The Earth is not a spinning globe but a vast, flat plane covered by a dome-shaped firmament. Everything we experience points to this reality. When you stand on solid ground, there’s no sensation of movement, no sense that we are hurtling through space at unimaginable speeds. That’s because the Earth is stationary, and what moves above us is the sky—the sun, moon, and stars, all circling over this flat surface within the dome-firmament.
The sun and moon are not as far away or as large as we’ve been told. They are not millions of miles away but much closer (about 3,000 miles) and local, acting like spotlights that move in circular patterns above the Earth. That’s why we experience day and night—the sun moves across the sky, illuminating different regions, then continues its path until it’s out of view. The moon isn’t just reflecting the sun’s light either; it shines with its own soft glow. Both are part of an intricate system that has been misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented.
Antarctica isn’t a frozen continent at the bottom of the world. Instead, it’s a colossal ice wall that surrounds the edges of the Earth, holding the oceans in place. This ice wall forms the boundary of our world, stretching beyond what we’re allowed to explore. There are likely more lands beyond it, hidden from us by those in power. NASA and other space agencies, rather than exploring outer space, have one main job: to keep the truth from getting out. They’re safeguarding the ice wall and manufacturing the illusion of a round Earth, feeding us fake images and data to maintain their control over this secret.
Think about water. It always seeks its level. On a curved surface, water would never be able to lie flat, yet it does. Lakes, oceans, and rivers all spread out evenly across the Earth’s surface because the Earth itself is flat. Have you ever seen water stick to a spinning ball? It’s simply not possible. And gravity, as it’s been described, has never been proven. Objects fall due to density and buoyancy, not because of some mysterious force pulling everything toward the center of a ball.
Now, consider the horizon. When a ship sails into the distance, we’re told it disappears hull-first because of the Earth’s curvature. But in reality, it’s just moving farther away until it shrinks from sight, always staying level with the horizon. The horizon doesn’t curve—it’s a straight line as far as the eye can see, the point where our vision meets the limit of this vast plane.
For generations, we’ve been misled about the nature of our world. By questioning what we’ve been told and looking at the evidence around us, it becomes clear that the Earth is flat and stationary. It’s time to consider this reality and see the world as it truly is—an endless plane, with the heavens turning above us and powerful forces working to keep this truth hidden.
The evidence and truth are all out there. You just have to look. One of the pieces of evidence in plain sight is that you can literally see stars in front of the moon. I have proof. Don’t believe me? Explain this!
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Of course, I do not believe any of that, and as you might have realized, it was just a lead-up to the punchline of my joke. But, according to a 2022 Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll, 11 percent of Americans say that the Earth might be flat. [1] More than 36 million people in the U.S. believe most, if not all, of the things I wrote above! And it doesn't stop there. 20% (43 million) people in Brazil think the same [2]. And the list goes on.
A few weeks ago, my YouTube algorithm suggested some videos about debunking the flat Earth, and I started watching them—one after the other. The more I dug in, the more fascinated I became with these flat-earthers. Even though the most vocal ones, such as David Weiss and Mark Sargent, might be grifters and conmen, they have many followers who honestly believe that the Earth is flat. They come up with the weirdest arguments amidst their very basic, and sometimes completely non-existent, scientific knowledge.
For instance, when asked to explain sunsets and how they work on a flat earth, a typical flat-earther, aka flerf, would tell you that it is a matter of perspective. The sun is actually moving away from you, but it only appears to be setting. They throw out terms like “The Vanishing Point” or “Fata Morgana” to explain why the sun only seems to set. These are actual terms, but the vanishing point refers to a perspective related to two-dimensional planes, not the three-dimensional world we see. Fata Morgana is a mirage observed at the horizon over large bodies of water. Neither of these terms explains why a sun would appear to go down and sun behind the horizon if the Earth was flat and the sun was like a spotlight moving above us. They say we see in hyperbolic geometry and not Euclidean geometry, which is why the sun only looks like it is setting, a notion that is entirely false. Many flat-earthers also believe that since it is a matter of perspective, viewing the setting of the sun through a powerful enough telescope would bring it back into view, a claim that they have never been able to prove or show on video. Why? Because NASA controls all the telescope production in the world, they are purposefully designed not to bring the sun back in view after it has “set.”
In a flat-earther’s mind, NASA is the biggest villain. Flat-earthers believe that NASA was created to guard this super-top-secret that the world is flat and not actually a globe. All the photos, videos, and other documents that NASA has ever released are faked, made with CGI, or otherwise manipulated. They point to inconsistencies or mistakes in NASA’s footage, like certain anomalies in spacewalks or satellite images, as “proof” that the space agency is engaged in a coverup. They believe that we never went to the moon (how could we? The moon is just a spotlight, remember?), and all the footage the world has seen is fake. Videos of astronauts in space are just actors in swimming pools or suspended by wire to show they are floating in zero gravity. NASA has been working tirelessly and spending billions of dollars to keep up this façade. Why? Power, control, and money—governments and elite groups benefit from keeping people in the dark about the true nature of the world. NASA, therefore, is not a genuine space exploration organization but rather a gatekeeper of information tasked with hiding the true nature of our world.
