This is with all easily disproven conspiracy theories. Yes, there are many stupid people that believe these things because they saw a video and it was a simple explanation that appealed to them or because someone they like said it once, but some of the flat earthers are smart.

Heck, I have seen some pretty outlandish comments on hacker news that aren’t much better and I assume everyone here is smarter than I am.

People believe things for emotional reasons. People often, for example, find religion after the death of a loved one. People also want to believe what others in their community believe, so belief can take hold easily once seeded into a community.

We all like to think we are rational, we are not.