#FlatEarth - #2016 Has its First #ConspiracyTheory, Courtesy of #TilaTequila

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What would you guess, without any hints, the above hashtag refers to? Don't overthink it. Yes, you're absolutely right, it's a conspiracy theory that the planet Earth is, in fact, flat, and that we've all been lied to about it for centuries. This isn't actually new to 2016, but it seems like, depressingly, this might be the first time since the 1800s that the idea is actually gaining any ground. This is thanks, in part, to a documentary which reared up on YouTube at the tail end of last year, and partially thanks to Tila Tequila.

.@AngelTilaLove have you ever read a book

— jake (@callmeshitto) January 7, 2016

Don't remember who Tila Tequila is? Lucky you, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to ruin that for you. She was a mildly not very big deal around the time MySpace was still a thing and people were still saying 'dope' without irony. She was hosted A Shot at Love, which was basically The Bachelorette if it was hosted by someone who treated bisexuality like a gimmick and she got kicked off of Celebrity Big Brother for basically being a Nazi. Taking all that into account, it might not be all that surprising that she also thinks we live on a disc.

Why are all the buildings in NYC standing straight up? If earth was round then some of the buildings would have a slight tilt. #FlatEarth

— Tila Tequila (@AngelTilaLove) January 7, 2016

A few days ago, Tequila went on an epic Twitter rant in support of the Flat Earth Truthers, or whatever the hell you call these idiots. She cites that you can't see the curvature of the Earth on the horizon (except you actually can, you just have to be higher up) and questions how planes can stay in the air if the Earth is spinning. That's only where the fun starts though, after that she started talking about how she had died in 2012 and came back as an immortal 'robotoid clone'.

If you were more enlightened then you would understand why I'm already dead but came back in a parallel world as an organic robotoid clone.

— Tila Tequila (@AngelTilaLove) January 8, 2016

Given the timing of the tweets (the middle of the night), my betting is that she stumbled across the video and everything that followed is the result of an increasingly violent knee-jerk. The immortality stuff I just can't account for though, so obviously it must be true. The fact of the matter is, conspiracy theories have been granted a new lease on life by social media and forum culture, no matter how ridiculous/easily disprovable they might be. The age of information has led to a culture of mistrust, where even the most tightly presented scientific evidence can be argued against, simply because it's online. Add to that groups of people who only operate within circles that support their arguments and you have a recipe for a metric ton of country-fried lunacy.

Tequila's tirade (great name for a bar crawl) might win a few more people around to the cause, but you'd be amazing just how much more a film on YouTube can do with the benefit of timing and ostensibly slick presentation. It's much easier than it used to be to make something like well-produced when really it was made in somebody's garage with a pirated copy of aftereffects and that guy down the street who can do a really good impression of Leonard Nimoy. The fact remains though that for every person who actually believes this stuff, there are 1000 more of them who are just in it for the lols. Sorry Tila.

Callum Davies

Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @CallumAtSMF

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