The Tragedy of Being a Flat-Earther

Once again, dear reader, your Curmudgeon provides you with vital information. As you know, the bible clearly declares that The Earth Is Flat! But sometimes, knowing and believing The Truth™ can cause terrible problems.

At the website of Wired, which Wikipedia says is a monthly magazine — see Wired — we found How do you find love when you believe the Earth is flat? Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:

In 2015, Brian Dolan decided not to pay for a digital TV subscription, reasoning that he could find all his entertainment for free online. It was a life changing moment. He ended up spending a lot of time watching conspiracy videos, and kept seeing pop-ups for videos made by people who believe the Earth is flat. “I thought it was the stupidest thing ever,” says Dolan, who is 39 and lives in Niagara Falls. But that quickly changed.

It changed? What happened? Wired says:

This is a common occurrence: someone investigates conspiracy theories on YouTube; they dismiss flat Earth as ridiculous; they are converted, often after watching the Flat Earth Clues videos by the community’s poster boy Mark Sargent. [We’ve mentioned him before in flat-Earth posts.] The same thing happened to Dolan. Within a few weeks, he had – as the flat Earth community puts it – ‘woken up’.

That Sargent guy must be very persuasive. And how did it affect Dolan’s life? Not favorably, it seems. We’re told:

He believes becoming a flat Earther has affected his romantic life. “Quite honestly, my dating pool has become a dating pond,” he says. [Egad! His dating pool shriveled up!] “If you can’t agree on the fundamentals of where you’re living, I don’t think you have much chance of that much of a future.”

That’s probably true. So what happened? Wired tells us:

Once, a friend made (and operated) a profile for him on the dating site Plenty of Fish, which mentioned that Dolan is a flat Earther. A few people were interested but Dolan asked that he take it down. “I’m not good at the game,” he says. He faces an unusual – but not unique – challenge. How do you find love when you think the Earth is flat?

We know you’re interested, so what’s the answer? We’ll have to skip several heart-breaking paragraphs that tell us about lonely flat-Earthers, until we come to this:

Given the barriers, perhaps it’s unsurprising that a single flat Earther in search of love would turn to the internet and its algorithms. And that’s where Flat Earth Singles comes in.

That sounds promising — but after a few more paragraphs, we find out that it was a scam. Is there no hope? Wired says that there is:

But it is eminently possible for flat Earthers to fall in love with one another, as my interviews proved. When they do so, their membership of a minority that is widely mocked can strengthen their relationship. [That’s wonderful!] When Nathan Thompson dated a flat Earther he said it felt like “us against the world”. Charlotte Love fell in love with another flat Earther at her meet-ups, and David Weiss and Paige Windle met at a Halloween party in 2006 before either of them had ‘woken up’.

Then they both “woke up.” Let’s read on:

The two of them watched flat Earth videos together and came to their conclusion together. “And I almost felt lighter,” says Windle, “because everything made sense – that we’ve been living this lie for so long.” The pair would do small experiments together, and film them. “We are doing great and flat Earth is making us stronger than anyone out there,” says Weiss. “We are not bored; life is exciting and new every single day.”

Isn’t that wonderful? But then Wired gets realistic:

Weiss and Windle are clearly in a fortunate minority. The flat Earth community believe that a significant percentage of their number are ‘in the closet’, afraid to come out to their glober loved ones. [Glober? Hee hee!] Sargent describes these people’s secrets as “ticking time bombs” – revelations that may destroy their relationships.

Oh the horror! And now we come to the end:

When we begin a relationship with someone, we perhaps subconsciously assume that their stances on the important issues in life will never change. To contemplate anything else is too frightening for us – it may entail having to change ourselves. But conspiracies lure people in all the time, and people change every day. It could happen to anyone. What would you do if the person lying next to you in bed told you they believed the Earth is flat?

That’s a great question! What would you do, dear reader?

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