Believe it or not, and despite all evidence to the contrary, more and more people are believing the world is flat. Probably not as many as you might think, however. The number is growing, and it’s being aided by people who believe in the traditional globe Earth model.
While the amount of money made from this sort of content isn’t colossal, if you’re good at it, it’s more than a nice little earner.
Social Media Income Generation
Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) directly reward users for their content. Those platforms are absolute cesspools of misinformation and copyright theft. They pay users directly for engagement.
It’s no secret that, through this model, rage bait posters have made significant sums of money—the best ones earning in excess of six figures a year. Flat Earth theory is one of the tools in the rage bait arsenal.
Most people correctly acknowledge that the planet Earth, like all other observable planets, is a sphere. It’s so plainly obvious to most people that they’re affronted when faced with such stupidity. So when well-meaning and correct people get mad enough to leave a comment telling the Flat Earth poster they’re a tool—boom! Rage bait success.
Eventually, hundreds of comments show up, and boom again—our theoretical Rage Bait Poster gets their engagement. This tells the platform’s algorithms that people like this sort of content, so it pushes more. Worse still, because our well-meaning Globe Earther engaged, they see more of it too. So the spiral continues.
The Broken Clock and the Dunning-Kruger Effect
Most people’s post feeds on these platforms correctly place content in front of users they’d like to see. In my case, cooking, cars, football, and village cricket umpiring decisions, among other things.
What I tend to find interspersed in my feed is the occasional Flat Earth post and right-wing horse pooh. I’ve made the mistake of telling these posters in the comments where they can go stick their posts.
It’s the content of the posts that draws people in. It starts with the Broken Clock—because a broken clock is right twice a day. The Broken Clock works thusly: there are elements in almost anything that can seem sensible, well-meaning, and difficult to argue with. Amidst 24 hours of incorrectness, there are two minutes when the broken clock is right. In Flat Earth’s case, this is usually something about water finding a level in a small space or something benign that you can see with your eyes. The kind of thing that, if you don’t think too hard, you’ll agree with pretty easily.
That’s how they hook you. Now you’re in. So the person who didn’t think so hard before now starts to look around and see what else they can find to suit that narrative. Now the person is thinking, but with a cognitive bias toward conclusions that support the broken clock.
Now you have a person who’s done some research—albeit basic—and is leaping to the conclusion that the Earth is flat. These people are typically prone to believing conspiracy theories or are forthright in their opinions—or worse, both. This is where the Dunning-Kruger Effect comes into play.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect causes people with limited skills or competence to vastly overestimate their level of expertise or ability. Essentially, there’s so much you don’t know about a subject that you aren’t even aware of the things you don’t know. Talking to Tom, Dick, and Harry down the pub about your “research” is wildly different from talking to an actual physicist.
Should the physicist actually have a conversation with the Flat Earther, it would make little difference. Even when the physicist starts talking about gravitational waves, quantum theory, and a whole host of other things, the Flat Earther, so far removed from understanding these concepts, refuses to acknowledge their relevance to the argument.
The Engagement Trap
Social media algorithms do not care if content is good, bad, or indifferent. They only consider whether content is being engaged with, either through views or comments. Engaging with content to argue, debunk it, or even make jokes only serves to fuel the growth of these posts. This contributes to a feedback loop in the social media platforms’ algorithms, which pushes that type of content more and more. Worse still, it directs it increasingly toward people who don’t want to see it.
This sort of rage bait thrives on triggering an emotional reaction in the viewer—be it absolute indignation, anger, frustration, or simply a need to correct obvious nonsense. This only amplifies the problem. Instead of silencing the spread of conspiracies, interaction helps keep the content alive and circulating. In short, engaging with rage bait, even with good intentions, only feeds the machine.
What to Do When Confronted with Flat Earth on Social Media
The answer to this is very simple, and it’s the same for any rage bait, not just Flat Earth: block it and move on. Don’t stop to read the comments; don’t watch in disbelief. If your instinct is that it’s trash, get rid of it and carry on.
Social media platforms are keen to shirk their responsibility to stop the spread of misinformation, so it’s on the individual user to protect their feeds from this rubbish.
