16 Flat Earthers who returned to sanity

I don't know if the couple in the first photo are flat-earthers or just t-shirt models, they're not the subject of this post, only the claim on their shirts is.
 
You frequently see things on forums like "once you go flat, you never go back" ...

.. so even one counterexample refutes that.  One often sees responses to these counterexamples (for example, in a comment to this post), that these people were never really flat Earthers, but they never post any evidence other than their having left flat Earth, see the No true Scotsman fallacy.  

To save having to look for the details each time someone claims this never happens, I'm putting them here.  

The first two former flat Earthers (FFEs) appeared on the SciManDan Podcast but they also show up again in the FTFE playlist at the bottom of this article.

1. The first is Craig Bryan Pennock, Seek Truth Speak Truth (STST)

I had previously written that his name was  Frank DiLeonardi, but Craig corrected me in a Facebook comment.  Now I'm wondering who Frank is and where I got his name and whether he has anything to do with this at all.

2. And this is Ranty (Flerfspective, this channel isn't available now, I don't know what's going on) who describes himself as a recovering flat Earther.  

3. Here is a video about a FFE who goes by the name "Johnny Orbital"

(not counted) Here's an article, Ex-Flat Earthers share the moment they realised the world is actually round, based on a thread at Reddit.

4-8. Here's a playlist, Interviews with Ex Flat Earthers, by FTFE (Fight The Flat Earth).  In addition to the previously mentioned STST and Ranty, it also has discussions with four more FFEs, Clear Cognition (Adam Doughty), Sean G, Blu, Jose G Gonzalez, and Promethean Kitchen.  Update: since I last looked at this playlist, added short clips if Rachie 00000 (see next paragraph)

9. YouTuber Rachie 00000 is another former flat-earther.  Here's a sample.  

10. This is an interview between Will Duffy from The Final Experiment and Amorel Lerner who used to support Eric Dubay on Patreon and got a tattoo of the Gleason map, but later left FE after Dubay refused to go to Antarctica to see if the sun would set even for free.

In contrast to people who used to really be flat-earthers, Noah Fox Burley (FOXX) was never a flat-earther, but used to pretend to be one.

Here's the Ex-flerfs category at Flerf Wiki.  I suppose I'll have to keep that list in sync with this one.

11. On January 7 2025, not long after returning from The Final Experiment, Jeran Campanella announced on Telegram, "I am no longer a flat earther"  Follow the link for his entire post

12. Nick Havok also was convinced by The Final Experiment

13. YouTuber MellowDome (Austin Thompson) switched sides in 2024 due to sun observations he made himself as well as those from The Final Experiment.  See his post on YouTube and on Facebook.

14. This is a post from Feb 24, 2025 from Robbie Davidson who ran four Flat Earth International Conferences and the YouTube channel @Celebrate Truth

in another post, he said "Once you go flat, you CAN globe back!"

15. Patrica Steere, she's left FE since The Final Experiment but doesn't call herself a glober.  She sent a letter to Mark Sargent, which he didn't read, but sent a copy to Jeran, which he read in this video at 9:40

Mark if you have a minute, I'm having serious issues regarding Flat Earth, I'm going to have to bow out of it. I know I've done this before and probably sound crazy, please don't be mad, let's just remove me from Strange World for good, not for a break.

My reason is that I have doubts about flat earth now. We thought in the past we had science and now it appears we don't. After 10 years there's no actual working model. Joe Hanvey's model is great, he's also a really nice guy, but it relies too much on speculation. There is a 24-hour sun in Antarctica. The AE map is toast. It only works some of the time, that's not good enough, I can't stand behind it anymore.

After looking into this for a while, I don't solidly believe the Earth's flat. I could be wrong of course, I don't want to cause a commotion and create drama, this isn't about me, so I'm not not doing anything but pulling out of being a spokesperson for Flat Earth. I'm not going to be a promoter of the globe or flat now. 

The southern pole system shows the globe. The sun is moving in Antarctica like it would on a globe. In Antarctica the sunspots were in the globe-predicted positions, the sun even moved right to left. These are things formerly that I didn't believe were true. The Antarctica trip showed me otherwise, especially with the 24-hour sun. 

I went over rocket launch video Jeren did February 10th that I sent to you and Chris Van Matre who is a land surveyor and often on Globe Busters Tech and was a good friend of Bob Knodel and Cammy. He is respected in the community and does long distance photography. He measures things for a living. We both can't justify what happened in the video. I'm not saying Chris went globe, I don't know his position on the issue. I haven't forgotten what I've learned about lasers, how we see too far, etc and how water is flat but I think there's some other explanation for that. As I said before I could be wrong. 

So please remove me from your show lineup, I'm not coming back, I've been thinking about this for a while, searching my heart to find a solution to this. All I can find is I was wrong and it's my fault no one else's. That's a decision I have made for myself, and I won't push on I won't push it on any anyone else. I'm going to privatize my old Flat Earth videos on my channel and turn it into something else. I wish to act with integrity. I have changed my opinion based on new information that has been presented. If you want you can say I did a globe flip. I'm okay with that. You can read this on air if you wish, I think it would be a great idea. You can share this with David Weiss or anyone. I'm not a glober I'm still me but with new information. I'm a truth seeker, I don't want to simply believe anymore. I've not been paid threatened or compromised in any way.

Your friend, Patricia Steere

16. Paul on the Plane, who had been inactive for about four years, also recently left flat earth. 

reac

Why and How I Post Gibberish on Debate Forums

Another post in my series of "I am tired of answering this question and wrote this so I can just paste a link to it. 

The why is, I am mocking something.  Very often I will have taken some @*#$*@ nonsense and transformed it into worse nonsense.  To put it another way, if you say something willfully ignorant, I assume that your native language is gibberish am trying to talk to you so you'll understand.

Now to the how.

The simplest method is just to hit keys at random. 

A method that generates texts that almost look meaningful is to use my phone's predictive text and just accept one of the suggested words or emojis at random.  If a phrase emerges from the randomness it may be because my phone has learned to recognize frequent word-pairs, e.g. personal incredulity.

Sometimes I'll copy the text to which I'm responding, paste it, and mangle the words.  I will sometimes free-associate into song lyrics, pick similar-sounding words, any meaning you think you detect is probably apophenia.

And then there are gibberish generators.  Lorem Ipsum generators. general gibberish generators, scientific nonsense generators.  The disassociated-text command in Emacs or websites that do something similar.(these also take the text I'm mocking as input).  Sometimes, if what I'm satirizing is in a language other than English. I'll see if I can find a nonsense generator in that language, here's a recent French one that I used. 

And for when what I'm replying to made overuse of emojis, a Random Emoji Generator

Some new ones: Jabberwocky produces nonsense that looks like isaþsai ve nnåenesoho ytæetuþn wåheau ebalà and The Cut-Up Machine that re-orders words.

Reactions tend to be

• are you drunk/stoned?  (Maybe, but that's not why)
• are you OK? (I'm possibly in better mental health than the person I'm mocking, but feel free to decide for yourself)
• are you schizophrenic? (No, but see the link for apophenia, the term first appeared in a study of early stages of the disorder)
• the shock/wow reaction emoji (I don't know if you're scared or impressed)
• attempting to interpret the gibberish as meaning something (ok ...)
• religious screeds or quotes from scripture (I'm sure you won't be offended if I apply the same procedure to your latest comment)
• Why bother?  (I enjoy it)