They almost all say the same thing. "I grew up with the same education you did, believing the Earth was round and gravity was real. I watched some flat earth videos and laughed at how ridiculous they seemed. Then I kept watching, and I stopped laughing. The more I researched their claims and tried to debunk them, the more I realized they were actually right! I'd been brainwashed and lied to by NASA and the government! Now I finally know the truth!"
It's their biggest lie of all. Flat earthers SAY they learned mainstream textbook science in school, but examining what they write and say will quickly show they didn't. Either they didn't go to school, or they weren't paying attention, or they forgot everything they learned (or they went to Hogwarts or Jedi Academy or Professor X's School for the Gifted. But not any school that teaches science as it is in THIS universe).
For many, the poster child for this chicanery is the Reddit celebrity, u/MaraCass. She will brag that not only did she learn science in primary and secondary school, she went to college and graduated Summa Cum Laude.
Even if one ignores the glaring grammatical and logical errors in the passage above, examining her comment and post history casts doubt on these claims.
When I first encountered Mara, I took some screenshots of her comments because I found them amusing. I didn't know if she was serious or not. When I realized she was not a "troll", I occasionally took more screenshots, simply because they were fascinating and might be interesting to examine later.
Even if one ignores the glaring grammatical and logical errors in the passage above, examining her comment and post history casts doubt on these claims.
When I first encountered Mara, I took some screenshots of her comments because I found them amusing. I didn't know if she was serious or not. When I realized she was not a "troll", I occasionally took more screenshots, simply because they were fascinating and might be interesting to examine later.
She once claimed to have taken an astronomy course in college. She remembers looking through different kinds of telescopes, but doesn't remember if she ever looked at any galaxies (unfortunately, I do not have a screenshot of this, and I was unable to find the exact comment). The only other exposure she seems to have had to astronomy is watching the 2014 film "The Principle" (a "documentary" notorious for having been edited to make respected scientists seem to doubt the Copernican Principle).
Longtime Mara followers may recall that as recently as May, 2018 (her Cake Day [the day a person creates a Reddit account] is May 24), Mara knew essentially nothing about physics. It was about that time she wrote the following to a STUDENT:
Notice that last bit. "... I hear that engineering textbooks say ... Do any of your engineering texts have a formula for this?"
And it was at precisely this moment that Mara Cass began her science education. 6 months ago, on Reddit. Not before, and not in school. She'd heard about physics textbooks, but never actually seen one.
There is nothing else written by that user in the thread, but a few days later, Mara was suddenly an expert on classical physics. Or so she claimed.
About two days after asking that crucial question, she began asking "ballers" to "figure out the amount of centripetal force exerted on a huge object spinning at 1000 mph." She repeatedly asserted--and I think she still does--that centripetal force would tear a large, spinning object apart. Not centrifugal, but centripetal. More than once, it was explained to her that centripetal force is directed toward the center of rotation. Mara resisted unbendingly. She stated very clearly, "Centripetal force is the outward force exerted on a spinning object."
Note her statement "Please to check [sic] an engineering text and stop talking nonsense." This is ironic on two levels—first, she (like most flat-earthers) routinely says textbooks are full of lies, and second, the textbook would contradict her, anyway.
When it was explained that centripetal and centrifugal forces are opposite, she accused her challenger of "nitpicking over definitions".
Shortly after that, she demonstrated that she doesn't understand the terms "mass", "weight", and "size."
"HUGE as in MASSive," implying mass is the same thing as size. What's striking is not just that a supposed highly-educated scholar confuses these simple, elementary terms. It's that she refuses to go check to see if she's correct. Finding the definition of "centripetal force"--a basic concept taught in middle school—would only take a few seconds, but she almost seems too afraid to look. Instead, she becomes hostile and begins hurling strange, awkwardly out-of-place insults.
Also, there was the famous incident of Mara claiming to have read Newton's Principia (if you follow the link, Mara's comments are obviously those with the name covered by a red box). She insisted (incorrectly) that Principia was a philosophy book, not a science book, it began with a big "IF" in oversize print, and that it had not a word to say about gravity. Despite insisting that she had read the book and knew all about what it said, she refused to answer even the most basic questions about it (like, "what is it that follows the BIG IF?" To my knowledge, she has yet to answer). Rather than responding to these simple questions, which is easy since the text can be found for free online, she simply changed the subject, chanting, "show me the curve."