I decided to dig deeper and determine why there is so much distrust in NASA. One thing that immediately popped up is that since NASA is a governmental agency, flat-earthers believe that NASA, just like the government, is lying to everyone and is part of this colossal conspiratorial coverup. But why is that? Has NASA ever lied? I am sure it has. Do governments lie to us? They do and have done it many times. Does that mean that every single thing they tell us is a lie? No. One of the main reasons people distrust NASA’s photos, or those from other agencies, stems from several logical fallacies, such as the Fallacy of Composition or Hasty Generalization. In this context, the fallacy occurs when someone assumes that because NASA or the government has made a mistake or acted deceptively once, they will continue to do so indefinitely. This thinking generalizes a single incident into a broader, often unfounded, conclusion. It is similar to fallacies like Poisoning the Well or Black-and-White Thinking (also known as False Dichotomy), where someone makes an absolute judgment based on one perceived act of dishonesty, concluding that NASA or any other organization is always lying. This reasoning oversimplifies complex situations, failing to account for the fact that an entity can be truthful in some instances while not in others. By judging all future actions based on one past event, this logic creates an unfair generalization. It also reflects a Hasty Generalization, as it leaps to a sweeping conclusion from limited evidence.
Funnily enough, these same people also point out an article by NASA in which it is stated: "This report details the development of the linear model of a rigid aircraft of constant mass, flying over a fiat, nonrotating earth" [3] as proof that NASA knows the world is flat and nonrotating and is deceiving the world. So, on the one hand, they do not believe anything that NASA says and then use NASA's documents to say, "See!" By the wit, the phrase "flying over a fiat, nonrotating earth" in the report refers to a simplified model used for deriving the linear aircraft model. In this context, "flat" means that the Earth is assumed to have no curvature, and "nonrotating" means that the Earth's rotation is ignored. These simplifications are common in aerospace modeling to make mathematical equations more manageable when analyzing aircraft dynamics. The focus is on the aircraft's behavior, and accounting for the Earth's curvature or rotation would add complexity without significantly affecting the results for most aircraft operations. It does not, by any means, prove that the Earth is flat and nonrotating and that NASA is hiding it.
To learn more about the psyche of these flat-earthers, I spent some time on various flat-earth forums and YouTube channels, and it became clear that many flat-earthers see their belief in a flat Earth as a profound revelation. They describe it as an eye-opening experience, a moment when they finally “see the truth.” They genuinely believe that scientists, astronomers, astronauts, space agencies, governments, and millions of people throughout history are all part of a vast cult that has brainwashed the world into thinking the Earth is a globe while hiding the absolute truth. Within these communities, flat-earthers find a strong sense of camaraderie, sharing a feeling of superiority over others. They often refer to those who correct them to say that the world is round as “globers” or “globetards” (mainly because they think that saying the Earth is a globe is a belief and not a fact) or believing in “scientism” in a derogatory way, using these terms to dismiss anyone who disagrees with them. For many, this belief seems to act as a coping mechanism, a way to feel validated and confident in what they think they know while also giving them a shared identity within the group.
These people are also misguided by videos and memes posted online. In this day and age of TikTok and short-media consumption, many compelling influencers have been posting videos with so much conviction that they have been able to fool many of their viewers. These people use deceptive wordings, completely false and/or unrelated scientific observations and phenomena, and are able to convince people with limited scientific knowledge. Many of these TikTokers and YouTubers use seemingly intelligent words that actually do not make sense, and their followers are left in awe, thinking hey, this dude must be right. For example, this is what FE Kaleb, one of the more famous flat-earther TikTokers, said in one of his videos: “We live on the inertial plane or block domain wall of the magnetic perturbation that starts at the center of the earth.” [4] This might sound clever and profound but it does not make any sense (insert Ron Burgundy's line from Anchorman]. These content creators (because I think that is essentially what they are) are just grifters who are making money from views (which makes me realize that I might have made a buck or two for them as well, given how many videos I have watched over the past few days). Nevertheless, they do present their arguments in a relatable manner, so many misinformed people start agreeing with them.
One of the most complicated things to wrap our heads around is the mindbogglingly-unfathomable-flabbergastingly-staggeringly-perpexingly-overwhelmingly vastness of space. Even the most brilliant minds in the world, past or present, have not been able to and cannot truly imagine the scale and size of the universe, which is why the more simple-minded folks do not even try and they fill in the gaps with whatever makes more sense to them. This is another reason why flat-earthers believe what they do. They cannot understand the science of what has been done, what is being done, and what scientists are doing, and they say, meh, impossible.
Take, for example, a couple of quotes from David Weiss, a renowned flat-earther.
