[lwansbrough]

Once you internalize that flat-Earther-ism isn’t about the Earth being flat you realize that rational arguments are pointless.

To expand on that, it’s about community and finding people who share your interests. The movie Behind The Curve explores this idea and it’s quite revealing.

[thomasahle]

A bunch of flat-earthers went to Antarctica to see if the midnight sun was real. Turns out it was.

Jeran from Behind The Curve was one of the ones to flip, and since then, he's been making videos on how the earth is actually round.

He has a lot of thoughts on what it actually takes to convince other flat-earthers. I found it somewhat interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1grMf17PeEk

[QuadrupleA]

And the ego boost of it all - being one of the special few who sees "the truth" that others are too brainwashed/dumb/whatever to see. Makes one feel quite important.

[lordnacho]

Indeed, this might be why religion seems so odd to outsiders.

It's implausible, yet that's what stimulates the tribal feelings among the believers.

[kakacik]

Those are the simple cows to be milked, but numerous 'gurus' in these communities are very well aware of the bullshit they propagate to the weak and gullible, but its just such an easy noncritical prey. You can always just go deeper in paranoia.

Makes me think that mr trump switched from being democrat to republican and pushed for magaesque folks who often love him to the death due to very similar principle - just spit out some populist crap that stirs core emotions - the worse the better, make them feel victim, find easy target to blame which can't defend themselves well (immigrants), add some conspiracy (of which he is actually part of as wall street billionaire).

Extreme left wouldn't swallow easily that ridiculous mix from nepotic billionaire who managed to bankrupt casinos and avoided military duty (on top of some proper hebephilia with his close friend mr E and who knows what else).

But what do I know, just an outside observer, but nobody around the world has umbrella thick enough that this crap doesn't eventually fall on them too.

[immibis]

I think Trump's just been running a simple popularity-seeking loop for a while. Do a thing; if his people like it, do it more; otherwise do it less.

I've heard that even Hitler was like this: that he didn't start out hating Jews, but repeatedly reacted to the fact that he got louder cheers whenever he blamed things on Jews. But I don't know how to verify if this is true.

[theoreticalmal]

The feedback response post is true, but specifically about Jews is not true. He hated Jews long before he rose anywhere near power

[dnemmers]

Hitler was enthralled by Henry Ford, and copied what he learned about anti-semitism.

https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/hitlers-...

[zahlman]

What could be expected to be the "shared interests" of a community of people organized around supposedly believing something that they aren't actually about believing?

[teiferer]

It's since being replaced by similar isms like climate change hoax-ism. Very similar way of arguing, dealing with contradicting evidence and seeing a conspiracy whenever a large body of scientists has a consensus.

Unfortunately, the climate change deniers in all their forms have made it much further by having support in politics and having a real impact on people's lives. In contrast to flat earthers.

Just the mere fact that my post here could be interpreted as political (which it really isn't) is evidence of this.

[fooker]

It's more about discrediting conspiracy theories to shift the Overton window so the real ones with the flavor of 'the government is spying on you' also seems crazy to most people.