[bratwurst3000]

Hahaha this is a good article. I love the part where the father didn’t believe them but the mother did and kind of published the photographs. And they did it only because of an argument with their mother.

Could something like flat earth theory have started like this? A bad joke that people believed and it got hyped not because it is true but because idiots believing it is kind of fun.

[the_af]

Today? I think most flat-earthers are indeed having fun with an elaborate, long-running joke. Some even sort of admit it. (And some are truly deranged, of course).

Back then? Flat earth made all the sense in the world, according to the empirical observations possible at the time. Only it wasn't able to explain some phenomena (e.g ships "sinking" over the horizon), and so evidence accumulated against it, eventually.