This is a Triumph.

"Clearly, the moon is fake and gay"

"The Moon was created by Islamo-Communists to make Hot Blooded Americans go to sleep!!"

How do they explain seasons, solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, lunar phases, tides, polar nights, polar days, etc?

So, they aren't exactly a monolith, different folks have different ideas. But generally speaking, they beleive all celestial bodies are basically spinning above us. I know they consider the sun to be actually really small and shockingly close to the surface. Generally the idea is the antarctic is the rim of the disk, with a giant ice wall that keeps the oceans in. Gravity is an illusion caused by the Earth constantly accelerating upwards.

The moon is a sticker on the sky which is a big glass dome with holes in it. Or something like that, honestly they're not really very consistent.

I saw an animation once where the sun sort of dipped and peaked above and below the world disc horizon. Total mental gymnastics

Oh it is explained, though, but not consistently. I have heard explanations of that the light refraction makes the sun look lower when it moves away, to a point where its visibility is hidden by the horizon, like a mirrage of the sky. Another explanation is that the surface of the earth isn't flat, but bulges slightly, like a dome, making the sun disappear behind the dome every day. I'm sure there are more explanations as well.

The thing about flat earth theories is that they always have an answer for whatever you throw at them. They are so committed to their idea, that they will invent reasonings on the spot which become more and more convoluted - often in conflict with other parts of their theory.

My favorite part about their map is that, among the many other ways to test the Earth is round, they could just fly from Joburg to Perth or Sydney on a private charter plane, and when the flight time isn't 37 hours, it would only be possible on a globe.

It's called perspective and the vanishing point /s

I've also heard a fucking flat rectangle theory.

But then how do we get delicious cheese ?

Birbs aren't real.

Can’t land on a lie.

I wonder are there flat earthers who are also simultaneously NOT moon landing deniers? Or is that like a prerequisite.

What if the underside of earth had stuff down there?

That's where you get a lot of the real 🤯-tier pseudoscience and pseudohistory.

Dinosaurs and lizard people are down there. Nazis and Communists are down there. Mole people. Atlantis. The Garden of Eden. The sky is the limit.

Yeah, that's how I've seen them describing near-equator orbits more than once. (Back when the entire thing was an internet joke, the models were very funny.)

It's polar orbits they have an issue with.

This is because flat earthers don't understand anything about science or physics or basic common sense and as a result believe the most insane things.

They spend their entire time trying to come up with increasingly convoluted ways that a flat earth could work, rather than just accepting that the simplest explanation is that, in fact, isn't flat. Their explanation for why you can't see mount Everest from the top of any reasonably high hill anywhere else on earth, involves throwing out all scientific thinking back to Aristotle and starting again, don't believe in geometry or infinitely parallel lines.

One thing that gave me a different perspective on this is that conspiracy theorists tend to believe a whole load of conspiracy theories. And the conspiracy theories that people believe follow certain patterns: they can be falsifiable, but not so easily falsifiable you can't come up with some arguments that take real work to debunk. And while they obviously contradict mainstream beliefs, this combination alone is not enough. Basically, someone needs to plant the idea for it to spread: most people aren't deciding for themselves that everyone is lying about the Earth being round, they get it from someone else.

I think all this tells us that it's not really about the facts. There's a cognitive bias at play here which engenders belief in things which enable the believer to feel like they're in on a secret and are therefore one above the common person.

Probably for some of them (e.g. the one making videos). Definitely not all of them.

Believing something wrong is not really a reason to hate someone though. We all have varying degrees of wrong beliefs - if anyone thinks they don't, well ... that's an excellent example.

Do not underestimate a human's ability to delude themselves or, more importantly in this case (in my opinion) buy into being part of a social group. Flat earthers have a pretty active social community going online and some people will absolutely buy into the things they say just to be a part of it. And this isn't some 'I'll just pretend to so they'll talk to me' thing, they will convince themselves they're true believers. The belief in a flat earth is often downwind from the belief in other conspiracies, things that may be pretty benign or just outright true (Tuskegee experiment, MKultra etc), putting Flat Earth on a path from the benign to the deeply harmful, like Pizzagate or raging antisemitism.

In all this, community is extremely important. If a person loses this access to the community, their beliefs may turn somewhat more mainstream. We see this with cults too, though I'm not saying Flat Earthers are a cult by any means.

Anyway, there are Flat Earth books, podcasts, YouTube channels, conferences, you name it. There's a real dedication to showing everyone in the community just how much you bought into the thing. I think approaching this from the standpoint of 'this is a personal failure for the one believer' doesn't provide us with any answers about the 'why' of it all, nor will it necessarily help anyone with leaving such a worldview.

Anyway. My two cents. The best way to make sure someone leaves a cult or a toxic worldview is to allow them to be part of communities that aren't that cult or that worldview. The more insular you force them to be, the more insular they will become. Within reason of course and especially with cults, within what's safe for everyone.

Sorry, long ass post. Tl:dr, they don't necessarily believe the earth is flat, they believe that they believe it because that allows them to join a social group.