Yaya Camara

Professor Harris

Writing for Social Science

8 April 2020

First Draft

My first look into the Flat Earth community was through a Netflix documentary called, “Behind the Curve”.  I became interested after reading the “bio/info” section, and instantly thought about elementary school days when I first heard about a Flat Earth. My thoughts on the topic since elementary school remained the same, it was no question that the earth is a globe/ round, but anyways I clicked play keeping an open mind to the possibility.

The documentary was the reason why I chose this community for this project because I learned tremendously about the community, and their beliefs. To start, the Flat Earth Society is a community that has been around for nearly 65 years. They regard themselves as Flat Earthers and use the platform to express their beliefs publicly. Samuel Shenton created the organization by advocating for the cause by distributing flyers and hosting talks for the general public. However, it was after the leadership of the second president, Charles K. Johnson, where the community and its membership took flight (Wiki).

From my observations in multiple Facebook groups, I believe most of the members of the society are adult White Americans. Additionally, most of them live in the Southern and Western part of America. However, there are still many international members which shows that this group is very much universal.  The members seem to use their actual names in the discussion chats and are combative.

Many people started listening to the community because of the experiments and evidence the society was providing skeptics. For instance, Samuel Birley Rowbotham wrote a book called “Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe”, where he conducted many experiments proving that the Earth is flat. One famous experiment was his second experiment where he posted 6 flags, a mile apart from each other, onto a body of water that was eight feet deep. His experiment showed that the Earth was flat because he was able to see all six flags in a horizontal line, whereas if the Earth was round, the flags would’ve curved downward following the curve of the Earth (Experiment 2).

This experiment is one of many members of the society use to defend their stance, and they do not defend it the earth’s shape lightly. I was shocked at the posts I was reading regarding the Earth’s shape and their interactions within the community and against outsiders, aka “Round Earthers”. They often questioned each side’s intelligence when a person posts a comment which proved to me that members of these chats were condescending.  For instance, in the Official Flat Earth and Globe Discussion, a Facebook user post “I have recorded the size of shadows a couple miles apart and they were different, not possible in flat earth but you probably won’t even approve this because anytime someone posts actual science you mute them for a week or ban them”. Another replies, “This is by far and away the most idiotic post I’ve seen approved in this group.” Finally, a third person writes, “idiotic it is BUT I think the poster will see the idiotness and realize the lie. Sometimes dumb posts have teaching moments.” This is one of the many posts that proved to me that members of these group are very degrading to dissenters. This also made me wonder, is this platform an outlet for Flat Earthers to express their opinions after being SILENCED/SHOOED by most of the world?

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