Why would she lie about it? Why wouldn't she just say, "I may be mistaken on this point, but I still disagree with you overall." To most people, this would not be hugely damaging to one's ego, but Mara seems to be so afraid of being wrong that she makes more lies to cover for her first one, and finally avoids the question altogether. Amazingly, when this exchange was mentioned later, she claimed it as a victory (this has since become one of her favorite defense mechanisms).
These are just two examples. There are dozens more, of course.
She wrongly explains how magnets and compasses work. If she knows anything about magnets, she didn't learn it in school, because her understanding of them is not what is taught in school.
Like every flat-earther, she uses "buoyancy" to explain why things fall, but gives a strange description of "buoyancy" that is not taught in school or in any textbook. It's not even anything like the definition in Newton's Principia. So whatever she knows about buoyancy, she obviously didn't learn it in school.
She uses terms like "perspective" and "vanishing point," but not in ways that have anything to do with the rules of perspective that are taught in art class, or anywhere else, except flat earth videos. Certainly not in school.
And on and on.
Again, like virtually all flat-earthers, Mara tries time and again to use "what she learned in school" to debunk the ball Earth model, but she nearly always shows that what she learned in school is very different from what everyone else learned in school.
Lately, she has been flaunting her impressive Reddit karma as proof that she is an authority on geography, physics, astronomy, etc. (apparently not knowing that making post after post and comment after comment, 12 hours a day, in popular subreddits [like r/thedonald] will get you lots of karma regardless of the quality of your post. The actual value of karma is unclear, even among longtime Reddit users). She also boasts that she has not lost an argument in 6 months.
On the contrary, the obvious fact (obvious to most observers, anyway) is she has never won an argument, at least not on Reddit. Calling someone a "dumb as fuck dumbfuck" or a "piece of shit" is not a victory. Blocking someone is not a victory. That's a forfeit and an immediate loss (on Reddit, if you look at your account settings, you'll see a list of all the users you have blocked. For Mara, each one of these represents a defeat in a debate, and if added up, I suspect the resulting number is quite high).
If Mara were to read this, she would undoubtedly cry "ad hominem," but of course, that is not what this is. This is not an argument WITH her, it is an examination OF her and her comment history. It's about flaws in her logic and inconsistencies in her claims.
The point of this writing is this: Mara is not a troll. She isn't stupid, either. She's delusional.
According to the Covington Behavioral Health Center, symptoms of delusional disorder include:
-Demonstrations of aggression towards others (especially those associated with the delusional belief)
-Acting in an antagonistic manner, such as filing lawsuits (it's hard to sue someone on Reddit. Reporting and blocking is the closest you can get, and Mara does both excessively)
-Having one or more delusional beliefs (in addition to flat earth and the non-existence of gravity, Mara believes in the illuminati, a Nazi-run NASA, a government that is trying to "hide God", the moon landing hoax, time travel and other "Glitch in the Matrix" phenomena)
-Persecutory delusion (to Mara, every point of disagreement is a personal attack ["ad hominem!"])
-Grandiose delusion (such as the belief that one is smarter than nearly everyone else, "undefeated" in debate, etc. Mara, like most flat-earthers, seems to imagine herself as some sort of underground soldier, fighting in a war against "the Authority" for "the Truth")
-Easily agitated
-Social conflict that results from delusional belief
I would contend that Mara regularly exhibits all of these symptoms to varying degrees. In r/flatearth and other subreddits, there are other flat-earthers who show many of the same symptoms, but few show it as clearly and as often as Mara, who typically posts once or twice a day and comments up to 20 times a day. With so much material to draw from, it seems fairly safe to make certain assumptions about her real-life personality. Other flat-earthers, on other social media platforms, seem to share many of these traits. If one were to make a camparative analyasis, one might be able to learn a great deal about flat-earth delusion and possibly help these people.
I hope Mara Cass remains an active Redditor for a long time. Her extensive work should provide valuable information to anyone studying abnormal psychology.
