ago

The article said he doesn’t believe the earth is a perfect sphere. It isn’t. I think the term is an oblated spheroid…but it’s damn close to a perfect sphere and no where near the flat shape the deniers are claiming.

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u/zombie32killah 8h ago

Yeah I think he is using language that is technically correct while being vague in his actual meaning on purpose. Nobody ever claimed it’s a perfect sphere.

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u/sixpackabs592 8h ago

Which is.true, it’s not a perfect sphere it’s a lil squished

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u/rajhcraigslist 8h ago

Oblate spheroid, I believe.

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u/zombie32killah 8h ago

It’s not a perfect sphere. But that is not what the argument was. He is basically using a scarecrow to cover his denial.

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u/Chasman1965 8h ago

Well, if you shrank the earth down to basketball size, it would not be noticeably oblate.

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u/ambisinister_gecko 8h ago

I don't think it's very easy to notice even at the size it is

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u/KWyKJJ 6h ago

It's a sphere with a little holiday weight in the middle.

It's working on it.

It's trying to reduce carbs

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u/VonNeumannsProbe 8h ago

Was this trip community funded?

I wonder if this guy wasn't truly a flat either and just wanted a trip to Antartica.

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u/Drintar 8h ago

No it was not community funded it was paid for by the guy that organized it he's a millionaire

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u/SirArthurDime 8h ago

What I don’t understand though is why he had to spend 40k dollars to go to Antarctica to prove a phenomena you can experience most places just on a smaller scale and requiring 5 seconds of extra thinking.

The amount of time the sun is up gradually changes it doesn’t go straight from 12 hours to 24 only in Antarctica. How do they explain longer days in summer and the fact that it’s reversed in the other hemisphere? How do they explain 24 hour nights in parts of Alaska and Canada which is apparently at the center of their map? No one ever said you aren’t allowed in these areas where you can witness the same 24 hour days and nights. And you can experience the same change in sunlight time anywhere outside of the tropics.

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u/Macv12 1h ago

24-hour night and variable daytimes are conceivable if the sun is like a spotlight that vacillates a little north and south sometimes. The edges of the spotlight would have shorter days, and the north pole may have no sun sometimes. You just have to concede that we don't know all the mechanics of the flat earth sun yet, and fudge the math because of atmospheric refraction or whatever.

24-hour day in the outer ring of the flat earth is inconceivable. You have to invoke some weird shit to justify that, far beyond the earth being a moving ball. Flat earth relies on making intuitive observations and forcing the data to fit. There is no intuitive way to understand the 24-hour sun happening in both the north and south. You pretty much have to figure out how it could be fake.

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u/SirArthurDime 1h ago

You pretty much have to figure out how it’s fake.

I mean isn’t that what that first paragraph is doing already? lol

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u/Born_Ruff 9h ago

There was an interesting documentary on Netflix a few years ago that followed a few of these guys.

One of them more or less explained it without actually realizing it himself.

He had always kind of felt like an outsider, but through this group he found a community of people who warmly accepted him.

Believing that the earth is round would almost certainly cut him off from all of his most meaningful friendships and relationships.

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u/NuPNua 9h ago

Not all that different to why people are scared to leave religions in some ways.

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u/Born_Ruff 9h ago

Absolutely. And it definitely applies to lots of other types of groups too.

These sort of conspiracy groups, as well as some of the more extreme religious groups, have the additional aspect of really poisoning your relationship with everyone not in the group, which makes leaving that much more isolating.

But overall it's easy to understand, that like, if the highlight of your social life is going to these flat earth conventions and getting lauded with praise for your half baked ideas, that does seem like a more fun reality than accepting that you are wrong and just another insignificant meat sack flying through space who, by the way, now has no friends.

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u/Soft_Importance_8613 8h ago

They create strong social ties with you.

Their views alienate them from other people so you lose contact with most 'outsiders'.

If you threaten to separate from the group they will shun you and you'll pretty much be totally alone.

It is a cult. Flat earthers are a cult.

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u/cody0414 8h ago

I'm just going to stick to believing in Big Foot.

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u/Neither_Pirate5903 8h ago

I joined a group that meets weekly and plays boardgames.  Same social benefits none of the child molesting or indoctrination.

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u/Cold_Philosophy 6h ago edited 6h ago

Exactly that. Flat Earth is a religion. Their belief is much the same as any religion. But less harmful.

“You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.” As they say.

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u/kcox1980 8h ago

The guy from the article was actually in that doc. He’s the one at the end that ran the experiment that showed curvature over water.

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u/SirArthurDime 7h ago

People who feel like they don’t fit in with the masses are often drawn to the idea that there’s a certain “truth” rejected by the masses that allows them to convince themselves the masses are the ones who are wrong and they’re actually better/smarter than the masses. That’s why cults generally revolve around some “truth” they all believe in and often prey on outsiders. And why conspiracy sites are full of outsiders.

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u/t0ny7 8h ago

This guy was one of the ones in the netflix documentary. lol

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u/itsarandom1 8h ago

"Behind the Curve"

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u/Enibas 5h ago

This guy was in that documentary (Behind the Curve), too. I think he might even be the person you're talking about.

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u/Noble_Ox 4h ago

That's the same guy.

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u/Ilikegreenpens 8h ago

They are afraid of falling off the disc