Flat Earth: The Modern Movement.

The modern flat-Earth movement is not a continuation of medieval cosmology. It is a post-internet phenomenon, rooted in a specific 1950s UK revivalist society, radicalized by a specific wave of YouTube content creators between 2014 and 2018, institutionalized by a specific annual conference beginning in 2017, and pushed — by platform suppression and its own internal dynamics — into a specific set of alternative channels after 2019. Its arguments, its personalities, and its self-understanding have an actual documented history. Researchers argue the history is worth understanding regardless of one's position on the underlying cosmological claim.

Where it started — from Rowbotham to Shenton to the forum

The modern flat-Earth tradition begins in Victorian England with Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816–1884), a self-styled natural philosopher whose 1849 pamphlet and subsequent 1881 book Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe formulated what Rowbotham called the "zetetic method" — direct empirical investigation without reliance on received authority. Rowbotham's most cited experiment was conducted on the Old Bedford Level, a six-mile straight stretch of the Old Bedford River in Cambridgeshire, where he argued that the absence of expected curvature-induced drop between markers demonstrated that the water surface was flat. The experiment was conducted multiple times under varying conditions; results depended on interpretation of atmospheric refraction.

In 1956, Rowbotham's intellectual successor Samuel Shenton — a sign-writer in Dover, United Kingdom — founded the International Flat Earth Research Society as a formal membership organization. Shenton published a newsletter, corresponded extensively with members globally, and responded to early space photography with the argument that the images were either distorted, mistaken, or fabricated. Shenton died in 1971; leadership passed to Charles K. Johnson in Lancaster, California, who ran the society out of his home with his wife Marjory until his death in 2001. Under Johnson the society's membership reportedly peaked at approximately 3,500 paying members. A 1995 fire destroyed most of the society's records.

The modern online-native revival began in 2004, when Daniel Shenton (no relation to Samuel) re-established the Flat Earth Society as an internet forum. The forum has remained continuously active since and functions as the movement's longest-running institutional home. Its membership diverged over time into two roughly-distinguishable camps: a "Flat Earth Society" orthodoxy of ice-wall perimeter and circling sun-and-moon, and a "Flat Earthers" community — generally younger, more YouTube-native, more religiously motivated — that treated the Society itself as compromised or inauthentic. The split became explicit in the 2016–18 period.

The YouTube revival — Sargent, Dubay, and the 2014–18 surge

The movement's explosive phase is specifically and documentable. Between 2014 and 2018, a sequence of YouTube-native content creators produced material that reached audiences of a scale Rowbotham and Shenton could not have contemplated. Mark Sargent, a former video-game industry employee from Whidbey Island, Washington, uploaded the first episode of his "Flat Earth Clues" series in February 2015. The ten-part series presented the argument as a set of short, accessible deductions from observable phenomena — the behavior of commercial airline flight paths, the absence of direct Antarctic flyovers, the apparent missing curvature in long-distance photography — and became, within 18 months, the single most-cited introductory text to the modern movement.

Eric Dubay, an American yoga instructor and independent writer based in Thailand, uploaded "200 Proofs Earth Is Not A Spinning Ball" in 2015. The single long-form video is the most-shared reference in the movement's history. Dubay's later writings extended the argument into adjacent domains — anti-heliocentrism, dietary purism, aspects of political dissent — that made his work polarizing within the movement itself; the Flat Earth International Conference subsequently declined to host him as a speaker.

Other core figures of the period included Jeran Campanella (the YouTuber "Jeranism"), whose Las Vegas-based channel became one of the movement's most active community hubs; Bob Knodel, a former-engineer investigator who ran the "Globebusters" channel and whose gyroscope experiment became the Behind the Curve centerpiece; Patricia Steere, whose "Flat Earth & Other Hot Potatoes" podcast was a key interview platform from 2015 until her 2019 departure; Robbie Davidson, founder of the Flat Earth International Conference; and Rob Skiba (d. 2021), whose Biblical-cosmology framing connected the technological-skepticism strand of the movement to its Christian-literalist strand.

