This is absolutely genuine. I know a person who is a good birder and bird photographer. Indeed, some of his photos you may well have seen. He is also a member of the flat earth society, and, when talking to him once on a sea watch, he actually told me that if the earth actually was curving away from us, how come the oceans didn't actually drain away from the land we were standing on through the force of gravity? I was so astonished by this question that I simply went on counting the kittiwakes and auks that were passing, realising that anything I might have said would have gone so far over his head that it might well have rebounded off the sun.