Behind The Curve was a good film about flat earthers. Some of them did seem to be having some fun with it.
Uh here
If you go up a couple of sentences, the Kia statement says it applies when you've already made information public and in case of legal matters. Prior to that it states it complies with UK GDPR.
Neither Nissan's statement (both of them) nor Mozilla is talking about the UK. I don't have a state identification number or a driving license[sic].
Didn't the Flat Earth Society host a Round the World cruise a few years ago?
Regarding the Hitler's body thing, I don't know about the rest of it but I do know they saved his brain, I saw a documentary about it
What all the people who chose to engage with Flat Earthers seem not to realise is - YOU are the entertainment. The flat earth theories themselves whats fun for them so much its watching apparently rational people wriggle through every maze they set for them. Again and again and again.
I take your point and agree with it, but I think it runs deeper than that.
There are, surely, people who are just trolling for the LOLs. Absolutely. They're laughing their tits off at "intellectuals" who think they're superior in debunking their idiotic claims.
There are those for whom it's become an identity, a lifestyle (cf. Mark Sargent, Behind The Curve, as above).
There are those who are just mentally ill, shitfaced or both (Mikey Smith).
There are those who are serial grifters who have realised they can coral all of the above and make money out of useful idiots (Kent Hovind was the dino guy whose name I couldn't bring to mind earlier).
I don't think you can attribute one single factor to all of these. Headbangers come in all shapes. And some probably are just idiots.
I think part of it for some people is they see all the crazy conspiracies that were proven to be true and start to question absolutely everything, eg read about Operation Northwoods and draw parallels with 9/11.
Will a flat moon now bulk out the flat earth theory? And how will they explain how it stays in orbit?
Not quite a conspiracy theory, but it rather shows just how ignorant people are about the planet they live on, which I’m sure makes people susceptible to many conspiracy theories.
^^ That realisation will likely make some Americans even more inclined to think that global events can never reach them. Which is also a bit deluded
I think the conspiracy that winds me up the most is the "Ancient but technologically advanced civilisations" Most are really just badly disguised racism - How did brown people build this mega structure? and so on, but when they get their own (recommissioned) series on Netflix, you have to wonder if there isn't some law that needs to enacted that says "You can't just talk shite on telly about real stuff" And the really weird bit is that the truth about these ancient people is just as fascinating as anything made up about ancient astronauts or Atlantis, or spaceship landing sites.
I think the conspiracy that winds me up the most is the "Ancient but technologically advanced civilisations" Most are really just badly disguised racism - How did brown people build this mega structure? and so on, but when they get their own (recommissioned) series on Netflix, you have to wonder if there isn't some law that needs to enacted that says "You can't just talk shite on telly about real stuff" And the really weird bit is that the truth about these ancient people is just as fascinating as anything made up about ancient astronauts or Atlantis, or spaceship landing sites.
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That Brexit would be a good idea...
I think the conspiracy that winds me up the most is the "Ancient but technologically advanced civilisations" Most are really just badly disguised racism
Egypt is always good for this especially for those who go "so they just built the Giza pyramids without issue" when you can look elsewhere and see the gradual evolution of tombs to stepped pyramids and then to the smooth sided ones. Can also see examples where they tried new things and failed before changing the approach.
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A likely story. I assume black helicopters appeared overhead and you were ordered to remove the truth.
Egypt is always good for this especially for those who go "so they just built the Giza pyramids without issue"
Well yes, but only up to a point.
Egypt is always good for this
I think most folks don't really understand just how old the Egyptian 'Empire' (in all its forms) actually was. - From 3500BCE - if we're excluding prehistoric settlements to more or less the 4th C CE. It's so old that in the latter stages, archaeologist was a legitimate profession for a group of priests who had to go to school to learn to translate older hieroglyphics. They had plenty of time to get pretty good at building pyramids
But I think for me, the likes of Graham Hancock's ancient apocalypse, which is just riffing off Von Daniken's Chariot of the Gods where apparently you need to able to drive a spaceship to be able to pile a bunch of rocks on top of each other, and the absolute exclusion of most of the actual scientific work in favour of woo, really boils my piss.
miniminuteman does a good line in debunking them on you tube (they are long though)
Plus also - the medieval world, including the poor wouldn't have understood the concept of wealth redistribution. To them, both poor and rich are part of God's plan, and you are where God intended you to be - The poor are (in this world) the 'better off' - at least spiritually, and it's the very wealthy that have to work hard at good deeds- (which they're very much doing BTW - if their immortal souls are to be redeemed) in order to get over the very deep suspicion and moral and spiritual hazard that wealth bought.