What the theory claims

The modern flat-Earth cosmology is not a single model; it is a family of models with a shared core. The most widely held specific version — associated with Sargent, Dubay, and the majority of the FEIC presenters — describes the Earth as a flat disc roughly 25,000 miles in diameter, with the magnetic North Pole at its geometric center. The continents are arranged as they appear on the standard azimuthal equidistant projection, which is the logo of the United Nations and forms the graphic basis of most flat-Earth maps. Antarctica is not a continent at the "bottom" of the world but an ice perimeter surrounding the disc, reported by some (including Eric Dubay) as a wall approximately 150 feet high.

The sun and the moon are described as bodies approximately 32 miles in diameter, orbiting at an altitude of approximately 3,000 miles above the disc. They move in circular paths, contracting toward the center during Northern Hemisphere summer and expanding during winter, producing the observed seasonal patterns. Sunlight is held to be localized — more of a spotlight than a diffuse illumination — which is argued to explain why the sun illuminates only half the disc at any given time. Stars are described as "luminaries" situated within the "firmament," the solid canopy described in Genesis 1:6–8 that forms the upper boundary of the Earth system.

Gravity as a long-range mass-attraction force is rejected. In its place, most proponents advance "density and buoyancy" — the argument that objects fall because they are denser than the air around them, and rise because they are less dense, with no need to postulate a mutual mass-attractive force. The problem of why all objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum is addressed variously; the problem is generally acknowledged. Electromagnetism and the local behavior of the atmosphere are accepted; the globe-Earth physics of orbital mechanics is rejected.

Space, as conventionally described, is held to be a fabrication. Satellites are proposed to be either high-altitude balloons, ground-based cell-tower triangulation, or (for some proponents) entirely fictional. The International Space Station is argued to be filmed either in a large water tank (for the apparent zero-gravity footage) or by wire suspension. The Apollo program — see our coverage of the moon landing — is rejected on the broader grounds that space travel in the conventional sense is not possible. NASA and adjacent space agencies are held to be participants in a coordinated deception.

The variations

The movement houses several internally distinguishable subsets. The secular technological-skepticism strand, associated with Sargent and most of the original YouTube wave, focuses on alleged inconsistencies in photographic evidence, the absence of direct Antarctic overflight, anomalies in long-range photography, and the unverifiable nature of satellite data. The Biblical-literalist strand, associated with Rob Skiba, Nathan Roberts, and much of the FEIC speaker roster, treats the flat Earth as a scriptural requirement following from Genesis 1's firmament and subsequent references. The geocentric Catholic strand, associated with Robert Sungenis and the film The Principle (2014), holds to a motionless Earth at the center of a rotating universe; it is distinguished from flat-Earth proper by retaining Earth's spherical shape. The Concave Earth (hollow-disc) strand, an older offshoot, reverses the standard flat-Earth model by placing the observable universe on the inside of a concave surface. The hollow-Earth tradition is distinct again.

The evidence: what both sides actually point to

The classical round-Earth evidence — ship masts disappearing over the horizon, the round shadow cast by Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse, the circumpolar behavior of southern-hemisphere constellations, the Coriolis effect in atmospheric and hydrological systems, the Magellan circumnavigation of 1519–22, the Foucault pendulum's 1851 demonstration at the Panthéon in Paris, and the totality of modern satellite and space-flight photography — is acknowledged within the movement but reinterpreted. Ship disappearance is attributed to perspective and optical effect; lunar eclipse shadow is attributed to the geometry of a disc-shaped Earth intersecting a light source of specific geometry; circumpolar constellations are argued to be consistent with a domed firmament; the Coriolis effect is attributed to local atmospheric electromagnetism; circumnavigation is argued to constitute a circle around the disc's center, not a great-circle route around a sphere; the Foucault pendulum is argued to be consistent with the Sungenis-style rotating-cosmos geocentrism; and satellite and space photography are rejected as fabricated.

The movement's own most-cited affirmative evidence includes the Bedford Level experiments of Rowbotham and their 1901 re-performance by Lady Blount that produced similar results; long-distance photography that appears to show landmasses or buildings visible from farther than expected curvature would allow (the most-cited example being the Chicago skyline photographed from the Michigan shoreline at 55+ miles); the consistent level behavior of water as observed on large lakes; the behavior of commercial flight paths (specifically the absence of direct Johannesburg–to–Sydney polar routes, which proponents argue is inconsistent with a spherical Earth); the alleged irregularities in the Apollo record; and the Antarctic Treaty's restrictions on independent verification of the perimeter.

