[Bikini Polaris]

I honestly have this (non-scientific) problem that I do not know how to discern "false fes" from "true fes". I have this feeling that an alleged fe could, at any moment and paying no price, reveal himself as someone who was just pretending for other purposes: attention-seekers, marketers, trolls, etc.

Don't get me wrong, the same holds for round earthers. But at least, round earthers all do believe in a single model,  they all conform to all authorities, and each of them proposes a variety of reasons to believe in a round earth. If they lie, they all tell the very same lie, and I can be sure they don't have a second purpose. At worse they're just gullible fellows believing the biggest lie ever.

This isn't true for fes. Each fe has a different story,  different authorities and they seem united only by their denial of a globe earth. If some of them are lying, they say a different lie from others. So someone may falsely push for an ancient belief of a dome, and someone else may falsely push for an infinite plane. In both cases, I feel I cannot in any way understand if they believe in what they're saying or not, since questions like "what did you experiment?", "what exactly is your model?", or "how do you explain xyx?" mainly go unanswered and usually they make those questions look like deceitful. Moreover, many of them try to monetize fe, without feeling the urge to unite with other fes, and this really does not help.

Any thought, approach, tip, or trick will be appreciated

[Pete Svarrior]

It's, uh... interesting to see that the bikini crowd has made their way down here. I hope you intend on behaving better than those you associate with.

As for your question: 99% of the time it's extremely obvious. The other day I saw a bunch of RE'ers on Twitter argue with some guy who claimed to be a Flat Earther and a nationalist. The very first thing you'd see if you visited his profile was a pinned tweet reading "geraffs aren't real".

My best advice, therefore, is to think before you write. There's no panacea, there are trolls in every discussion, and unless you exercise the bare minimum of critical thinking, you're gonna get caught up in the crossfire.

As for the monetisation aspect - while I personally think trying to make money off FE is a big no-no, it does nothing to prove of disprove someone's intentions. There are honest FE'ers who make money through merch, and trolls who don't make any money.

[Bette Davis Eyes]

It's, uh... interesting to see that the bikini crowd has made their way down here. I hope you intend on behaving better than those you associate with.

As for your question: 99% of the time it's extremely obvious. The other day I saw a bunch of RE'ers on Twitter argue with some guy who claimed to be a Flat Earther and a nationalist. The very first thing you'd see if you visited his profile was a pinned tweet reading "geraffs aren't real".

My best advice, therefore, is to think before you write. There's no panacea, there are trolls in every discussion, and unless you exercise the bare minimum of critical thinking, you're gonna get caught up in the crossfire.

As for the monetisation aspect - while I personally think trying to make money off FE is a big no-no, it does nothing to prove of disprove someone's intentions. There are honest FE'ers who make money through merch, and trolls who don't make any money.

Pete-

I recently came to this forum and had never known of the FE movement or belief until about 3 days before that.

Personally it doesn't do much to/for me whether the Earth is flat, round, or rectangular - so initially my interest was peaked because I was curious to learn what people who held this view had read/seen/experienced, etc so that my eyes could be opened to new information and a different way of thinking/seeing.

Then, based on what someone claiming to be an FE'er wrote on another, unrelated site, I had thought maybe this wasn't so much about the earth being flat as it was that a group of people had taken that position as a way to try and get others to question what they thought they "knew" - to help wake them up and open their eyes so to speak.  That was further reinforced by some of the things I read at this site, for example Zeteticism, and the welcoming of other, non FE ideas/theories that challenged unrelated sacred cows.

But that's based on my often faulty interpretation and intuition, and since coming to these forums it's been hard for me to tell someone's alt from a troll that's just trying to be disruptive for no reason.  For example when a response seems to have missed the point of the post completely, is it a troll being disruptive or is it an alt seeing if someone is going to get pulled down a rabbit hole?  Or if a response is almost exaggerated in how one-sided it is, is it a person who doesn't allow for any view but their own or is it an alt holding up a mirror for the original poster so they might see their own close-mindedness?

I'm asking all this because debating or discussing the shape of the Earth, with no other goal beyond that, is very low on my list of priorities.  So if that's the sum of this whole thing then I can move on, though I'll be sad and disappointed it wasn't what I had thought since I had been excited and relieved(?) that after many years I'd found some like-minded people (like minded at a macro, how we see things sense, not like minded in that we all hold the same opinions/beliefs) who were on a similar quest as me.

So if you could let me know I'd appreciate it, because the flipside to me being able to and okay with seeing through the veil, is that sometimes I see things that aren't there, and I have to check in and make sure I'm not "Beautiful Minding" it.

Thanks.

[Bikini Polaris]

It's, uh... interesting to see that the bikini crowd has made their way down here.

I do appreciate the wiki effort. It creates order out of a chaos.

Thanks for the advice, I will pay more attention to "weird details".

[iamcpc]

I do appreciate the wiki effort. It creates order out of a chaos.

Thanks for the advice, I will pay more attention to "weird details".

What you call order out of the chaos others might call bottle necking a way of thinking.

If some of them are lying, they say a different lie from others. So someone may falsely push for an ancient belief of a dome, and someone else may falsely push for an infinite plane. In both cases, I feel I cannot in any way understand if they believe in what they're saying or not, since questions like "what did you experiment?", "what exactly is your model?", or "how do you explain xyx?" mainly go unanswered and usually they make those questions look like deceitful. Moreover, many of them try to monetize fe, without feeling the urge to unite with other fes, and this

 I've learned a lot about many FE models and there are many, many people who believe in a model (without lying) that differs some from the one the Wiki here pushes. If someone comes here and says this is the flat earth model that makes the most sense to me why would you instantly assume they are lying?

If you do research you will understand that the wiki model does a good job at explaining A, B, and C and a very poor job of explaining D, E and F. Because it does so poorly at explaining D, E, and F is why you have alternate models.

One thing the wiki model struggles to explain is why the air does not just fall off the edge. I understand there is an ice wall on the wiki model but there is air up many miles. If there was some sort of dome that held the atmosphere in place that would explain how planes are able to fly. Hence a model with a dome.

Many people have a biblical flat earth model. The dome is VERY common in those models.

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

Here's the same verses in a different translation

"Then God commanded, “Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places”—and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it. He named the dome “Sky.” Evening passed and morning came—that was the second day."



Someone who adheres to a more biblical flat earth model will believe in a dome.

[Tom Bishop]

As a Flat Earth information repository, the Wiki should include information on the popular alternative models, simply because they are popular and people want to learn more about the beliefs. Ideally there would be some sort of patrolled submission or edit process where people can submit to the Wiki editors for review for glaring errors and chicanery. However, at the moment, if you can help to document some of the models in the Projects forum, with some detail, we can start on an alternative models section, and then probably advertise that there are various models.

Most of the Wiki pages on phenomena are pretty model-agnostic, and we wrote them to be that way.

[Bikini Polaris]

If someone comes here and says this is the flat earth model that makes the most sense to me why would you instantly assume they are lying?

I don't assume this, my current method is to understand if they are emotionally involved in that model. I consider that as a good sign. Still, as you point out, some models have so strong limitations that I can't see how someone should believe in them.

Most of the Wiki pages on phenomena are pretty model-agnostic, and we wrote them to be that way.

That's the way to go