Ex-Flat-Earthers Explain What Made Them Leave The "Cult" - AskReddit

it honestly blew my mind to find out that a seemingly well-adjusted and normal person could hold such beliefs deep down X flat earthers what caused you to leave my old boss is a hardcore flat earther he left my company but back when I had just started I would eat lunch on my own at my jobs cafeteria I was totally okay with this as I like having my own downtime he started coming to sit with me to talk about God at first I didn't mind he talked a lot about God loving you and being a decent human being anyways as he got more comfortable with me he started mentioning the earth and how it's impossible for it to be an actual globe I was so appalled because I'm an engineer and he had a leadership role in our engineering team he added me on Facebook and his entire feed is about Flat Earth he eventually left the company to be a pastor at a church he started it's toxic but I guiltily like to go see what he posts and he is very what the Bible say is literally true and he will fight online with all kinds of Christians who don't agree with his stance it kind of baffles me that an educated fellow as himself is so immersed in the Flat Earth Society I used to believe that earth was flat basically I was in two other conspiracies like 9/11 and the Illuminati and I just went down the rabbit hole of conspiracies and became a flat earther I watched a lot of Eric Dubay and gern ISM to confirm my beliefs most people thought it was a joke but I believe didn't earned a reputation at my high school looking back I regretted pretty bad since it was really cringey they even put me in the school yearbook for it so it's there forever I got out of it by just becoming more mature and thinking more critically I also became close with my physics teacher since we have similar interests and that combined with maturity got me out of the mentality the worst part was everyone thinks I was doing it for attention when I actually believed it I basically destroyed my reputation in my hometown it's not a big deal though since I'm leaving and it's one of the reasons why I'm abandoning my childhood life my flatter Earth phase was a blunder but it was in the past and it really isn't that big of a deal to most people but it certainly did tarnish my reputation but to those people who think Flat Earth is the stupidest thing ever just remember that the majority of Americans believe praying to a dead Jew will give them eternal life it's all about what is accepted as normal in society I used to be really into conspiracy theories and a big part of the hook that people don't see is that it's an ego trip you think you know things that others don't and it makes you feel smarter special or superior it makes you feel good to feed the ego it takes a bit of self-reflection and a slice of humble pie to figure out your motivations for believing something a good friend started to be obsessed with conspiracy theories like this he was clearly suffering of low self esteem at the point of his life and he was dissatisfied with his career path conspiracy made him feel better because he believed to be more knowledgeable a pity because he really was smart while I was doing a PhD in neuroscience he became convinced that diet alone could cure about everything including Alzheimer's disease which was the subject then of my thesis I agree that diet could help a lot in most conditions but it wouldn't be enough on its own he then told me he understood that his knowledge would be hard on me since it was contradicting years of studying worst part to me was that he was not being condescending he thought my skepticism was born out of a closed mindedness instead he was the one being closed to contradicting opinions our friendship soon came to an end after more than 10 years my wife and I found a roommate through Craigslist who appeared to be completely normal he surfs is the drummer in a band is an avid rock climber plays disc golf loves backpacking and has a normal job any surface level conversation with him about hobbies sports video games where the outdoors is completely normal but if you start discussing anything deeper than that he starts going down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories he believes that the earth is flat that the government is a scam and run by a shadow organization that molecules aren't real etc anytime we try to ask him questions about his beliefs or ask for examples he gets very upset to the point where he doesn't won't listen to counter examples or basic logic I haven't ever really heard the reason for his belief in any of these things other than statements such as I don't memorize everything you've just got to watch the videos and well we can't prove things either way we just don't know for the sake of finishing the lease without a huge amount of drama we haven't brought up anything other than two or three times he definitely believes in these crazy theories and it is in a troll it honestly blew my mind to find out that a seemingly well-adjusted and normal person could hold such beliefs deep down it saddens me that somehow we as a society failed someone like him to the point that he believes such nonsense and won't listen to anything else I see flat-earthers as being no different than say the people who got caught up in the raw vegan fruitarian movement you have flat earthers and their conventions and meetups you have raw fruitarians who get together at fruit festivals with other crazy fruit people it's about inclusion that's all people get caught up in these things because they just want an identity and they cover all of their bases with arguments if anyone challenges them it doesn't matter whether those arguments are correct or not they take it as gospel because they are now part of the club they feel included there so they will uphold whatever BS they are fed I had been raised with no awareness that the earth was spherical this continued for many years until I learned in second grade that Columbus discovered that the earth wasn't flat when he sailed the ocean blue in 1492 you'd imagine that this would be the end of the story but then I learned that this was fake news in 