For this assignment, we were asked to analyze an online community and develop an essay discussing how they interact with each other. We were also asked to analyze how their behavior could connect or reflect a broader social problem.
-The Flat Earth Theory-
As someone who has always been curious about space and what other planets look like, I feel really conflicted about how some people view our own planet. I am going to be honest from the beginning instead of having you waste time trying to find my opinion. I DO NOT believe the earth is flat. This, however, is not the case for a big part of our population. This is especially true with the rise of social media and how easy it is to spread ideas and find people who think just like you, no matter how crazy the idea in question might sound. All these people with these different ideas and points of view ended up creating their own space on the internet to share their theories.
The community’s name is The Flat Earth Society, and you can find them in every social media platform there is. You can find them on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram…but these tend to be not serious or informed on the topic. Because of this, I decided to observe how they interact in their official forum instead. The first thing you will notice if you visit their website is how organized it is. You can find sections dedicated to specific concerns within the community, for debates, Entertainment, and many other things. This is something that really surprised me, because I thought the community might be highly composed of young people who might have been influenced by things they saw in other social media platforms. I discovered it is not that superficial. Michael Marshall, project director of the Good Thinking Society in the UK, talked about this specifically in an interview about flat Earthers and their beliefs. He said “I discovered a friend of mine who is very well educated, she’s got a doctorate in biochemistry and, uh, she has a sister who’s also very intelligent and very well educated.” After this, he then says that his friend’s sister is a flat earther herself, despite having the same level of education. What this means is that we are not dealing with the case of people who are just naïve and easy to manipulate, but with people who have critical thinking skills but still believe the Earth is flat. When you can take college classes and graduate, you cannot be considered someone who is easily manipulated or molded to believe certain things. This leaves us with the fact that many members of this community are very smart people who refuse to believe the earth is round.
After realizing this, I decided to look deeper into their website, to see how they interacted with people from the community and others who might just be curious. The forum has a Q&A (questions and answers) section in which anyone can ask questions and someone from their organization will reply with highly detailed explanations and examples of how and why they believe what they believe. The following are two photos placed on the Q&A section to answer someone’s question. Somebody asked: “How do you explain day and night cycles?” This was the answer he was given:
Now, I am not someone who understands a lot about physics and how things are supposed to work, so I will let the person explain this in their own words. The administrator, by the name “Jack” said “Day and night cycles are easily explained on a flat earth. The sun moves in circles around the North Pole. When it is over your head, it’s day. When it’s not, it’s night. The sun acts like a spotlight and shines downward as it moves.” Then, to explain the second image, he said “When the sun is further away from the North Pole, it’s winter in the northern hemiplain (or hemisphere) and summer in the south.” This is something that sounds convincing when you look at it, and that is the problem. If you are someone like me, who is not knowledgeable on how proper physics works, you might be convinced by these ideas and end up forming part of the community. It would be different if the people behind this theory had no way of supporting their claims, or if their ideas were completely off, because we could say that they are simply crazy. But we can’t call them crazy because even proper scientist has said that some aspects of the things they have said are correct.
So, how do we deal with a problem like this? Is there a way to convince people who are part of this community to stop believing in it? Well, some people argue that is just too hard at this point, because people have developed a sense of belonging in this society. Meaning that they really feel like what others are saying are wrong, and that the people from their community are the only ones who they can trust. An article about motivate ignorance and social identity threat written by Jones, Ian ; Adams, Andrew ; Mayoh, Joanne, discuses and develops the physiology behind this. The article says that “For those who identify with the Flat Earth concept, for example, involvement is not ‘so much a belief that someone would accept or reject on the basis of experimental evidence, but instead an identity. It could give you purpose to your life, it created instant community.” What this implies is that in some cases, people no longer care about being right or wrong when it comes to their findings or theories, they just want to keep believing in what makes them feel safe. This makes it hard to change their beliefs, because it would mean erasing a part of what makes them feel who they are. It is something that you refuse to abandon, regardless of how true or false it might be. In my case, it would be the equivalent of telling me that Jesus never existed, and that everything in the bible is made up. Even if this were true, I would still CHOOSE to believe otherwise.
Now, there is no way to make people who already believe stop believing, because they are choosing to do it, but there is a way to stop this theory from spreading to the younger generations, or there should be at least. The key to this is social media itself. Today, especially in countries like the US, people have a lot of access to the internet and the ability to freely express their ideas. This can be good sometimes, but it is also the reason there is so misinformation nowadays. It is normal for kids under five to have a phone or a tablet, and so we are exposing them to all the stuff people publish on places like YouTube and TikTok. Kids are very vulnerable, and they are easy to manipulate, so targeting them and making them believe that the earth is flat is not that hard. You are generally able to convince a child of something by repetition alone, eventually, the child will interpret it as factual and will highly likely grow with that idea. An article written by Chanais Matthias, a Philosopher from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom discusses how this has become a problem for everyone in general. He says “Misinformation, driven in large part by online conspiracy communities, plays a significant role in this erosion. YouTube has become a hub for spreading false claims.” This means that this platform is one of the reasons conspiracy theories are so easily spread. He also says that “Given the identified influence of social media platforms such as YouTube on public health behaviours and attitudes toward scientific information through conspiracy theories, it is crucial to address misinformation and its attraction within anti-scientific communities.” What I take from all of this, and my overall opinion, is that The Flat Earth Society is a complex community. It has some people who might not take it seriously and are just trying to be funny, but it also has a lot of people who honestly believe, defend, and support the idea of a flat earth. The solution to avoid having more people believing in pseudo-science instead of proper science? It would be regulating the stuff people are able to see and publish online, but then that would mean restricting freedom of speech. So, I guess there really is nothing we can do to stop this theory or its community from spreading, it has existed for more than 70 years, and it will continue to exist.
Works Cited
Matthias, Chanais, et al. “‘I Think Youtube’s Turning Me into a Flat Earther’: Social Media’s Role in Ex-Conspiracy Theorists Entering and Exiting Anti-Scientific Communities.” PloS One
[United States], vol. 20, no. 6, June 2025, p. e0323436, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0323436.
Jones, Ian, et al. “Motivated Ignorance and Social Identity Threat: The Case of the Flat Earth.” Social Identities [Abingdon], vol. 29, no. 1, January 2023, pp. 79–94, https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2208033.
Flat Earthers: What They Believe and Why | Scientific American
The Flat Earth Society. The Flat Earth Society, www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/. Accessed 17 Apr. 2026.
