Rapper B.o.B. Thinks The Earth Is Flat, Engages Neil deGrasse Tyson In Twitter Beef Over It.

#1

One may never be able to listen to B.o.B.'s hit collaboration with Rivers Cuomo, 'Magic,' the same way after learning that the Georgia-born hip hop artist legitimately thinks that the world is flat and there's a conspiracy to cover it up. He may actually think he has the magic with him as well, and that everything he touches turns to gold. In any case, he tweeted a lot of stupid stuff.

#2

"The cities in the background are approx. 16miles apart... where is the curve ? please explain this"

#3

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident of Internet idiocy: so-called 'Flat Earth Truthers' are a thing online, and include such illustrious supporters as one-time reality star and sometimes-Hitler-praiser Tila Tequila.

#4

The movement has picked up steam in the past decade, because the Internet provides a safe haven for stupid the way a damp, dark basement provides a haven for mold.

#5

Here's one that debunks itself, not that that matters to anyone who's this far gone. If the planet was actually flat, stars in a timelapse photo would still rotate if the disc was spinning. (But if you have a disc, why even spin it? Seems like a pain in the butt for the giant turtles the disc is resting on). But they would rotate directly overhead like a big vinyl player. Instead, we see stars spinning around an off-center point that's different depending on where you are. That's because the Earth spins on an axis. The center of the rotation is always above the North or South poles, depending on which hemisphere you're standing in.

#6

But if the Earth is a disc, and all these gullible humans are flying around on planes, surely someone has gotten too close to the edge. How could this be a secret?

#7

At this point, B.o.B. (real name Bobby Ray Simmons, Jr.) just started tweeting out screenshots from other Flat Earthers' theories:

#8

Yeah, OK, no. If you stood on a tall structure on a Flat Earth, you'd see the whole goddamn thing. Because it would be flat. Maybe the horizon would get blurry at some point from the atmosphere (which would be concentrated in the middle of the disc near the center of gravity, not evenly distributed, or it would fly off into space as the disc rotates ugh), but ugh.

#9

Actually you literally can't see the base of the mountain in that picture. You arrggghhhh.

#10

Fortunately, this one was stupid enough to attract the attention of the Internet's Greatest Spoilsport, Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson. Please, please Prof. Tyson, take over:

#11

In fact, Prof. Tyson responded to a few tweets (today, after last night's tweet storm) in an effort to keep more Internet dwellers from falling off the edge of reality. He was remarkably polite about it, considering.

#12

By the end, however, B.o.B. was not content to keep his misconceptions grounded on Earth. He decided to close with a grab-bag of the web's favorite dumbs:

#13

Then, unwilling to admit defeat, B.O.B. let loose a song called Flatline (get it? because it's flat... like the Earth) that features an out-of-context chunk of Tyson discussing the formation of the Earth.

#14

And just to make sure you didn't miss a thing, here are the lyrics in full, according to Genius.com. (As an added bonus, see how many different conspiracies you can count hiding in the lyrics. I found six.):

Verse 1

Yo, you ain't seen my best

Checkmate, ain't a game of chess

Globalists see me as a threat

Free thinking, got the world at my neck

Hah, am I paranoid? Picture Malcolm X

In a room full of pigs, trying not to bust a sweat

Aye, Neil Tyson need to loosen up his vest

They'll probably write that man one hell of a check

Aye, I'm over here on this side of town

Come on over, over, over, over here try to clown

Aye, I never pipe down

If they weren't coming for me then

They definitively coming for me now

I can't even keep my phone charged up

All this shit I'm talking, I should get my

Rappers get off of my dick, get your own bars up

Now the mirror lizard's breath got the clones scared cuz

Woo, use your, use your common sense

Why is NASA department of defense?

They divided up the seas into thirty-three degrees

Feeding kids masonry, bruh, be careful what you read

Hook 1

Flat line, flat line

There's no superior blood line

Flat line, flat line

You got me once but that died, aye

Verse 2

Voice, voice, do I have a voice?

Do I give a fuck? Do I have a choice?

Joint, joint, I roll up a joint

Keep my shooters in the game like I hate to disappoint

I see only good things on the horizon

That's probably why the horizon is always rising

Indoctrinated in a cult called science

And graduated to a club full of liars

Heliocentrism, you were the sixth victim

Fuck you and your team, you could sit on the bench with ‘em

But before you try to curve it, do your research on David Irving

Stalin was way worse than Hitler

That's why the POTUS gotta wear a Kipper

I'm a man first ‘fore an artist

Get a lawyer, look up Doctor Richard [?]

Hook 2

Flat line, flat line

You fooled us for the last time

Flat line, flat line

There's no superior blood line

Interlude: Neil Tyson

So you want to find farthest point from that center. And it turns out sea level from the equator is farther away from the center of the Earth than sea level at the poles. It has nothing to do with global warming and melting of the ice caps

(Why is that?)

Because we...Earth we know it spins, once uh...a day. Yes thank you. Three people know, uh, how long a day lasts here

(Good for row number two, they're off to a great start)

So you, you know when you spin pizza dough it kind of flattens out. It gets wider in the middle...so Earth throughout it's life, Earth, even when it formed, it was spinning. And it got a little wider at the equator that it does at the poles. So it's not actually a sphere, it's oblate, it's officially an oblate spheroid

But not only that, it's slightly wider below the equator than above the equator

(A little chubbier?)

Little chubbier, chubby's a good word, it's like pear-shaped. It turns out the pear-shapedness is a bigger than the height of mount Everest above sea level

Hook 2

Flat line, flat line

You fooled us for the last time

Flat line, flat line

There's no superior blood line

Dead

#15

All in all this just goes to show that some idiots no matter how famous shouldn't be allowed to speak. Isn't right Professor Tyson?

#16

For the record, the circumference of the Earth was first figured out 2200+ years ago by Eratosthenes in ancient Alexandria, Egypt. Eratosthenes measured the angle of the shadow from pillars at noon in cities several hundred miles apart (they were 5000 stadia apart, but the measurement of the 'stadia' unit has been lost to time).