Man, I could be wrong but I swear the flat earth started as a joke like the whole "birds aren't real" thing. But it had a more intellectual thought excersizey angle like "tell me why the earth is round". I know for a fact that's how my earth science teacher used it getting into how to structure a testable hypothesis and the scientific method. I wonder everytime I see flat earth shit when exactly he had to retire that one. It's to bad because it was great then.