Shaq Trolls Fans, Claims the Earth Is Flat

Basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal added himself to the growing list of celebrities who choose to use their public platform to promote ignorance — or at least to mess with people’s heads for a little while.

Specifically, Shaq decided to throw his weight behind perhaps the easiest-to-disprove conspiracy theory out there: that the Earth is flat.

In a recent podcast, Shaq was asked about basketball player Kyrie Irving’s comments that the Earth is flat — and “revealed” himself to be a Flat Earther as well. “It’s true. The Earth is flat.”

Keeping a straight face as he said it, Shaq, 45 — who played for six different teams during his distinguished 19-year NBA career — suggested people had been manipulated into believing the Earth was round. “I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it’s flat to me,” he said during the podcast.

He continued: “China is under us? It’s not.”

After receiving numerous media headlines about his comments, Shaq revealed the statements to be an elaborate joke: He was trolling people.

“The first part of the theory is, I’m joking, you idiots. That’s the first part of the theory,” he told “The Art of Charm” podcast. “The second part is, I said jokingly that when I’m in my bus and I drive from Florida to California, which I do every summer, it seems to be flat. When I’m in my plane, and we’re getting ready to land, and I open up the window, and I’m looking at all the land that we’re flying over, it seems to be flat.”

The damage had been done by then, though. Shaq gave plenty of attention and at least momentary validity to a ridiculous, anti-intellectual conspiracy theory. Worse, there are plenty of other celebrities who actually do believe crazy things like this — which is why Shaq’s original and mind-boggling comments were taken so seriously.

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Rapper Bobby Ray Simmons — more commonly known as B.o.B. — found himself outmatched in a Twitter feud last year about the shape of the planet with astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

“The cities in the background are approx. 16 miles apart … where is the curve? please explain this,” the rapper posted to Twitter in just one of a series of tweets questioning the roundness of the Earth.

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DeGrasse Tyson went on “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” and even took part in a rap song released by his nephew to respond to the questions of B.o.B.

“The Earth looks flat because: One, you’re not far enough away at your size. Two, your size isn’t large enough relative to Earth to notice any curvature at all. It’s a fundamental fact of calculus and non-Euclidean geometry — small sections of large curved surfaces will always look flat to little creatures that crawl upon it,” Tyson said during his bit on “The Nightly Show.”

Seems more plausible than someone using the logic some people used five centuries ago to argue that we live on a pancake.

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Unfortunately, B.o.B. is not the only high-profile celebrity who seem to be on a mission of outright war with common sense.

Jesse Ventura, who now basically makes a living by promoting conspiracy theories and suing the widows of fallen heroes like Chris Kyle, was given a whole hour of television to promote the belief that there is a machine in Alaska that allows the government to control the weather.

On an episode of “Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura,” the ex-governor and wrestler dug into the HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) and claimed it was possibly a system that could help the government control weather and the minds of citizens.

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“Conspiracy Theory” played a little bit like a parody show that Seth Rogen or Jonah Hill would have made to poke fun at conspiracy theories at one point. Instead, it’s a deadly serious take on some of the most ludicrous things you’ve ever heard, all hosted by Ventura. While HAARP may be closer to an “X-Files” episode than reality, Ventura certainly does know how to entertain with his lunacy sometimes.

Kanye West is known for doing anything but rapping when he takes the stage these days. Mixed in with some of his wild ramblings has been the theory that the government was actually responsible for creating AIDS.

In the song “Heard ‘Em Say,” West famously let out the lyric, “And I know the government administered AIDS / So I guess we just pray like the minister say.”

West also said at the 2005 Live 8 AIDS awareness tour that the disease was “man-made” and that it was “placed in Africa just like crack was placed in the black community to break up the Black Panthers.”

Well, OK, then. Don’t ever say it’s boring to be a celebrity.