I think it's because it's a true insult to your intelligence. To have been running around for your entire life thinking you are living on a sphere, when in actuality you've been walking across a flat plane... is somewhat unnerving. This is the only conspiracy that made me really stop in my tracks. I've been genuinely contemplating the fact that I am going to have to live my life knowing that the earth is flat. No other conspiracy has hit me this hard.
Flat earthers are also generally associated with stupid people, which forms a subconscious connection - "I'm not stupid, therefore I won't even consider the fact that the earth might be flat."
For what you mentioned about time travel and such, I think those topics are easier to broach (less resistance) because people usually don't have strong opinions on them one way or another. No one is taught to believe "NO! Time travel IS NOT POSSIBLE!" - in fact, mainstream is full of stuff talking about time travel. Whereas they are certainly taught "NO! The earth is a SPHERE, not FLAT!"
The lack of easily-discernible purpose for the flat earth lie is also a big thing that prevents people from looking into it, I think. "Why would NASA lie?" has a clear answer - money. "Why would people lie about a flat earth?" is harder to answer, and the answer makes the uninitiated roll their eyes.
Lastly, flat earth also has a bunch of supporting lies (e.g. gravity) that need to be untangled before the concept can be fully understood.
There may be shills on the forum. But when it comes to flat earth, I think even conspiracy people are skeptical of it because the trickery seems to serve no clear physical purpose.
For example...
Federal reserve? Self-explanatory. Money.
Something like WTC7 could be linked to finances, war, politics, etc.
Even something like NASA could be seen as an institution meant to extract money from the taxpayers or something along those lines.
But flat earth seems to benefit no one. It seems like too big of a con for no apparent purpose.
"Who" it benefits only becomes clear with esoteric knowledge at your disposal. And you cannot simply state esoteric knowledge to the uninitiated; the individual must seek it himself. In my eyes, this is the major roadblock that prevents people from doing research on the topic. (Not counting how difficult it is to find good info on it due to repression and such.)
Just my 2c.
Thanks again.
My friend, your posting efforts made me see the light. I made a short post regarding it here: conspiracies DOT win/p/12i4DNGyjG/forthegenerations-youve-convince/
For anyone curious, this is the best video that summarizes the concepts that I've found: youtube DOT com/watch?v=U_bJYXS9p4A
And this is also good for more in-depth research (I think it's made by the same guy): atlanteanconspiracy DOT com
Not hyperlinking to avoid spam filter. Been lurking on here for months but decided to make an account to share this.
I hadn't seen a good argument either until I started digging. The video I linked to in the first comment I made - youtube DOT com/watch?v=U_bJYXS9p4A - will do a much better job explaining the grand theory than I possibly can. If you're genuinely interested, check it out.
In case you need a push, I will leave you with a thought that may pique your curiosity:
The initial thing that got me interested was curvature math. You can go to sea level on Google Earth right now and see things in the distance that should not mathematically possible if the earth is shaped as it is said to be shaped. These things should be hidden behind the horizon. Period. Full stop. I'm not talking about lighthouses - I'm talking about islands and such. They should be hidden from view. These are simple calculations that anyone can make - and test for themselves. Countless examples of this phenomenon exist.
This doesn't prove the earth is flat, necessarily - but it does prove that the estimates of the circumference of the so-called sphere are faulty at the very least. Like I said in the OP, I don't pretend to have the full picture, but things like this cannot be ignored.
Also: How have we "proven" that gravity makes large objects become round over time? I'm not aware of any such experiments that we have conducted that have proven that. You mention the provable laws of physics, but I see no such proof in your post. I don't mean to be hostile here, just looking at it from an objective standpoint.