In the past year, internet users noticed a surge in popularity of a particular Conspiracy Theory. No, it has nothing to do with 9/11 and steel beams or aliens on Area 51. This time, a group of people actually believe that the earth is flat.
'The Flat Earth Society has members around the globe'
Calling themselves the Flat Earth Society, these people defend the theory that the Earth is, well, flat. Their argument hinges on the fact that NASA or any other scientific authority cannot produce indisputable evidence for the earth being round while claiming that they have proof of their own belief.
They also promote "trusting one's own senses" over the data presented by the scientists at NASA and others.
Surely a theory like flat earth would not have gained traction in this age when information is easy to come by. For many people, the theory was treated with a healthy amount of skepticism, if not being outright rejected.
However, as most of us witnessed, irony gets the best of us. Still, the theory steadily gained popularity. In a report by The Verge, it was stated that "search interest in the flat Earth conspiracy theory has already had several distinct peaks in the last year." This data is collected from Google trends.
Irony… and memes?
So how did the Flat Earth come to be so popular? Well, obviously, the internet has been a big part of it.
But there are other factors.
The internet's own curiosity about the issue fueled interest over time. And in true internet fashion, we welcomed the theory with memes. To be fair, flat-earth memes are entertaining, but there is an undeniable fact: that those memes also contribute to the theory's spread and, in consequence, the budding of potential followers.
It's safe to say that there are far fewer "flat-earthers" than there are people who believe that the earth is round. But being this controversial, it's easy for the flat earth stories to thrive in a point-and-click world.
Popular media outlets like The Guardian, The Atlantic, Vice, and Sports Illustrated already ran stories about the flat earth theory.
And the internet's very curiosity is the reason why articles like these were bumped to the peak of Google's top news at one point or another.
It didn't matter that the articles (like this one, actually) were actively discouraging people from believing in the theory — what matters is that the theory is spread.
Well, as they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
