I thought they were just being trolls, whatever. And as part of my job for the Daily Beast, I was monitoring some extremist forums in 2017, and I started seeing people post about Flat Earth theory and I thought they were kidding.

So I have always watched weird people online. What actually led you to start reporting on on Flat Earth theory to begin with?

On this week’s episode of Don’t Let This Flop, Rolling Stone‘s podcast about TikTok and internet culture, co-hosts Ej Dickson and Brittany Spanos talked with Kelly Weill, a journalist at the Daily Beast and author of the recent book Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything. In the following interview, as transcribed from the episode, Weill talks about the roots of Flat Earth in a Nineteenth-century utopian community the overlap between Flat Earth and more insidious conspiracy theories, such as the anti-vaccine movement and how platforms like YouTube and, more recently, TikTok, have allowed the community to mushroom. And in light of the pandemic, which has led to a proliferation of conspiratorial thinking in general, there’s growing concern among those who study extremism and misinformation that believing in Flat Earth theory can lead one down even darker rabbit holes.

But in recent years, thanks to the advent of social media, Flat Earth theory has gained increasing prominence, and has even been espoused by prominent figures like NBA star Kyrie Irving. The archaic belief that the earth is flat and not a globe, as centuries of research have determined, may seem like a silly and fringe belief.

Of all the conspiracy theories in history - QAnon, the faked moon landing, the belief that Katy Perry is somehow JonBenet Ramsey - perhaps none is as ridiculous, as outright outlandish, as Flat Earth theory.

Flat earther memes