The Claim
Modern flat Earth believers argue the planet is a flat disc, not a sphere, and that governments, space agencies, and scientific institutions worldwide are cooperating in an elaborate, generations-long cover-up to hide it.
The Evidence
- “The horizon looks flat, and water finds its level” — a common intuitive, visual argument.
- Claims that NASA imagery is computer-generated or otherwise faked.
- The idea that a global conspiracy spanning every government, airline, and scientist is, to some, more plausible than trusting institutions they already distrust for other reasons.
- Various social-media “experiments” with disputed methodology.
The Official Story
A spherical Earth is one of the most independently verified facts in all of science. Ships disappear hull-first over the horizon well before they vanish entirely — a dead giveaway of curvature that sailors have documented for centuries. Different countries and private companies, with no incentive to collude with one another, all operate their own satellites and take their own photographs of a round Earth. Commercial pilots plan great-circle routes that only make sense on a globe. And during a lunar eclipse, Earth casts a round shadow on the Moon every single time — only a sphere does that consistently, regardless of angle.
File Notes
Modern flat Earth belief is largely an internet-era phenomenon, amplified heavily by video-platform recommendation algorithms in the 2010s. It's become such a recognizable meme that it's often used as shorthand for “the most obviously wrong thing someone could believe” — which, tinfoil-rating-wise, earns it the top spot in this archive.