AKA ‘Fear of a Flat Planet’
You stopped believing in Santa when you were four years old
And use vitamins and bed rest to cure a common cold
Never fell for Brexit lies on the side of a big red bus
And you were never really into all that Flat Earth Theory stuff
But when you were cruising YouTube for theories on 9/11
You were autoplayed a video from a dustbin man in Devon
He’d purchased many spirit levels and glued them end to end
As proof the world was flat and not some social media trend
I thought you’d banged your head; how was this proof the world is flat?
But YouTube served you videos which helped you answer that
“The Illuminati,” you said, “propped up by Jewish banks
Have formed a New World Order Government with Beyoncé and Tom Hanks.”
The arguments for Flat Earth Theory keep going round and round
But they’re easily disproven by a pole stuck in the ground.
I once went to a talk by Mr Michael Marshall, who is a paid investigator of how conspiracy theories take hold, and why people believe in them. He went to a Flat Earth convention to ask people why they were believers and how that belief came about. He interviewed 25 people, and 24 of them believed because YouTube’s algorithms force-fed them theories about Flat Earth until, eventually, they became indoctrinated. And the 25th? He was indoctrinated by listening to his son, who had been indoctrinated by watching videos about Flat Earth on YouTube. Once it has you, the algorithm doesn’t let go.
True story: there’s no such theory as “Flat Earth”. There are in fact dozens of competing and contradictory Flat Earth theories and frankly none of them are even half as believable as either Terry Pratchett or The Silmarillion.
The subtitle is inspired by Public Enemy’s “Fear of a Black Planet”.
It's a Queer Old Blog... 
One response to “Eratosthenes would have been so disappointed in you”
[…] However, the find-followers-fast-with-bits-of-sticky-paper trend has most recently been superseded by COVID denial propaganda. Some of this seems to be organised in that it has less spelling mistakes than the more home-brew efforts, and when I say ‘organised’ you should know that I’m pulling my most dismissive face, which admittedly is very much like all my other faces except I tell you that I’m pulling it (I’m fascinated by conspiracy theories, and the more unbelievable the better. See also: “Eratosthenes would have been so disappointed in you”). […]
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