Blogger: Sophie Wu
I am part of a Facebook group called Flat Earth – No Trolls. The group describes itself as “a place to talk and share research about FE without the hassle of being kicked out by those who have different opinion [sic] with you.” A friend added me as a joke years ago (probably something along the lines of “Sophie, you’ve got to check this out lol”), and I’ve been observing the group with a hefty dose of curiosity ever since.
It is hard not to look at some of the things in the group and laugh:
Images like this are funny to me. Something feels blatantly absurd about everything here – the font choice, the symbolism, the Despicable Me reference. Plenty of other memes populate the news feed of the group, which range from visually explained flat earth theories to conspiratorial in-jokes that I will never understand.
But the bulk of the group’s newsfeed is composed of pictures of the horizon, all captioned with an innocuous “no curvature”. These pictures are from all over the world – in front of lakes and oceans, on massive plains and from the tops of rolling hills. They are sometimes beautiful, but that isn’t the point.
Seeing the world stretching out beyond yourself and feeling like your vision recedes into nothingness – it can really make you feel like you know absolutely nothing about the world, right? But you see what you see: an indisputably straight and horizontal line. Take a picture. Post it on Facebook. What you saw today meant something. No curvature. No doubts. You are no longer small. You are the maker of your own world, and you alone can decide what that meant for yourself. Contributing to the ever-growing pool of “no curvature” photos populating this group is a form of reaffirming the self. These photos get two (maybe three) likes each, and occasionally a comment (the group is only 800 people, and a good chunk of them are probably just like me – observers, not contributors). There are far too many of these photos for any sane person to engage with all of them meaningfully. And anyway, the validation probably comes immediately (I am guessing because I wouldn’t know personally) – you’ve left your mark.
Bridle says that “we’re all looking at the same skies, but we’re seeing different things.” But what happens when we see the same things? I have also never seen the curvature of the earth myself – I probably never will. It’s laughably improbable that we could one day all become astronauts so we could one day finally see the world from afar. I might not believe in flat earth, but I know what it’s like to feel insignificant. I know what it’s like to feel like the world is beyond your grasp – like you’d never be able to fully understand it all.
According to Bridle, you shouldn’t need to “be a plumber to take a shit” – you also shouldn’t have to be an atmospheric scientist to be able to establish that the earth is flat. When reading about the Wikipedia Edit-a-thons hosted in 2015, I thought a lot about what it takes to trust the information you see on the internet. “The language of librarianship—reaching, community, outreach—highlights interconnectedness.” Wikipedia builds itself on openness. It thrives on the idea that our own horizons are horribly limited – that we operate best when we can learn from others and challenge ourselves.
There is surely some interconnectedness in the community of Flat Earth – No Trolls. You see “no curvature”. And then you see that others see “no curvature” as well. You must be part of something bigger than yourself. But it must be so, so lonely to think that your whole world is right in front of you.
Works Cited
James Bridle, “Conspiracy” in New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (London; Brooklyn: Verso, 2018), 187-214.
Siân Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, and Michael Mandiberg, “Editing for Equality: The Outcomes of the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thons,” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 34, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 194-203.
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