Ex-Flat Earthers share the moment they realised the world is actually round

The ‘Flat Earth’ conspiracy theory is so ludicrous that people often take it to be a parody.

It is difficult to take the Flat Earth Society, which peddles the antiquated belief, seriously amid all the jokes about them having members right across the globe. They don’t help themselves, either, when they make claims like there being no Flat Mars Society because “unlike Earth, Mars has been observed to be round”.

But they are quite serious in their claims that the Earth is flat and that NASA images that suggest otherwise have been doctored. Only selected people know the truth, they believe, like the NASA agents who guard the ice wall at the end of the Earth.

Luckily, though, some former flat earthers have managed to extricate themselves from their beliefs. Here’s how they did it.

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Responding to a question posted on Reddit, user Trungus McTungus wrote:

“I have an acquaintance I met in the Navy, who joined specifically so he could see that the Earth was flat while at sea. Every day he would chart the ship’s location, speed, heading, etc so he could make a map of their path. Ultimately, he realised that the path the ship was taking would be impossible if the earth was flat.”

I_literally_can_not wrote:

“I fell in and out of the belief over time until I saw a video of an experiment where one group flew a helicopter far out over the ocean and another group watched it with a powerful telescope as it slowly lowered to the horizon. It disappeared behind the horizon while the helicopter was still a considerable distance from the ground. That ended that phase for me for good.”

EchoBladeMC wrote:

“[My Mum and I] both came to the conclusion that the flat Earth doesn’t adequately explain many of the things we observe on earth.

For example, we know there are two hemispheres of stars that can be observed from the earth, in the northern and southern sky. It's been well-documented throughout history. But if the Earth is flat, wouldn't we see only one hemisphere of stars from any point on the earth?”

Finally, Seaotter_toebeans wrote:

“My husband got trapped in a YouTube black hole of flat earth videos for a while. Drove me up a wall. As of recently I discovered he changed his mind. His reasoning? He discovered the majority of flat earthers are Trumpers with extreme political views. Husband’s flat Earth ideas died that day.”

It turns out that science and common sense is enough to convince some people, at least, to leave their more illogical beliefs behind.

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