FE Meme
Oblate Spheroid With Water in Vacuum?
#188: Calling Earth an oblate spheroid with oceans clinging in vacuum is obviously stupid.
The Meme
Reaction meme: skeptical child face with setup text about oblate spheroid water in vacuum and punchline "Are you stupid or something?"
Why It Spreads
The phrase water clinging in vacuum sounds absurd when stripped of gravity and hydrostatic context. A skeptical child reaction face makes the listener feel clever for scoffing at oblate spheroid wording. The meme targets vocabulary, not any measurement.
What It Gets Wrong
A skeptical-child reaction meme pairing setup text about oblate spheroid oceans in vacuum with "Are you stupid or something?" swaps mockery for mass, gravity, and pressure measurements. Gravity and pressure gradients hold oceans to a massive body; vacuum beside the atmosphere is not the same as vacuum replacing gravitational attraction, and an oblate spheroid differs from a perfect sphere by only about 21 km in equatorial versus polar radius, measured by satellite laser ranging. Oceans follow equipotential geoids shaped by mass and spin, not a magic lid. TestTheGlobe's Down Is The Same Everywhere and TestTheGlobe's Gravity Direction walk through the observations and predictions this image skips.
The Debunk
Oceans sit on gravity equipotentials around an oblate spheroid; hydrostatic balance and a central field hold seas in open space without a dome lid. A skeptical-child reaction meme asking "Are you stupid or something?" about oblate-spheroid water in vacuum is inconsistent with GNSS fixes and downward vectors that converge toward Earth's center. Use TestTheGlobe's Gravity Direction to compare the meme's claim with a measurable prediction.
- TestTheGlobe's Down Is The Same Everywhere: weight vectors converge toward Earth's center on a spheroid, the field that defines hydrostatic level for oceans.
- TestTheGlobe's Gravity Is Not Real addresses denial that tries to remove the attraction holding water to a massive body; without it, both the domed-tank cartoon and flat box fail.
- The image is a reaction meme pairing setup text about oblate spheroid oceans in vacuum with a child's skeptical face; that template swaps mockery for mass, gravity, and pressure measurements.
- TestTheGlobe's Vacuum Next To Atmosphere clarifies open-sky taper beside space is hydrostatics, not water clinging without physics, and TestTheGlobe's Gravity Direction maps how local down tilts across latitude on an oblate body.