That week I tried to fact-check a flat earth video for my uncle

Last month, my uncle sent me a 2 hour video about flat earth theory and asked me to 'debunk it for him'. I spent three whole days going through it, pausing every few minutes to look up stuff like the Bedford Level experiment or photos of the so-called 'ice wall'. I even downloaded a free astronomy app to track the ISS. The worst part was finding out how many of the 'proofs' were just old, bad science from the 1800s that got debunked ages ago. By Friday, I had a 15 page Google Doc full of links and explanations. When I showed him, he just said 'they could fake all that, you know'. I felt like I ran a marathon and got nowhere. Has anyone else had a family member who just would not accept any evidence you showed them, no matter how clear it was?

2 comments

2 Comments

seanh9114d ago

Oh man, that reminds me of the time my cousin got deep into moon landing conspiracies. I printed out NASA's technical reports on the reflectors left up there, the ones universities still use to bounce lasers off. I even found the original TV broadcast footage and showed him the flag moving. He just kept saying the vacuum would make it behave differently, that it was all filmed in a desert. I finally asked what proof he would actually accept, and he just shrugged. It's like playing chess with a pigeon.

the_nina13d ago

Three days on a 15 page doc is brutal. That "they could fake all that" line is the real killer, it makes any fact pointless. When @seanh91's cousin shrugged about what proof he'd accept, that's the same dead end. What did your uncle even want from you when he sent the video, if he was just going to dismiss everything you found?

-1