New Zealand Today – Flat Earth “The truth is more important than my life.” – YouTube
Seriously horrific. I know you went into this a bit earlier. For those who don’t know what is New Zealand Today?
It’s a show in New Zealand where I travel around as a fake journalist and interview people about stories that aren’t proper news stories, but they are stories that I am passionate about. So, our most famous stories are going to a woman who organised a New Zealand Flat Earth Convention. We interviewed a Mongrel Mob member, which is a very famous gang in New Zealand, who is running a healthy eating Facebook page. Which is ironic as the Mongrel Mob is known for selling hard drugs and it’s like if they wanted to help the community be healthier, they would probably just stop selling hard drugs instead of having a healthy eating Facebook page. But his heart was in the right place but that’s the main thing. So that’s what it’s kind of about.
I would love to film some in Australia because I feel like Australia has a lot of similar hilarious people. People often characterise the show as going to small towns and laughing at people. Which I don’t like because I reckon, we make small towns look better than they are often, and I like to think we find the humanity in people. This is probably me reading into my own thing with probably meaning that isn’t there. I think that the internet is fucking us so badly because it shows the worst of humanity and the worst of people, and I interview unusual people that have weird beliefs and kind of humanise them. I have been criticised for that. I generally think that everyone has humanity. I think everyone I have interviewed, even people that have despicable beliefs are often good people who are just misguided or brainwashed or troubled and that’s what I think is the crux of the show. Occasionally we laugh at people, but I like to think we are laughing with people and showing that life should be fun.
Except at the flat earth convention, right?
Nah, I like everyone who I met at the flat earth convention. I think they’re all generally good. Some of the Americans who make money off it, I think are grifters and they really piss me off. I love the lady we spoke to Adrienne. We’ve actually spoken to her multiple times, and we always have a great time when we are together. She is just a lovely lady who has been on the internet for too long. We interviewed her for two hours, one of my longest ever interviews cut down to four minutes.
That would’ve been so hard to cut down.
Yeah, it was brutal. We got to a moment where we stopped, and she was like ‘I can prove to you the earth is flat right now’. I was like perfect, this is great. She said, ‘let’s go outside and prove it right now’. We go outside and she’s pissed off and I found it so funny because of course it’s going to be ‘damn it’ and I asked, ‘what’s wrong’ and she’s like ‘the clouds are out’. I was like we can wait for hours for the clouds to move if you’re going to have some big revelation, it was very convenient she couldn’t prove her theory that day because the clouds are out. I had to say, ‘Adrienne I’ve spoken to you for hours and I’m finding you very hard to believe when every leading scientist in the world is telling me this thing and you’re telling me this complete opposite thing I can’t believe you’ and she just said, ‘why can’t you believe me I want to be believed’. It was almost like a plea; she was almost crying when she said that. I thought it was such a touching moment, I developed my home swung theory I’m not sure if I’ve read it on the internet since society really alienates people, the world is cold in modern society with cuts to benefits and stuff like that, if you’re not successful or can hold down a job or are doing a job that isn’t respected, or if something happens and you can be kicked out and be out on the street really easily and a lot of people can just quickly become ‘losers’. As Donald Trump says and completely alienated from society. Conspiracy theories offer this amazing gateway to not being a loser anymore. You go from being someone who isn’t particularly welcome in normal society to being a leader in the flat earth scene. What I love about Adrienne she is very capable and organised a whole convention about flat earth, which is a huge win when you think about it. She got the world’s leading experts on flat earth and yeah, they are people I think are idiots, fucking idiots, but she did that. It’s not easy to organise and it’s quite an amazing achievement. That’s when I could understand it a bit more. Like, yeah there are a lot of abhorrent things about that theory and also the run-on theories that those people believe, and I hope that Adrienne doesn’t believe all those, but I do understand the community aspect.
