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Researchers believe they have identified the prime driver for a startling rise in the number of people who think the Earth is flat: Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube.
Their suspicion was raised when they attended the world’s largest gatherings of Flat Earthers at the movement’s annual conference in Rayleigh, North Carolina, in 2017, and then in Denver, Colorado, last year.
Interviews with 30 attendees revealed a pattern in the stories people told about how they came to be convinced that the Earth was not a large round rock spinning through space but a large flat disc doing much the same thing.
Of the 30, all but one said they had not considered the Earth to be flat two years ago but changed their minds after watching videos promoting conspiracy theories on YouTube. “The only person who didn’t say this was there with his daughter and his son-in-law and they had seen it on YouTube and told him about it,” said Asheley Landrum, who led the research at Texas Tech University.
[...] Some said they watched the videos only in order to debunk them but soon found themselves won over by the material.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @11:50PM (2 children)
Flat Earthers are almost as stupid as people who believe that biological sex is malleable.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @12:46AM
Don't blame millennials. Their mothers had them vaccinated and it affected their brains.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday February 19 2019, @08:47PM
I assume you are talking about trans and non-binary people. But any one of them will tell you that their gender is not malleable. Their gender is what is it, and it doesn't always match their genitalia.
Let's talk biology for a minute. 99% of the time, the human body forms one cohesive gender. But sometimes you get both sets of junk. Sometimes you get the outer part of a vagina that transforms into a penis at puberty. And sometimes, you get junk that works normally for one gender, but a brain that is set up for another.
The brain is gendered, and it does not always match the rest of the body.
It's not like biology itself isn't malleable either. You can dramatically change the shape of your body by diet and exercise alone.
You can even change your body with tattoos and piercings, including the "gauge" earrings that permanently stretch out your ear lobes.
This kind of body modification is "transhumanism", or the idea that we can be more than our natural biology. Typically the word is applied to cyberpunk, where fictional people modify their bodies with technology. But it applies pretty well here. The goal in either case is to assert direct control over one's own biology.
Trans and non-binary people assert three pretty basic things:
Beyond that, I suspect your problem is really with a political idea that has taken hold among LGBTQ advocates: that every person has a right to define how the rest of society relates to them.
This statement should be more controversial than it is. But because of how similar it is to thing #3 above, it tends to be lumped in with "rights of self-determination" instead of the category where it really belongs: "socially-compelled behavior".
I personally don't agree that we have a right to unilaterally compel others to treat us a certain way. But that's not even the most common way that trans and non-binary people get the pronouns that they want.
One common way is by adjusting other people's expectations through appearance and behavior. This dovetails nicely with many trans people's goals for personal expression.
But another common way to get people to treat you the way you want is by being worthy of respect and asking for it based on that respect. In this sense it's similar to insisting on being addressed as "Sir" or "Mr Lastname", with one important difference: the desired title is a lateral move instead of a promotion.
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This has gone way off the rails (the rails being "let's feed the trolls"). Given my apparent failure to reach a satisfying conclusion, I'll end with a discussion prompt: who else believes that every person has a right to define how the rest of society relates to them? How similar is it to the right to not be offended in public spaces? And among those who reject transgenderism on the grounds that "biology is not malleable", is that because you believe biology is 100% consistent when it comes to gender, or because you reject transhumanism as a whole? Does that belief come from faith in the traditional gender binary, or something else?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?