“Space is just giving us images of insanity in space like when they show us nebulas, they show us [these pictures] and they tell us this is where stars are born; this is where there’s gas and dust, so much of it that it’s creating stars... This gas and dust in space in a vacuum in zero pressure; how does that work?” [5]
“Do you believe that all the rocky bits turn into perfect balls and then all of the gases somehow start getting gravity and they start pulling it together getting? How do they grow into stars? How come the dust is accumulating? What’s bringing it together? So gravity is somehow pulling all of these gases together and turning into a nuclear furnace that burns for billions of years? Um I’m sorry that doesn’t make any sense.” [6]
Basically, his argument is that no, that is not possible as far as I can understand it, so it must be wrong. This is precisely what many other flat-earthers do as well. They cannot explain what they see and what science is telling them, so instead of putting in the effort to try and understand the science, they believe that the science must be wrong and find alternative explanations that they find easier to understand. Or maybe they are incapable of understanding the science, so they do the same.
Flat-earthers’ beliefs also stem from how their observations conform with what they want to believe. People tend to want to make sense of the world around them, and they utilize motivated reasoning by relying on biased cognitive processes when they create and assess their beliefs. Confirmation bias or biased assimilation comes into play, as an individual is more likely to accept and believe information that is in line with their pre-existing beliefs and disregard information that does not align with their worldviews or one that challenges their beliefs. At the same time, attitude-congruence bias also plays a part: when people have decided what they think of an issue, they are more likely to seek and accept supporting arguments rather than opposing ones. Distrust in all things government also plays a massive role for the proponents of the flat-earth theory.
I must admit that it was pretty addictive to look into this whole thing. Over the past few weeks, I went through amazement, fascination, shock, disbelief, anger, contempt, scorn, amusement, and so much more. I watched several videos of well-educated people, including scientists and experts, trying everything in their arsenal to debunk the flat-earth model, including in debates with flat-earthers. I visited several forums where I read debates between flat-earthers and people telling them that the world is a globe in several different ways, providing photographic evidence.
But then, I realized that watching and reading such content as flat-earth proofs, etc., is just a waste of time for me and those engaging with them. Flat-earthers will not change their minds. The people who still hold onto the belief that the Earth is flat are not interested in science, education, or facts. What drives them is distrust and a desire to feel unique. Most, if not all, of them lack a genuine education in subjects like mathematics, physics, astronomy, orbital mechanics, photography, history, surveying, and engineering. These are adults who are well aware of their educational shortcomings, and instead of seeking to fill that gap, they rebel against the system that, in their eyes, failed them.
I also noticed an obvious resentment toward those with formal education, who can provide them with the knowledge and expertise to challenge their beliefs. Feeling belittled by this, they don’t embrace reality but instead turn away from it, rejecting science, facts, and reason. For them, there’s comfort in their delusion, a sense of empowerment in believing they’ve uncovered “hidden truths” compared to the rest of the world and where everyone is too blind to see. They label themselves as “awake,” as though they are privy to a secret understanding that others lack. It’s an attempt to feel superior, to escape the stigma of ignorance by claiming to possess insider knowledge.
Flat-earthers gravitate toward one another (pun intended, because they don’t believe in gravity, remember?), as it gives them a sense of belonging. After feeling dismissed or marginalized by a society that values education and critical thinking, they have found a community where their views are validated. In these circles, they no longer feel disenfranchised or cast out for their lack of knowledge but instead find camaraderie in their shared rejection of the mainstream. They resent those who took the time to learn, to conduct research, and to build the skills that allow them to understand the world through the lens of science and reason.
The tragedy is that these individuals look at science as something that deceives or excludes them rather than as the ongoing, evolving process it is—one that constantly seeks to understand the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and testing. They have all the evidence in the world, including photographs and videos of the Earth being a globe, and yet they reject all of that to keep their false beliefs alive. They dismiss proven scientific facts from a position of ignorance without even realizing how uninformed they are. This becomes dangerous on a larger scale, as these are the same kind of people who are likely to be vaccine deniers and not follow the science in other aspects as well, endangering not only themselves but others around them as well, especially their children.
Trying to reason with people who reject reason itself is futile. They have embraced absurdity over knowledge, claiming their ignorance is as valid (and even superior to) as the collective wisdom of humanity spanning thousands of years. These individuals have chosen to remain in a mindset more suited to ancient times. They are simply rebels without any actual, empirical cause.
I will end this with the funniest YouTube comment I came across on this issue by @AdelphiaaWoW: “If the Earth was really flat, Flat Earthers would think it was a globe.”
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[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1131128/flat-earth-brazil/
[3] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19890005752/downloads/19890005752.pdf
[3] https://youtu.be/V4JFJCT0wRc?si=iSQ3EIeoY_7X4pwE&t=1180
[4] https://youtu.be/he-7vs0BkLE?si=BkWTlw2fMsoCXhHz&t=550
[5] https://youtu.be/he-7vs0BkLE?si=wzG_qgojan8RUyHB&t=628
