I think your wife’s case was actually significantly different from “flat earthers”, as a community. There’s ignorance, which can be corrected with knowledge and information and reasoning, and there’s willful defiance, which cannot. The very fact that she was freaked out and had a crisis, which enabled facts to enter her head, demonstrates that.

Flat earthers don’t believe in a flat earth. What they actually believe is that Satan is fighting a war for the minds of people, and education is a tool of satan to lead you away from god. All other nonsense they spew stems from that— they don’t believe the earth is flat because evidence shows it, they find evidence to support the earth being flat because the education system, which they believe to be from Satan, tells you it’s spherical.

And most (but not all) flat earthers have moved on to the next conspiracy that supports their central belief (Satan is fighting a war for your mind) and don’t care much about flat earth anymore. Flat earth was never the point, not being swayed by Satan is always the center.

Can’t you swap out DMEM for sports drinks anyway (with the Japanese brand Green Dakara being the best replacement)? That implies DMEM is basically a sports drink itself, if you think about it.

Because “mafia wars” makes consistent money, and the games people actually might want to play don’t. Slapping a new coat of paint on the same mechanics over and over again means getting the money maker out there to more people, just gotta lure em in with the promise of a game they might actually want to play, then swap in the game they don’t and hope you snag em with the psychological tricks before they leave.

It works just often enough to make it profitable and easy.