On the Antarctic Treaty specifically: the treaty of December 1, 1959, signed originally by twelve nations and now counting 56 parties, sets aside the continent for peaceful scientific research and prohibits military activity. Private expeditions to Antarctica are permitted under specific conditions; over-flight is largely unrestricted; commercial tourism via cruise ships operates from South America. Flat-Earth proponents argue the treaty's specific restrictions on interior exploration and the absence of direct polar-crossing commercial flights are the mechanisms by which independent verification of the "ice wall" perimeter is prevented. Researchers argue the interpretation rests on which categories of access are emphasized.

Mad Mike Hughes and the costs of self-verification

In February 2014, limousine driver and longtime daredevil Michael "Mad Mike" Hughes of Apple Valley, California, launched himself approximately 1,374 feet above Winkelman, Arizona, in a home-built steam-powered rocket. The attempt was initially framed as daredevil entertainment. By 2017, Hughes had publicly affiliated with the flat-Earth movement and reframed his rocketry as a project of personal verification — the intent being to launch himself progressively higher until he could photograph the shape of the Earth directly. A successful March 24, 2018 launch in Amboy, California reached approximately 1,875 feet.

On February 22, 2020, during a launch attempt near Barstow, California, filmed by the Science Channel series Homemade Astronauts, Hughes's rocket's parachute deployed at launch, prematurely. The rocket reached an apparent altitude of several hundred feet before the parachute failure produced a fatal descent. Hughes was 64. The footage was widely shared and, for a period in late February and March 2020, became among the most-watched flat-Earth-related material on any platform. Hughes's longtime partner Waldo Stakes continued the program briefly after his death. The documentary film Rocketman: Mad Mike's Mission to Prove the Flat Earth was released in 2021.

The connections people make

The flat-Earth movement rarely exists in isolation. The independent-research ecosystem in which it has grown connects the specific cosmological claim to a larger network of alternative-knowledge commitments — not all of them logically entailed by the core claim, but reliably co-occurring in the same audiences.

The space-program skepticism cluster. The most structurally coherent connection is to the broader critique of the human space program, most notably the moon-landing-hoax tradition associated with Bill Kaysing's 1976 self-published We Never Went to the Moon and with Bart Sibrel's more recent A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon (2001). The two arguments are separable — one could hold that Apollo was faked without holding the Earth to be flat, or vice versa — but in practice the two positions correlate strongly in the same audiences. Recent Artemis-program developments and the scrubbed launches of 2022–25 have been cited within the flat-Earth community as confirming the original space-skepticism.

The Biblical-cosmology strand. A substantial fraction of the movement is motivated by a Christian-literalist reading of Genesis and of cosmological references throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The "firmament" (raqia) of Genesis 1:6–8, the "four corners" passages of Isaiah and Revelation, and the Daniel 4:10–11 image of a tree visible to the ends of the earth are taken as literal descriptions of a specific cosmology. Rob Skiba's work before his 2021 death, and the continuing production by Nathan Roberts ("Flat Earth Doctrine") and others, anchor this strand. The Mandela Effect tradition connects with the Biblical-literalist strand through claims that the Bible itself has been altered — "Lion shall lie down with the lamb" becoming "wolf shall dwell with the lamb," and similar.

The broader institutional-distrust cluster. The 2014–18 surge did not occur in isolation. It overlapped with the growth of broader institutional-skepticism audiences — the pharmaceutical critique, the climate-science critique, the mainstream-media critique — and the same content creators who drove the flat-Earth boom often produced adjacent material in those other domains. The 2020–22 COVID period accelerated this cross-cluster interaction. Whether the flat-Earth claim is load-bearing or symbolic within the broader distrust — whether it matters that the Earth is flat, or whether the claim is a signal of willingness to reject institutional authority in general — is the interpretive question often raised by social researchers of the movement.

