I’ll level with you – I’m not entirely certain that flat earthers aren’t having fun at our expense. As conspiracy theories go, this one is, on the face of it, relatively harmless. It is entirely possible that the Global Society of Flat Earthers are just having a laugh. After all, it’s the sort of thing I say to my brother at Christmas just to watch his head explode.
I think there’s a glitch in my brain that simply cannot conceive that anyone could believe something so ludicrous. Like the Dunning-Kruger effect in reverse. However, judging by a cursory glance on Facebook, I find that UK chapter of The Flat Earth Society (I’m not including a link) has 179k members. That’s a lot of people in on the joke. The only question now is whether I join to have a snoop?
Two hours, four cups of coffee and an existential crisis later:
I snooped. I regret it. God only knows what Google makes of my digital footprint.
However, to save you jumping down that rabbit hole, here’s few key facts I now know about Flat Earthers:
- They don’t think that Australia doesn’t exist. That would just be silly;
- The average Flat Earther’s approach to punctuation can only be described as “fast and loose”;
- Because science can’t explain everything, the next logical step is to assume that it can’t explain anything; and
- They believe their opinion is equal to an ACTUAL SCIENTIST’S fact.
However, I’m no closer to working out whether they really believe it, or are pulling our collective leg. I suspect a little of both. However, this means that the only rational explanation for this phenomenon is that this is a joke that’s got waaaaaay out of hand.
When Life Imitates (Bad) Jokes
As previously mentioned, I will spend a sizeable portion of Christmas Day winding my brother into a spluttering mess of incoherent rage by telling him that chemicals in the water are making frogs gay, there’s a second sun that NASA is hiding from us, and that the Large Hadron Collider is actually a Stargate.
I will do this because I think I’m funny, and sipping a margarita while he screams “If there was another %^&*€?! sun we’d be able to see it in the %^&*€?! sky!” is my idea of a good time.
Except that two Christmases ago, I accidentally convinced him that someone invented a helicopter with no rotors because of something vaguely convincing about hydrogen and national security. And now he believes that the technology exists and will not accept that I was kidding. Because we are twins, however, and because he’s an engineer, there’s a very high chance that he’s now winding me up and the joke has gone meta.
Three years ago, someone else who thinks they’re funny started a joke online about people eating Tidepods (laundry detergent) because they look a bit like confectionary. And then, yep, you guessed it, people started eating Tidepods.
Because the problem with telling these jokes is that some people won’t recognise them as jokes, so they’ll believe that the earth is flat. And that undermines intelligence and expertise in a wider sphere. You can’t trust scientists to tell you the truth about the shape of the globe (actual quote), so how can you trust them to tell you the truth about vaccinations?
And then suddenly there are people with compromised immune systems in isolation wards and no one is laughing anymore.
Parody as Fake News
I’ve never really been comfortable with parody being considered a form of disinformation (fake news), because it is not designed to mislead, but rather to amuse. However, it seems that it belongs there for two reasons. Firstly, we cannot budget for the media illiteracy of the audience, who will miss the joke and believe it. Secondly, as in the case of Tidepods, life imitates art.
We seem to be in an era of meta-news. Previously, the news reported events. Then 24-hour news meant it had to hype up events to create 24-hours of things to talk about. Now the news is encouraging events in order to create news to hype up so as to have 24-hours of things to talk about.
As such, it feels like we’ve gone beyond parody. So for Christmas this year, I might refrain from telling my brother that Stephen King killed John Lennon (he didn’t). It doesn’t feel very funny anymore.
Related Posts
I’ll level with you – I’m not entirely certain that flat earthers aren’t having fun at our expense. As conspiracy theories go, this one is, on the face of it, relatively harmless. It is entirely possible that the Global Society of Flat Earthers are just having a laugh. After all, it’s the sort of thing I say to my brother at Christmas just to watch his head explode.
I think there’s a glitch in my brain that simply cannot conceive that anyone could believe something so ludicrous. Like the Dunning-Kruger effect in reverse. However, judging by a cursory glance on Facebook, I find that UK chapter of The Flat Earth Society (I’m not including a link) has 179k members. That’s a lot of people in on the joke. The only question now is whether I join to have a snoop?
Two hours, four cups of coffee and an existential crisis later:
I snooped. I regret it. God only knows what Google makes of my digital footprint.
However, to save you jumping down that rabbit hole, here’s few key facts I now know about Flat Earthers:
- They don’t think that Australia doesn’t exist. That would just be silly;
- The average Flat Earther’s approach to punctuation can only be described as “fast and loose”;
- Because science can’t explain everything, the next logical step is to assume that it can’t explain anything; and
- They believe their opinion is equal to an ACTUAL SCIENTIST’S fact.
However, I’m no closer to working out whether they really believe it, or are pulling our collective leg. I suspect a little of both. However, this means that the only rational explanation for this phenomenon is that this is a joke that’s got waaaaaay out of hand.
When Life Imitates (Bad) Jokes
As previously mentioned, I will spend a sizeable portion of Christmas Day winding my brother into a spluttering mess of incoherent rage by telling him that chemicals in the water are making frogs gay, there’s a second sun that NASA is hiding from us, and that the Large Hadron Collider is actually a Stargate.
