So I watched the flat earth documentary Behind the Curve on Netflix last night.
It's more depressing than the clips of the experiments would suggest. It's just kinda sad really, and gives me a lot of deja vu about the Ron Paul campaign and all the conspiracy theorists it drew into it. (I would bet money that the majority of the people in this documentary were Ron Paul voters)
A lot of people, many of whom are relatively bright, who are unhappy and don't feel like they fit into society galvanising around some weird little bit of nonsense and building a community out of it. You can tell that the leaders of this movement are addicted to the respect and adoration they receive from their community. They're somebody in this society, even if this society is a lie. And because their status is contingent on their perpetuation of this farce, they throw themselves into it with full earnestness, even when their own experiments tell them they're wrong.
Several of the people did say that they basically became flat earthers because they were dismissed and ridiculed for "asking questions" of scientists. And I'm sure that's what happened in some cases (boffins aren't known for their social skills generally).
But that isn't the whole story here, because the rational response to "a physicist/doctor/biologist was mean to me" is not to just decide that the scientific method is trash, vaccines cause autism, and the Rothschilds run the world.
It's almost like they embrace these conspiracy theories as a provocation to force people to interact with them. Like they're taking their own intellects hostage and demanding attention and respect as a ransom.
"Either you talk to me and accept me or I swear to God I will believe every crazy thing I read on the internet."
But at the same time, I was a bit annoyed at one of the actual physicists insisting the existence of communities like this is a failure of science to be empathetic and welcoming. I mean, ideally the scientific community would be those things, but it seems clear to me that these conspiracy theories simply are not responsive to evidence. That's not why people join them and that's not why people defend the central falsehoods.
He says something like "we have to figure out where they're hung up rather than leaving them behind," but they're not hung up anything the scientific method can help them with.
They're hung up on the fact that as long as they embrace this wacky conspiracy theory, people watch their videos and listen to their podcasts and treat them with reverence and respect. The second they acknowledge their movement is a lie, they'll never be the keynote speaker of anything again.
If this anti-science thing was harmless, I'd actually find it endearing that all these people found each other. But the second they trot their little innocent kids out to declare gravity and evolution aren't real and the moon landing never happened, all my sympathy and pity immediately evaporate.
I'd recommend it. People like this exist. I already knew that from my experience in the liberty movement, but it's worthwhile to remind ourselves from time to time.