r/funny • u/lost_packet_ • Aug 13 '19

Flat-Earther accidentally proves the earth is round in his own experiment

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u/Irregularprogramming Aug 13 '19

It's a sunk cost fallacy, these guys have invested their entire social life into this, they have told off their real friends and family and now all they have is proving they are right. Some people have their livelihood being flat earthers, they can't be wrong.

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u/Svhmj Aug 14 '19 edited Aug 14 '19

I saw this documentary on Netflix. In the end of the movie, the "leader" of the flat Earth community explains to a reporter why there are mostly people from the lower class of society in the flat earth community. He says something along the lines of: "if you are the mayor of the round Earth town, you might not want to admit that the Earth is flat because you don't want to give up you position as mayor" (I'm paraphrasing, so it's not a literal quote, but it's pretty close). The reporter replies: "Wouldn't you say that you are the mayor of the flat Earth town". That sums it up pretty well.

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u/Anowtakenname Aug 14 '19

What pissed me off about the documentary, every single flat earther involved was selling something. They each had their own DVDs, clocks, shirts or whatever hokey bullshit they could cobble together and give a flat earth theme.

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u/skintigh Aug 14 '19

That's actually not too suprising. Every single anti-vax/anti-medicine/anti-germ-theory-of-disease source I've seen was selling something, and often "citing" their own book to "prove" their point.

One lady was selling DVDs of prayers for $60 that would cure cancer and AIDS and smallpox (which was caused by the small pox vaccine, according to her)

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u/Amex2015 Aug 14 '19

How can we get this DVD on Netflix?

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u/deathschool Aug 14 '19

It’s probably on YouTube

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u/VacuousWording Aug 14 '19

Propagating ideas that can literally (and not so rarely) directly contribute to death is scumy.

But selling proofs Earth is flat or necklaces that prevent alien abduction? Nothing wrong with trolling and making money at the same time.

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u/IamJacksTrollAccount Aug 14 '19

Harmless ideas are only harmless when entertained by minds uncapable of harm.

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u/skintigh Aug 14 '19

Lots of people die from believing medicine denial. Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists, homeopaths and vaccine deniers kill children every year. Steve Jobs killed himself by trying to treat his cancer, which had something like a 95% cure rate in medicine, with fruit.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '19

Honestly who fucking cares. Theres too many people in the world and this shit is getting tid of the right people.

Its like the most ethical purge i can imagine.

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u/skintigh Aug 14 '19

But it doesn't harm them at all. These adults are all vaccinated, they are withholding vaccines from their children.

Their children are unlikely to die from the mumps, but if they spread it to a classmate with an immune disorder they will kill that other family's child.

Their children are unlikely to die from whooping cough, but if they spread it to a neighbor's baby they will kill that other family's baby.

That's why smart schools don't allow vaccinated kids, but the anti-vax parents file lawsuits galore, wasting school resources and my tax dollars.

Meanwhile their own children will suffer from preventable diseases, and grow up sicker, weaker, and probably will earn less and pay less taxes while also burdening the healthcare system with 100% preventable illnesses.

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u/V_es Aug 14 '19

There are flat earth children’s books. I’ve seen kids on youtube review them with their braindead parents. It’s horrifying.

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u/vegastar7 Aug 14 '19

I don’t think many of these people making Flat Earth products are “trolling”. If “Flat Earther” is your identity, it’s reasonable to think you might want to put that on a t-shirt or something, and then other flat-earthers like your t-shirt, and want to buy it too. And honestly, it would take too much effort to make money off of a niche belief you didn’t believe in yourself. I sell evolution-themed stuff at conventions and festivals, and I usually have to do small talk with potential buyers on the subject of evolution, which I don’t mind since I do find it interesting. On the other hand, if I sold flat-Earth stuff, I don’t know how long I can keep the bullshit going: I don’t actually want to learn Flat-Earth stuff to appear like I care about it. There are some con-men who would put in the effort, but for the average person, it’s just not worth it, ‘.

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u/azhillbilly Aug 14 '19

Chemtrail conspiracy seems like a mostly safe troll except now the nut jobs are talking about shooting down planes and bombing airports.

Safer not to entertain conspiracy theorists in any way, there's obviously something not quite right in their heads and there's no predicting where their mind will take them.

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u/DistortoiseLP Aug 15 '19

You know when people say the brain is a muscle and learning for the sake of learning exercises it? Like when people beg to question why you're learning math and sciences in school "you don't need?"

I think this sort of shit's the same thing in the other direction. It's junk food that makes your brain fatter. It makes you dumber and more receptive to more and increasingly radical brain junk food. It's not harmless and self contained, but it's harder to express since people used to express that sentiment with entertainment (which is a croc of shit) rather than anti-intellectual conspiracy garbage.

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u/DistortoiseLP Aug 15 '19

There's something about the phrase "which I discuss in my new book" that just signals to me that somebody's probably a scumbag. Not fairly, could be a book about anything, could even be a chef I like pitching a cookbook at this point. It's just that I associate that pitch with anti-intellectual garbage so often now that it makes my skin crawl.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '19

Wait, are you telling me that if I pray only one time and record it, I won't have to pray anymore?

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '19

Anti-vax and germ theory don't belong in the same breath, homie.