I will do this because I think I’m funny, and sipping a margarita while he screams “If there was another %^&*€?! sun we’d be able to see it in the %^&*€?! sky!” is my idea of a good time.
Except that two Christmases ago, I accidentally convinced him that someone invented a helicopter with no rotors because of something vaguely convincing about hydrogen and national security. And now he believes that the technology exists and will not accept that I was kidding. Because we are twins, however, and because he’s an engineer, there’s a very high chance that he’s now winding me up and the joke has gone meta.
Three years ago, someone else who thinks they’re funny started a joke online about people eating Tidepods (laundry detergent) because they look a bit like confectionary. And then, yep, you guessed it, people started eating Tidepods.
Because the problem with telling these jokes is that some people won’t recognise them as jokes, so they’ll believe that the earth is flat. And that undermines intelligence and expertise in a wider sphere. You can’t trust scientists to tell you the truth about the shape of the globe (actual quote), so how can you trust them to tell you the truth about vaccinations?
And then suddenly there are people with compromised immune systems in isolation wards and no one is laughing anymore.
Parody as Fake News
I’ve never really been comfortable with parody being considered a form of disinformation (fake news), because it is not designed to mislead, but rather to amuse. However, it seems that it belongs there for two reasons. Firstly, we cannot budget for the media illiteracy of the audience, who will miss the joke and believe it. Secondly, as in the case of Tidepods, life imitates art.
We seem to be in an era of meta-news. Previously, the news reported events. Then 24-hour news meant it had to hype up events to create 24-hours of things to talk about. Now the news is encouraging events in order to create news to hype up so as to have 24-hours of things to talk about.
As such, it feels like we’ve gone beyond parody. So for Christmas this year, I might refrain from telling my brother that Stephen King killed John Lennon (he didn’t). It doesn’t feel very funny anymore.
Related Posts
I’ll level with you – I’m not entirely certain that flat earthers aren’t having fun at our expense. As conspiracy theories go, this one is, on the face of it, relatively harmless. It is entirely possible that the Global Society of Flat Earthers are just having a laugh. After all, it’s the sort of thing I say to my brother at Christmas just to watch his head explode.
I think there’s a glitch in my brain that simply cannot conceive that anyone could believe something so ludicrous. Like the Dunning-Kruger effect in reverse. However, judging by a cursory glance on Facebook, I find that UK chapter of The Flat Earth Society (I’m not including a link) has 179k members. That’s a lot of people in on the joke. The only question now is whether I join to have a snoop?
Two hours, four cups of coffee and an existential crisis later:
I snooped. I regret it. God only knows what Google makes of my digital footprint.
However, to save you jumping down that rabbit hole, here’s few key facts I now know about Flat Earthers:
- They don’t think that Australia doesn’t exist. That would just be silly;
- The average Flat Earther’s approach to punctuation can only be described as “fast and loose”;
- Because science can’t explain everything, the next logical step is to assume that it can’t explain anything; and
- They believe their opinion is equal to an ACTUAL SCIENTIST’S fact.
However, I’m no closer to working out whether they really believe it, or are pulling our collective leg. I suspect a little of both. However, this means that the only rational explanation for this phenomenon is that this is a joke that’s got waaaaaay out of hand.
When Life Imitates (Bad) Jokes
As previously mentioned, I will spend a sizeable portion of Christmas Day winding my brother into a spluttering mess of incoherent rage by telling him that chemicals in the water are making frogs gay, there’s a second sun that NASA is hiding from us, and that the Large Hadron Collider is actually a Stargate.
I will do this because I think I’m funny, and sipping a margarita while he screams “If there was another %^&*€?! sun we’d be able to see it in the %^&*€?! sky!” is my idea of a good time.
Except that two Christmases ago, I accidentally convinced him that someone invented a helicopter with no rotors because of something vaguely convincing about hydrogen and national security. And now he believes that the technology exists and will not accept that I was kidding. Because we are twins, however, and because he’s an engineer, there’s a very high chance that he’s now winding me up and the joke has gone meta.
Three years ago, someone else who thinks they’re funny started a joke online about people eating Tidepods (laundry detergent) because they look a bit like confectionary. And then, yep, you guessed it, people started eating Tidepods.
Because the problem with telling these jokes is that some people won’t recognise them as jokes, so they’ll believe that the earth is flat. And that undermines intelligence and expertise in a wider sphere. You can’t trust scientists to tell you the truth about the shape of the globe (actual quote), so how can you trust them to tell you the truth about vaccinations?
And then suddenly there are people with compromised immune systems in isolation wards and no one is laughing anymore.
Parody as Fake News
I’ve never really been comfortable with parody being considered a form of disinformation (fake news), because it is not designed to mislead, but rather to amuse. However, it seems that it belongs there for two reasons. Firstly, we cannot budget for the media illiteracy of the audience, who will miss the joke and believe it. Secondly, as in the case of Tidepods, life imitates art.
We seem to be in an era of meta-news. Previously, the news reported events. Then 24-hour news meant it had to hype up events to create 24-hours of things to talk about. Now the news is encouraging events in order to create news to hype up so as to have 24-hours of things to talk about.
As such, it feels like we’ve gone beyond parody. So for Christmas this year, I might refrain from telling my brother that Stephen King killed John Lennon (he didn’t). It doesn’t feel very funny anymore.