Have you just described an actual conspiracy and a conspiracy theory? First, that the wealthy and religious (much the same thing) conspired to keep the plebs poor by use of force, and threats of all sorts of nasty things happening in this world and the next if they didn't pretend to believe in god* and do things for him. Second, that the wealthy needed to do more good deeds than poor people (excepting work, obviously) but obviously didn't actually do that in real life because they weren't stupid like the stupid poor people who were poor because they were stupid...
* And then we have the continually repeated line that everybody used to believe in god because obviously everyone in the past was so stupid, when actual written histories show that even church people didn't necessarily believe in their gods.
actual written histories show that even church people didn't necessarily believe in their gods.
Islam is good for this one. It's baked in to reject unbelievers (for various degrees of "reject") so you could have a room full of Muslims none of whom believed a word of it but none of whom could admit that for fear of what the others would think.
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A likely story. I assume black helicopters appeared overhead and you were ordered to remove the truth.
That's how these things start isn't it. A small error, then people think you are trying to cover up some massive mistake that involves you taking over the world!! Nothing to do with incompetence. 😋
First, that the wealthy and religious (much the same thing) conspired to keep the plebs poor by use of force, and threats of all sorts of nasty things happening in this world and the next if they didn't pretend to believe in god* and do things for him.
There's not a huge amount of evidence for it. People really believe in the Christian Bible and it makes sense to them. That's not to say that peasants lot wasn't shit, it kinda was, but that's also true of just about everyone apart from a few hundred people at the very top of the the tree, everyone else is having more or less the same experience. Population post Black Death in the UK is about 3 million at best, no one has the time or is putting in the effort to make life shit for someone else, life's too hard. Caveat: Everyone knows their place, you don't get to treat people as shit just because they're lower down the pecking order than you, but at the same time, everyone else is going to bow and scrape per your position.
Second, that the wealthy needed to do more good deeds than poor people (excepting work, obviously) but obviously didn't actually do that in real life because they weren't stupid like the stupid poor people who were poor because they were stupid...
Nope, they're really doing it. Schools, 'hospitals' monasteries all being built by donations from the wealthy - often by directly hiring the specialities trades. Guilds in London are building and repairing infrastructure, and providing education/lodging. Most of the 'hospitals' are run by the rich/churches. They very much believed that without doing this stuff, they wouldn't get to heaven, and they badly want to go to heaven
Perhaps not a conspiracy, but definitely some higher powers at work here...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d96220wyro
There's not a huge amount of evidence for it
there is if you want to see it
for someone who states he is a nonbeliever you dont half give unquestioning faith in the religious institutions and wilful blindness to their failings and cruelties
No I don't. There's no evidence for it as mostly the wealthy are only interested in themselves if they are writing things down, and the peasants aren't leaving much in the way of personal writing for historians to examine. I'm not saying peasants lot wasn't bad- it was just not in the way that Hollywood and TV portray it. The local priest and the local landlord in the are the only institutions that are assisting them - either local poor assistance, or mostly providing additional food on feast days and festivals. Peasants are being exploited - both their productivity is bad (not lazy, just everything is done by hand for little return) and they are being tithed and some of their product is being extracted. But the church and the local landowner need the peasantry just as much.
There is obviously examples of exploitation, but that's not the overwhelming experience; over human history the vast majority of humans have been peasant farmers, and most of them lived out their lives pretty peacefully even if by our standards it was a life of drudgery
you dont half give unquestioning faith in the religious institutions and wilful blindness to their failings and cruelties
I don't, I just don't have your overly generalisation of "All religions bad" colouring my understanding the actuality of the medieval/early modern experience. You often regard "The Church" as one encompassing entity that moves singularly and has just the one corporate outlook, when even just a passing understanding of the myriad diverse schisms and radically different experiences is more realistic.
Take the Spanish in South America, yes some of the conquistadors are burning the locals, but at the same time, Queen Isabella is sanctioning Columbus for enslaving who she regards as Spanish citizens against the law, and some Spaniards are reporting local priests for being too harsh, and are in fact pretty respectful of local traditions. Yes we gave them new diseases, but they did the same to the Europeans - syphilis. You can't just say "religion = bad" just because you don't like the modern church. It's ahistorical
Yes we gave them new diseases, but they did the same to the Europeans - syphilis.
Oh my word.