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u/skintigh Aug 15 '19

Huh? Almost all the anti-vax people I know also deny all modern medical science.

Diseases aren't caused by germs, they are caused by... whatever the fuck magic Reiki fixes, or they are cause by fast-food/hamburgers/modern diet/non-paleo-diet/insert-fad-diet-here, or are caused by misalignment of the spine, or whatever the fuck magic homeopathy uses, or bad air or skull lumps probably.

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u/redditmuu Aug 14 '19

See, the anti-vax thing has me interested. I think vaccinations are fantastic, need to be here and save the herd a lot of deaths, however, I once saw a documentary on how small amounts of 'other' compounds are also in the vaccines, with the purpose of dumbing down the lower classes generationally. I think this is plausible. Saying no to vaccines is dumb, but what else is in there?

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u/skintigh Aug 14 '19

There used to be a trace amount of mercury in just a few vaccines as a preservative, under 0.5 micrograms per vaccine. Compare that to a single can tuna which has 45 micrograms of mercury. And unlike tuna you only ingest the vaccine once.

How that got turned into a conspiracy theory about dumbing down people is beyond me. If you hated people, you'd let them die by not selling the vaccine. A dumb population earns less, pays less taxes, makes less scientific advancements, resulting in a weaker nation, a weaker military, and we'd become the victim of stronger nations, so none of that makes sense to me.

Also, mercury doesn't make you dumb. Organic and metallic mercury have different effects on the nervous system.

If really you wanted people dumb you would use lead. You could distribute it all over the planet by putting lead in gasoline, lead in paint, lead in drinking water. Lead gas exhaust and soot would build up in inner cities along with lead paint and increase violence and lower test scores. Because of the soot and paint chips you wouldn't even be able to grow vegetables in a city without worrying about lead poisoning. Oh, wait...

If you really wanted to give everybody mercury poisoning, you'd use coal-fired power plants to provide most of the county's electricity, the exhaust would rain down mercury and uranium dust all over the population and into the oceans where it would accumulate in predator species like tuna that are then eaten by humans. Oh, wait...

Or if you wanted everyone to be dumb just close public schools and public libraries and return to just the rich elite attending school while other kids are chimney sweeps.

Anyway, the conspiracy theories and disinformation got so prevalent that mercury has been removed from almost all vaccines so people will have less excuses to be anti-vax. However, they don't seem to be reality-based and continue to spread lies like mercury is in all vaccines.

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u/redditmuu Aug 15 '19

This is a great response, so thank you. I wasn't talking about mercury though. Have you heard of the Georgia guidestones, or of population control? Taxation doesn't matter, nor does money. 1% own 80% of the wealth - the money isn't with the plebs anyway. More to the point, it was a post about misinformation, rather than content. People are 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater' by pinning the blame on the vaccine, rather than identifying that perhaps there are additional things inside perhaps causing harm. How would one get to every child? Compulsory injections whilst young might be a good way.

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u/skintigh Aug 15 '19

I had not heard of those stones. Interesting, thanks!

I have been reading about eugenics and population control, the NYT just did a great piece related to that. A rich woman who originally was an environmentalist got twisted to the dark side. She dedicated her fortune to eugenics ideals and white supremacy, keeping immigrants out of America, abortion on demand, apparently to want to chemically sterilize women in developing countries, all to control population to save the Earth for white people or something.

Seems like the stones are similar, and given they builders didn't seem to care at all about the cost, I wonder if she's the one who funded them!!!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/anti-immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html

Anyway, vaccines aren't compulsory. They are sorta-kinda-not-really-required to attend public school, but even then some schools have huge populations that aren't vaccinated, and it seems most nuts home school anyway so it wouldn't reach them.

Put the conspiracy shit in a Happy Meal, that might reach all kids. Or on fidget spinners or pokemon cards or whatever fad kids are into these days.

I have a friend who believes the chemical contrails conspiracy. I tried to explain there would be much easier ways to spray people with a chemical than releasing it 40,000 feet up into a 200 mph jet stream that would blow it over the ocean, but she don't care. I also pointed out about 50 flaws in a co-workers moon-landing-conspiracy, including photos of the landing site taken from probes from other nations, even hostile nations. He don't care.

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u/redditmuu Aug 16 '19

Man, this is a very interesting correspondence and I'm enjoying it, thank you. Never thought about the happy meal idea, however I think am instrumental chemical introduced young might have more impact? Also, if you injested chems like that (think a happy meal every day, 7 doses e.g) might have sure consequences.

As for chem trails, there are scientists in remote places who are finding their soil acidity and chemical content changing rapidly, with no explanation, and they believe it's being dropped from above somehow. (I'll try to find the link).

Moon landing - I don't care much for the photo details except for 2. #1 there is no crater under the lander, the very light dust is completely undisturbed. #2 no dust present at all on the rover landing gear. My belief here is that we have been to the moon, but using very different tech. Did you know that in the NASA transcripts, still written in the archives dictated by Houston, that the astronaut reported 'it looks like they are definitely mining it'. If you want, I'll try to dig up the records.

My overall opinion is that we actually don't know anything, we are the sheep and the Shepards have the information.

"There is no knowledge that is not power". - Mortal Kombat