Myself and four of the most well-known flat earthers in the world are in the Sherlock Holmes pub in West Edmonton Mall’s Bourbon Street, waiting for a man named Rick Hummer to rejoin us. Everyone is excited for his return as I will be meeting his alter-ego, Rolan Reedy, a “redneck rocket scientist.”

The plan is to have Hummer, as Reddy, sing a flat Earth-inspired rendition of “Brown Eyed Girl” to the pub—something he accomplishes before the night’s end. To pull this off, they apparently make friends with the waitress and talk her into letting them film there.

“They turn you while I was gone?” he asks me, with (what I think is) a faux-Kentucky accent, referring to the group trying to convince me the world isn’t round. He changes topic quickly though and sets off to get footage. He marches intentionally into a door with his camcorder on the end of a selfie stick, filming every action.

Reedy, the group explains to me, is the flat earthers’ secret weapon of sorts—their ticket into the mainstream. He is to be the star of a film that mixes real-life stunts with narrative—think Johnny Knoxville's latest works but with fewer dick jokes and more Neil deGrasse Tyson confrontations. When Hummer shows up a few moments later, he’s in flannel with a wig and headband on. He’s crossing his eyes and wearing fake buck teeth made especially for him.

Flat-smacked, Grant explains to me, is when you drop some flat Earth arguments (aka “flat bombs”) on a normie, and if their face changes from the typical face of scorn and ridicule to curiosity and puzzlement, you’ve flat-smacked them.

My first hint of this comes when I’m getting my media accreditation with a man named Corey who has ridden his motorcycle from Victoria, British Columbia, to this conference. We’re waiting in line together, and once he gets a ticket he becomes visibly giddy.

It’s something I only learn when I first arrive at the Fantasyland Hotel (an apt location if there ever was one) for the two-day International Flat Earth Convention in Edmonton, Alberta. I know there is a set list of speakers who are attending the conference, and some of them have modest-to-large followings on online platforms—mainly YouTube—but I don’t realize at first that they have die-hard, true-blue, flat Earth superfans.

There’s a buzz in the air. Alongside getting to see flat Earth celebrities, people seem just pleased as punch that they get to talk flat Earth without sneers or rolled eyes. Conversations are happening all over. Behind me there is a small group of men chatting about how their wives don’t really like their beliefs. Over in the corner a couple is shit-talking NASA, and in the back a woman with a gaggle of children is working up the courage to speak to her favourite star. All in all, they just seemed happy to be among fellow travellers.

He quickly jets off into the hall to get some facetime with his faves—something you don't expect from a grizzled man in dusty biker gear. I follow my new friend into the hall and notice it’s full—far fuller than one would expect for a flat Earth convention in central Alberta. There are about 200 people sitting at round tables. Most of them are white and middle-aged, but there are a few exceptions. Above us are massive chandeliers. The one above my table won’t stop flickering.

"I came out from Calgary,” a man named James tells me. “I've been looking into this for about a year. It's kind of a lonely road. You're reading blogs, you're watching videos. There's nobody to talk to. Most flat earthers are closet flat earthers because there is a lot of ridicule and condescension."

The mingling slowly dies as people take their seats. The screens in front of the building have a timer that is counting down the minutes until the conference officially opens. It gives the whole scene a bit of an ominous undertone, but it works to build up the crowd into a buzz. For the last ten seconds, you can hear some counting down under their breath. When the counter hits zero, the room goes dark, and a flashy video begins playing.

"It's really cathartic for a lot of people,” Sargent explains to me later in the day. “I've done a whole bunch of meetups in a whole bunch of cities around the States. It kinda feels like a really happy AA meeting. At AA it's usually sad, you get there and you're like [sad inflection] ‘Hey, my name is Mark' but in this case, it's like [happy inflection] 'Hey, my name is Mark, I'm a flat earther!'”

Even though flat bombs are dropping throughout the conference, I’m having a hard time figuring out what—other than Earth is flat—these people believe. The theories of why it is the way it is seem to change with every theorist, speaker, and attendee. Some ideas are accepted by many in the community (the globe is under a dome with the North Pole at the centre and Antarctica's ice surrounding the edges)—some by just a few (God put the planets and stars on the top of the dome as decorations for mankind).

They use similar types of arguments and conduct “experiments” in order to justify and rationalize their beliefs but come to different conclusions. Everyone is lying to us, they tell me, but there isn’t a solid answer of who is everyone—I hear the Illuminati, David Icke–style reptilians, and just good ol’ transnational corporations—and why they’re lying fluctuates as well: money, power, attempting to further us from God. The group preaches that their audience do their own research and come to their own conclusions, which might be the reason for their mishmash of ideas.

One thing I do learn is just how closely tied to religion the movement appears to be.