10th grade when we discussed the fact that it is commonly believed that Pythagoras figured this out in 500 BC not me but my dad he is bipolar same as me but with more severe mania and during a manic episode a few years ago he got really into conspiracy theories he was smoking a lot of pot staying up till 4:00 in the morning getting messages from God and watching YouTube videos he would believe anything on YouTube he started obsessing over the Sun and Moon he would constantly take pictures of them and go on long rents about how the Sun doesn't really set in the West and it's revolving around the earth and how the moon always looks the same so it must be sitting still in the sky not rotating eventually this turned into believing that the moon the landing was faked the earth is flat and the center of the universe the Sun another planets revolve around the earth and the earth has a huge dome around it that keeps people from exiting the atmosphere into space every single family gathering he would bring this up and go on long multiple hour rants about it to anyone who would even pretend to listen he convinced a couple of sisters but most of the family just dismissed it as crazy uncle stuff he knew it didn't believe him and so he would corner me all the time trying to get me to argue with him or watch some of his again multiple hours long YouTube videos the thing that changed his mind he went on a trip to China on the plane there were screens in front of him that showed the trajectory and route they were taking on the way to China he saw that the route they took which took about 15 hours matched up with his flatter a theory if the earth was round they would have just flown over the ocean to cut three hours out of the trip or something but because they took the longer way which my dad believed was actually the shortest way going by the Flat Earth Map this proved that the earth was flat however on the way home the plane took the ocean route and made the trip in 12 hours should have been impossible according to my dad that opened his eyes and he started to fact-check some of the bogus math that had been spouted at him on YouTube he still believed some of the conspiracy theories but he picks and chooses which ones he believes like he still thinks the moon the landing was faked but he believes that we've sent unmanned rockets to the moon so there's no dome around the earth as a person who has spent some time on a flat earth discord they keep things semi cordial and try to uphold some form of debate structure flat earthers are a strange kind of people a quick summary of the type of people I meet in their spiritual people people who philosophies not necessarily Christianity but that it's more to us than just material I have had good conversations about some topics people who I sort of concede that they understand everything about physics so I don't really get why they would believe in a flat earth they are really good at spotting globe traps and using rhetoric to steer the conversation away from though topics I think some of them are just there to get some form of ego trip or money religious people most people there discuss the physics behind Flat Earth in addition to being diehard Christians the religious bias speaks for itself not very fulfilling speaking to them waste of time so what I think is weird is that you can show them proof indicating that the earth is curving in some shape or form doesn't matter they will provide another video stating look at this video we can see for 100s of miles how is that possible so their video beats all the other direct proof or observation of a curved earth they don't want to explain an anomaly or a noise in an observation if that anomaly or noise shows that the earth is curving less than what our model state the earth must be flat another thing is that they love to talk about gravity because people use the word force all the time but Einstein's definition of gravity is curved of space-time so they are getting us on that part all time and for some reason an experiment to provide the big G gravitational constant called Cavendish experiment is fake it's weird cause if big G is fake why would they publish results deliberately ruining their own results they might as well hide them and make up fake results which fit the model perfectly all in all crazy people some are jerks but many of them are simply lead to anything alternative that's why most faze are not only phase they are anti-vaxxers 9/11 was the government blowing up the building so we could get an excuse to invade the Middle East again etc not me but a family member he's still a flat earther so I can only answer the first half of the question he explained to me that the Bible states that the earth is flat not round in its own words in multiple parts of the book as if the Bible is a book of cold hard facts then the most compelling reason that he thinks to believe the earth is flat is that the higher ups of the world have deceived us and want us to believe the earth is round because the earth being round would point to the fact that there is no God because the earth being round and being part of a solar system can be explained by science basically if we have proof that there is a God Flat Earth we won't abide by the rules of the higher ups of the world anymore since we have God's rules to follow thanks for listening to radio TTS I hope you like this episode even if there were just a few answers from actual X flat earthers unfortunately there are not many that contributed to that reddit read and some of the other statements were just very interesting anyway subscribe and leave your comment

Channel: Radio TTS

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Keywords: askreddit, ask reddit, reddit, reddit best, reddit stories, reddit story, reddit top post, reddit stories 2019, reddit comments, reddit funny, askreddit funny, best of reddit, reddit creepy, reddit cringe, radio tts flat earth, flat earth theory, flat earthers, former flat earther, ex flat earther, flat earth believers, flat earth conspiracy theory, reddit flat earth, askreddit flat earth

Id: OvJWu32idkc

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 12 2019