FE Meme
South on Every Side of the Map?
#183: Only the north magnetic pole is demonstrated; every direction away from it is south, so east and west are just circles around the north on a flat layout.
The Meme
Circular diagram: globe with centred "N", "SOUTH" labels on all four outer quadrants, compass roses, and red/blue curved arrows marked East/West around the ring.
Why It Spreads
Compass language feels concrete, and pasting SOUTH on all four sides of a classroom globe cartoon implies cartography contradicts itself. The circular east-west arrows look like proof that directions only loop around a northern hub. Viewers skip declination, meridians, and how projections flatten a sphere.
What It Gets Wrong
The circular diagram centring "N" on a small globe sketch and marking "SOUTH" on all four outer quadrants with curved east/west arrows is a flat-layout template, not a field survey. Magnetic north is a wandering field feature; geographic poles are fixed spin-axis points, and on a sphere south means toward the south pole along a meridian while east and west are motion along parallels perpendicular to that meridian. Flat azimuthal diagrams preserve bearing from one pole; they do not rewrite compass behaviour or great-circle navigation on a sphere. TestTheGlobe's Compasses Prove Flat Earth and TestTheGlobe's Map Distortion Explorer walk through the observations and predictions this image skips.
The Debunk
Labeling "SOUTH" on four quadrants of a flat circular diagram does not rewrite compass behaviour or great-circle navigation on a sphere. East and west are azimuth directions along curved paths; weight vectors still converge toward Earth's center globally. Use TestTheGlobe's Map Distortion Explorer to compare the meme's claim with a measurable prediction.
- TestTheGlobe's Compasses Prove Flat Earth: magnetic field lines and map-edge labels are different categories; the meme's ring of SOUTH tags exploits that confusion.
- TestTheGlobe's Map Distortion Does Not Matter shows azimuthal projections can place south labels around a rim on paper while still representing a sphere.
- The circular diagram centres "N" on a small globe sketch and marks "SOUTH" on all four outer quadrants with curved east/west arrows; that is a flat-layout template, not a field survey.
- TestTheGlobe's Down Is The Same Everywhere maps converging weight vectors on a spheroid, and the Map Distortion Explorer demonstrates east and west as great-circle directions, not mere loops around a flat north hub.