I suspect they're 100% trolls.

It’s not much different than (and in fact tends to overlap with) Christian young-earth creationism, and I can assure you that there are creationists who are not trolls (to the highest degree of confidence one can have about another person’s beliefs).

There's definitely some overlap because of confirmation bias (young-earthers looking to help their case). But, in my brief time exploring and trying to understand the drive behind believers of 'flat earth' (mostly on YouTube), it seems to me a stronger corollary predictor for belief in 'flat earth' would be beliefs and fascinations with other conspiracy theories.

I would contest that in most cases if you have a Christian who believes in young-earth and you also have a person who believes JFK's assassination was a CIA hitjob, believes 9/11 was an inside job, believes government is using chemtrails to poison or otherwise alter people's perceptions or mental/physical faculties - the latter will be the one I'm putting my money on as the most likely 'flat earth' believer.

Amusingly, there's a couple of dead comments from someone saying that flat earthers are a media hoax/conspiracy.

In my country, there was a flat-earthers convention some time ago. It was going to happen in a small town, and the media took it as a funny thing to report on.

One journalist actually went there, and reported about it... What at first seemed like a funny thing, turned out to be kind of scary.

Yeah, there were a few small talks about flat earth. The rest of the day, the talks were mainly about about anti-vaccines, "New Germanic medicine", nationalism, white race superiority, antisemitism, etc...

I guess a group of neo-nazis were smart enough to use the "flat earth" talks as a means to attract Mass Media's attention, to get them to publicize their convention for free.

Here's the article about it (google translate from spanish):

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=h...

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PS: I don't get the reason for the downvotes... I'm not saying "flat earth = neonazis" nor giving any opinion at all.

I'm just telling the anecdote (and linking the source) of how some people used "flat earth" for manipulating mass media into getting free publicity for their convention.

Don't know why your being downvoted but there is a lot of overlap between neo-nazis and conspiracy theorists, particularly ones of the "elders of zion" persuasion. There are whole flat-earth sub conspiracies about the nazis getting up to no good in Antarctica. The actual original nazis had all sorts of crazy beliefs in the occult, other psuedo sciences and various conspiracies about WW1 so it's hardly surprising.

The dead comment is someone who has not studied how it's used in real life (as used by genuine and honest people)... or it's advanced misdirection (imo)... or it's both. I wouldnt normally say that, I think it's borderline not in the spirit of the wise rules.... but it's pretty interesting how it works.

It's astonishly effective to attach bad information to ideas.

OK, I can believe some Christian young-earth creationist to honestly be on that train.

The YEC community has extremely similar rhetoric to some of the flat earth “debunking,” utilizing scientific jargon and mimicking scientific instruction.

See Answers in Genesis for a perfect example. I’ve seen speakers from this organization, and I’m quite convinced that they are not trolls. https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/starlight/does-distan...

What is it about that link that you don’t like? I was expecting over the top rhetoric and sarcastic dismissal of opposing viewpoints. But it struck me as someone writing sincerely, attempting to tackle the questions as levelheaded as they could be.

Yes, this kind is much more dangerous - polite, calm and seemingly logical talk. Only that every second sentence is a lie / fabrication / wishful thinking / unscientific approach to facts. It would take too long to deconstruct the whole article, but my bullshit warning went mental after few sentences and I couldn't force myself to finish the whole thing.

I can see how people only vaguely interested in astronomy would take it more seriously, it seems legit on the surface. These kind of articles are properly dangerous, not the cartoony over-the-top ones. And if the person who wrote it actually believes it, its even worse.

That’s precisely my point: that it doesn’t sound at all trollish.

Here's a hint. The annual gathering of flat earthers featured in the Netflix documentary "Behind the curve" is called (with a rather awkward word ordering) "Flat Earth International Conference" -> "FEIC" -> fake.

Personally i believe in flat-earthers. There is a lot of evidence these people exist lol.

Starts out as trolling then some people buy into it, suddenly the group that was 80/20 trolls to believers is now 40/60 trolls to believers.

You left out the most important group.

I just don't get the profit motive. Pretty much every conspiracy has someone somewhere making profit or gaining something off the conspiracy. I just don't have any idea who would gain from concealing a flat earth.

Find the mentions of it here. What is it used for? If you made a table of all uses, what would you see?

Trolling is its own reward!

Weather on the moon would make them realise it us impossible to stably orbit around a flat surface.

Right, explaining stable orbits will definitely work.

In any case, I think it would make everyone on Earth feel a lot less special if they can look to a place they can never go and see a mirror of themselves... I certainly would expect some manner of incorporation into religion, perhaps as an Eden if the development of religion followed a similar course. A place separate from ours that must be better and therefore the source of all our goods and ills.

Thinking about what it would be like to be the first tourists to the other side...

We're talking about people who think a helicopter being able to hover over a stationary point is proof the Earth is flat because if it weren't, the ground would move away from the helicopter. I'm guessing none of them have ever actually piloted a helicopter before.

I have only piloted a helicopter in a simulator, and every time I tried to hover, the ground definitely moved away and then it tipped over and went splat.

The more “advanced” flat earth explanations account for (and actually depend on) general relativity. I don’t think they’d have any trouble accounting for weather on the moon.

Flat earthers are a fictitious invention of some misbegotten for-profit media contraption struggling to cope with election results.

The ones you see on YouTube are essentially a stand-alone complex conjured by hype.

To claim that there is (or ever was) a "Flat Earther Problem" is tantamount to claiming that we now also have a "4D Time Cuber" problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube

Just because, once upon a time, some cook went off the deep end, his ideas are now everyone's problem? If there's a crazy cat lady in every town and city across America, that's clear proof that a covert ring of international charlatans and propagandists whipped them into a frenzy and they cast the "wrong" vote?

The wrong vote. Really.

One begins to develop the impression that the legitimacy of a candidate would rest upon the candidate's party, and it's core base of party members. Knowing that a certain party has consistently produced dubious electoral choices for decades on end, it is rational to conclude that there is a media problem, just as much as there is a political problem.

Not only do we have terrible political actors, but we also have a terrible media ecosystem.