I just watched a debate between two professionals Apex Legends players on whether the earth is flat or not and I feel like my brain is about to pop out of my ears.
On April 10, two apex Pros livestreamed a friendly discussion about the shape of the planet we live on. Esteban “NanoFRYS” Gomez, a player at Counter Logic Gaming, took the flat-earth viewpoint, while Will “TeQ” Starck, currently at FURIA Esports, boldly championed the round-earth theory. The two were there for almost two hours, which impressed me incredibly. If I had to debate a flat earther, I’m pretty sure I would have collapsed a lot sooner.
It all started when Starck tweeted, “Are any flat earthers following me?” and someone tagged Gomez in the replies. Starck tells igamesnews that he thought taking their convo to Twitch would be good content given his background. You see, in addition to the job apex Player, Starck is also an aerospace engineer at MIT.
At first I thought maybe that Twitch Debate what emerged between the two was a bit, and that Gomez was just pretending to believe in a flat earth. But Starck believed Gomez was sincere. At times, the stream would get emotionally heated and participants would chatter to get the last word. Starck tells igamesnews that “I knew there would be no convincing nano with real facts and math [and] Physics.” Gomez confirmed this igamesnews that they both genuinely espoused their respective Earth theories.
During the debate, Gomez stated that he was “exposed to government lies and corruption from a young age.” While he once believed in the existing science that tells us our planet is round, a two-hour documentary he watched when he was 18 converted him to a belief in a flat earth.
Starck tried to cast doubt on his opponent by asking why he found these documentaries more compelling than aerospace engineers with years of academic experience. Gomez countered with the idea that space doesn’t exist.
Some of the conversations were really painful. Gomez stated that he didn’t believe in other planets and proposed the theory that the moon is a light within the atmosphere (making it impossible for astronauts to actually land on it). However, he went too far when he claimed that gravity was an unproven theory.
Starck became very animated when he tried to explain that the trajectory of a falling object on Earth would be different than on the Moon due to gravitational differences. Unfortunately, his science-based argument proved useless in the debate, as Gomez replied that humans had never walked on the moon.
Eventually Gomez ran out of patience for this nonsense of Euclidean geometry and he said:
“This theory [of a round Earth] only works when the sun is thousands of light years away and there is space. So you don’t prove anything to me. Because the sun is local. And it’s not that far and not that big. So this theory doesn’t work. You can’t prove the sun is as far as you say.”
In the end both apex Players agreed to disagree. Starck tweeted that Gomez was “a great guy” and didn’t deserve hatred for his beliefs. Gomez too asked his followers to respect those who believe that the earth is round.