The Tartaria and alternative-history cluster. A more recent adjacency, developed since roughly 2020, connects flat-Earth audiences to the Tartaria and mudflood alternative-history tradition, which holds that a previous global civilization with advanced (possibly free-energy-based) architecture was erased or buried in the 19th century. The two claims share an underlying structure — that the received history of the world is a deliberate fabrication — without being specifically dependent on each other.

Key voices

• Mark Sargent — Whidbey Island, WA; creator of "Flat Earth Clues" (2015); the movement's most-cited general-audience introducer; featured in Behind the Curve.
• Eric Dubay — author of The Flat Earth Conspiracy (2014) and the video "200 Proofs Earth Is Not A Spinning Ball" (2015); polarizing figure within the movement itself.
• Jeran Campanella ("Jeranism") — Las Vegas-based YouTuber; one of the movement's most active community organizers; featured in Behind the Curve.
• Bob Knodel — "Globebusters" channel; subject of the most-cited experimental scene in Behind the Curve (the ring-laser gyroscope).
• Patricia Steere — host of the "Flat Earth & Other Hot Potatoes" podcast, 2015–19; publicly departed the movement in 2019, citing personal attacks and doxxing from within.
• Robbie Davidson — Kryptoz Media; founder of the Flat Earth International Conference (2017–).
• Rob Skiba (d. 2021) — Biblical-cosmology author; major bridge between the secular and Christian strands of the movement.
• Mike Hughes (d. 2020) — daredevil steam-rocket builder; died in a February 2020 launch attempt near Barstow CA filmed by the Science Channel.
• Robert Sungenis — Catholic geocentrism proponent; producer of The Principle (2014); distinct from flat-Earth proper but adjacent in the cosmological-dissent ecosystem.
• Flat Earth Society (Daniel Shenton et al.) — the 2004 online revival of the 1956 Samuel Shenton society; the movement's longest-running continuous institution.

For connected material, see our coverage of the moon-landing-hoax tradition (the space-skepticism adjacency), hollow-Earth claims (a distinct but related alternative-cosmology tradition), and the Mandela Effect (the alleged alteration of the received record, including Biblical cosmology passages).

The official position

The scientific consensus, held by essentially every national science academy, university astronomy department, and geospatial agency, is that Earth is an oblate spheroid with an equatorial diameter of approximately 12,756 km and a polar diameter of approximately 12,714 km, rotating on its axis once every 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds, and orbiting the Sun at an average distance of approximately 149.6 million km. This is the position of NASA, the European Space Agency, JAXA, the Chinese National Space Administration, the Russian Roscosmos, the International Astronomical Union, the US Geological Survey, and every secular academic institution that has taken a position. National education curricula worldwide teach the spherical-Earth model as established.

Major private actors in space travel — SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Axiom Space, Firefly Aerospace, among others — operate under the spherical-Earth framework and have not publicly acknowledged a flat-Earth alternative as operationally relevant. The 2020–2025 expansion of private crewed spaceflight, including the 2021 Inspiration4 mission, the Polaris Dawn mission of September 2024, and the continuing Dragon flights to the International Space Station, has been cited by flat-Earth proponents as further material for scrutiny, and by the broader scientific community as additional verification of the standard model.

Where it is now

The movement's 2018 peak, measured in YouTube view counts and new-subscriber rates, was not sustained. Platform suppression beginning in January 2019, the departure of Patricia Steere in 2019, Mike Hughes's death in February 2020, and the deaths of Rob Skiba in 2021 and several other figures removed some of the movement's most visible public faces. The FEIC conferences after 2019 have been smaller. Mainstream media coverage has declined.

The movement itself has not disappeared. The Flat Earth Society forum continues. The FEIC continues — Dallas 2023, Denver 2024, with a 2025 edition confirmed. Mark Sargent continues to produce content. The Biblical-literalist strand has grown relative to the secular technological-skepticism strand, as the secular strand lost some of its YouTube-era leadership and audiences migrated toward Rumble, TikTok, and faith-adjacent platforms. A new wave of TikTok-native content creators has joined since 2022, bringing younger audiences into the tradition without the extensive 2014–18 archive behind them. Polling on the question itself varies; a 2018 YouGov US survey found that 16% of 18–24 year-olds were not "completely certain" Earth is round, a figure that has not been consistently replicated in later surveys.

