A middle-aged man a couple of seats away leans in to ask the pair what they are doing. Every once in a while they land on a photograph that piques their interest, enter into a brief discussion, and move on. ![]() Behind me, two men in their 20s are scrolling through images of the Earth taken from space. I’d arrived an hour earlier and found a chair six or seven rows back from the stage. I’m in central Birmingham, at the UK’s first Flat Earth convention, a weekend of lectures and workshops designed to provide believers with opportunities to engage with others who subscribe to the same hypothesis: that the Earth is not a globe, as most of us think, but some kind of plane, with edges. Few are able to explain why a conspiracy might exist, why scientists might go to such great lengths to create false evidence. “And I’m a Flat Earther.” Other audience members offer similar anecdotes: epiphanies, followed by a complete rebuttal of their previous beliefs. A 40-something woman approaches the stage. The woman who asks another, “If they’ve lied about this, what else are they lying about?” The various conversations peter out as the open-mic session gets under way. The man at the bar chastising an acquaintance for holding on to the science he was taught at school. ![]() The clique in the corner discussing the moon landings. ![]() Middle managers on a staff team-building exercise, perhaps. To the casual observer, there is nothing remarkable about the crowd gathered in a convention room at a central Birmingham hotel.
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