[stack]

One of the pillars of the YouTube FE community died...

Bob Knodel Death And Obituary
Bob Knodel, the co-host of the popular conspiracy theory YouTube channel Globebusters, has died. News of his death spread quickly on social media and websites, leaving fans and loved ones heartbroken and searching for answers.
While the cause of his death remains unknown, many are mourning the loss of a beloved family member and colleague.

[Action80]

Engineer to boot. Very sad.

[Pete Svarrior]

Very unfortunate. Bob has put a lot of work to seek reconciliation between different FE groups. He will be missed.

[Longtitube]

I'm sorry to hear of Bob's sudden passing. My condolences to his family and all who knew him. A sad day.

[stack]

Engineer to boot. Very sad.

I could be wrong, but I think I remember that he was a licensed private pilot too. On the young side, just like that other FE guy who was big in the movement who suddenly died last year. I can't remember his name. Found it, Rob Skiba. He was big in the movement too.

I saw some comment on the Globebusters YT memorial vid that a person was super stoked to meet him at the last Flatoberfest, but s/he said that he wasn't feeling well and wasn't greeting folks. So maybe he was suffering with something for a while. 

[Tom Bishop]

I've never met or spoken to him. But I would tune into Globe Busters on occasion and considered him to be the voice of maturity among that group and generally the Flat Earth YouTube community as a whole.

Bob appeared to be interested in it genuinely for the secular alt-science possibilities rather than proving biblical truth. Of all the Flat Earth proponents, I can count very few who seemed to have a main motivation in exploring the alt-science rather than using it as a tool to re-enforce prior or targeted beliefs. For that, I respected him.

[stack]

I've tuned into Globebusters many times. Never really making it through their marathon hour+ casts, but yeah, totally agree with your assessment. He seemed like the adult in the room a lot of the time and leaned hard into alt-science rather than some of the more supernatural/spiritual stuff. I really appreciated that about him. I think he brought respectability to the movement in the sea of some of the YT FE content from others less learned and usually offered a more reasoned temperament than some of the guests, even more so than his longtime co-host, Jeran.

[markjo]

It seems that Bob was well respected even among RE'ers who disagreed with him.