The underlying interpretive question — whether the flat-Earth argument is taken by its proponents as a cosmological claim per se, or as a symbolic claim about institutional authority more broadly — has not resolved. Researchers argue that understanding the movement requires holding both readings simultaneously. As of 2026, the movement is smaller than it was eight years ago, more organized institutionally, more Christian-literalist in its median speaker, and more resistant to platform-algorithm dynamics. The conference still meets. The forum is still up. That is the shape of the case.

Go deeper

Frequently asked questions

What is the flat Earth theory?

The theory holds that Earth is a flat disc with the North Pole at its center, Antarctica forming an "ice wall" perimeter, and the sun and moon (each ~32 miles in diameter in the most-cited model) circling above at approximately 3,000 miles. Gravity is rejected in favor of "density and buoyancy." Space is held to be a fabrication of government space agencies.

Who founded the modern Flat Earth Society?

The International Flat Earth Research Society was founded in 1956 in Dover, UK, by Samuel Shenton (d. 1971). Leadership passed to Charles K. Johnson in California until his death in 2001. The online-native revival began in 2004 under Daniel Shenton (no relation). The forum has remained continuously active.

Why did flat Earth become popular on YouTube around 2014?

The specific anchors were Mark Sargent's "Flat Earth Clues" series (2015), Eric Dubay's "200 Proofs Earth Is Not A Spinning Ball" (2015), and the YouTube recommendation algorithm of that period, which actively promoted long-form alternative-science content. The movement grew near-linearly through 2018, when the algorithm was changed.

What happened in the documentary Behind the Curve?

Daniel J. Clark's 2018 Netflix documentary followed Mark Sargent, Patricia Steere, Bob Knodel, and Jeran Campanella. Its most-cited scene documented Knodel's $20,000 ring-laser gyroscope registering the expected 15-degrees-per-hour drift of Earth's rotation, and his recorded on-camera unwillingness to accept the reading.

Who was Mad Mike Hughes?

Michael "Mad Mike" Hughes (1956–2020), American limousine driver and self-taught steam-rocket builder. Public affiliate of the flat-Earth movement after 2017. Died February 22, 2020 near Barstow CA when his rocket's parachute deployed prematurely at launch, during filming for the Science Channel's Homemade Astronauts.

What is the Flat Earth International Conference?

Annual conference founded 2017 by Robbie Davidson. Held in Raleigh NC (2017), Denver (2018, 2024), Dallas (2023), Edmonton (2022), Cancún (2019), and other locations. Features presentations, vendor booths, and social events. Peaked in 2018–19 attendance; recent editions smaller but more committed.

What Biblical passages do flat-Earth proponents cite?

Most frequently: Isaiah 40:22 ("circle of the earth"), the "four corners" passages (Isaiah 11:12, Revelation 7:1), the firmament (raqia) of Genesis 1:6–8, Daniel 4:10–11, and Matthew 4:8 (an exceeding high mountain showing all the kingdoms). Interpretation as cosmological descriptions is itself disputed among Biblical scholars.

How do flat-Earth proponents explain the Antarctic Treaty?

The 1959 Antarctic Treaty (56 parties) restricts military activity and governs scientific research on the continent. Flat-Earth proponents argue the treaty is the operational mechanism by which independent verification of the "ice wall" perimeter is prevented. Whether the treaty's actual restrictions support this framing is disputed; commercial and private access does exist.

Did YouTube demonetize flat-Earth content?

YouTube announced in January 2019 a recommendation-algorithm change demoting "borderline content" including flat-Earth and similar alternative-science claims. The videos were not removed; they were demoted in the recommendation engine. Prominent creators migrated partially to alternative platforms.

Is the flat Earth movement still active in 2026?

Yes. The FEIC conferences continue. The Flat Earth Society forum remains active. Mark Sargent continues to produce content. TikTok and Rumble have brought younger audiences since 2022. The movement is smaller than its 2018 peak but more institutionally organized, and the Biblical-literalist strand has grown relative to the secular strand.