Very true, flat Earth belief has been around much longer. This is in countless historical documents. They have had thousands of years thinking the world was flat. Once they started actually looking at things from a larger perspective, and using science and math, they realized it was in fact not flat. Interestingly enough, one Greek scientist did measurements to determine what the circumference of the Earth was, then modern flat Earthers decided to use the same experimental results that was intended for determining the circumference to say that it proved a flat Earth if the sun were much smaller and much closer to Earth.
So they took results from an experiment and used them for completely different purposes than what the experiment was designed for. This BTW is their biggest piece of scientific evidence. They can claim Rowbotham all they want, but Rowbotham's predictions of the distance from the Sun was drastically different from this one, and his changed throughout the day and seasons.
With all the wealth of historical documents showing where they thought the world was flat, why is it that they crying about unfair standards is not flipped around? Even in the beginning I am sure there was no crying about having to show proof, otherwise they would have never went out and provided it.
So, flat Earth has had several thousands of years to develop something, akin to proof. Spherical Earth has had less than 2 thousand years.
This conspiracy is needed for the flat, dual, concave, square, or any other shape of the Earth than what we see from images from orbit. No amount of BS can disprove that fact either, you have to say that all the photos are in fact fake, that we do not go to space, that we do not have satellites in orbit, that much of science is wrong, that gravity detecting devices showing discrepancies of gravitational force changes due to where you are on the Earth, that geometry is flawed, etc. for any of these to be true.