Kyrie Irving: I got flat-Earth theory from Instagram videos – CNET

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that’s taken over our lives.


Boston Celtics v New York Knicks

A little too influenced by the internet?

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It was an admission as stunning as the lucky shot against the Golden State Warriors that gave the Cleveland Cavaliers the NBA championship in 2016. (Disclosure: Warriors fan.)

When Kyrie Irving said last year that the Earth is flat, many wanted him to alter his horizons.

Subsequently, the now-Boston Celtic said this had been a humorous experiment.

But now he has revealed (what one hopes is) the ultimate truth. Appearing on the podcast of fellow pro J.J. Redick of the Philadelphia 76ers, Irving told a story of typical internet behavior.

Beginning at the 1:45 mark of the clip, he explained: “When I said it, though, I had been watching a bunch of Instagram videos. Meaning, like, I had these specific pages on Instagram that were, like, ‘The truth! Given to you,’ and videos like ‘This is the flat Earth’ and ‘the horizon evens out only on a flat Earth.'”

Look, I’ve watched Instagram videos that showed friends of mine with long, bunnylike ears and large pink eyebrows, but I didn’t think they’d been subjected to a sudden scientific experiment.

Why would Irving immediately spout what he’d seen in some possibly crackpot video? Because that’s what people do, perhaps?

“I didn’t do as much research as I had [to do] in order to say something like that, because I was just ready to blurt it out,” he said.

What makes one ready to blurt things out? For some, it’s an excess of alcohol or drugs. For others, it seems, it’s an excess of Instagram videos.

Irving attempted to justify his instincts by again saying that his ultimate intention was to get others to think.

“When you start thinking about it, it’s just, like, the actual intent behind it was just, like, ‘Do your own research,'” he said.

I will, I will. 

This wasn’t, though, the end of the scientific discussion. Redick said (around the 4:15 mark) that — “I know I’m wrong on this” — he isn’t entirely convinced dinosaurs existed.

He finds weird websites on his Google searches, he said. They say no one even uttered the word “dinosaur” until the 19th century and that only then did people start finding fossils. 

Moreover, when he took his 3-year-old son to a natural history museum, he realized no complete dinosaur fossil had ever been found. So how can anyone know what a dinosaur looked like?

(Of course, a five-minute web search reveals that rather complete dino fossils do seem to have been unearthed, and that dino bones appear to have cropped up before the class of creatures was named.)

Irving apparently believes that being on the web and finding pages devoted to conspiracy theories makes him question things.

And as far as Redick is concerned, the internet makes him think. 

Somewhere in Russia, a nerd giggles at the gullibility of human beings.

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