My current favorite implication of flat earth conspiracy theories... well, first of all, if you believe in flat earth, then satellites are fake. Because orbital mechanics depend on a curved planet and gravity, two things they don't believe in.

And everybody involved in anything having to do with space has to be in on it, or their own research would immediately disprove space exploration and the globe model and they'd be talking to everybody about flat earth.

Which means that if you simultaneously believe in flat earth AND pay any attention to astronomy, this means the whole scientific community is roleplaying a beef with Elon Musk and his Starlink internet satellites screwing up their view of the nightsky.

I honestly love the implications of "satellites don't exist". For instance: it means a satphone is actually a magic device that can fit a transceiver powerful enough to reach anywhere on earth in a phone. Cell towers are pointless.

If there are no satellites in orbit around the earth, then everybody who gets satellite TV or internet has to get their dish pointed in an arbitrary angle and direction before it will work, for no reason. The box is just checking to see if they went through the motions.

Satellite radio is just magic that can reach you at any point in the continent, unless you're in a tunnel or parking garage or what have you. They can broadcast to a whole continent somehow that is definitely not from outer space but you need line of sight to the sky.

GPS? I don't know how they think GPS works without satellites, if they think about it at all (and I think "they don't think about it" is the real answer on most of these.) We've just got beacons scattered all over the globe, including the ocean, I guess.

I know some flat earthers believe that satellites really are "up there", but they're just... up there. Just like hanging out there forever, perpetual motion machines.

"Water just does that sometimes." https://twitter.com/theHobieT/status/1325070527401226243

I think this is actually key to the flat earth mindset: they don't assume natural forces or observable phenomenon need explanation. It's weird to them that scientists look at tides and go, "Wonder what makes that happen." https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1325071568733605891

Bill O'Reilly, who is not to my knowledge a literal flat earther, once mused on his show about how tides come in and go out on schedule every day, twice a day, and "no one can explain it". To him, it was just a thing that happened.

Humans as early as the 300s BC were noticing and recording the relationship between the moon and the tide. I would imagine that this knowledge predated writing in some places at least, simply because it was observable.

But flat earthers don't like to think about what observations mean, because once you get past "from where I am standing the earth appears to be a flat plane extending in every direction" their whole deal kind of falls apart.

So to them, the tides rise and fall because that's what tides do. What tides are is what they do, and they do it because that's what they are.

You can explain to them that the gravity of the moon is acting on the individual molecules of the water at all times, which in the aggregate add up to a higher or lower ocean level, and their response is, "Oh, I guess you've never heard of a ~tide~. It just does that."