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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about LARPing destroying my life and my soul.
 
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F1DriverQuidenBerg
Jan 19, 2014

Ghogargi posted:

The issue is, and I think this is why I'm steering gently away from the Crazy Tales, is people regale others with the madness that occurs at LARPs, but nobody addresses how worrisome those things are. It's like telling stories about your friend Blaine who gets trashed every weekend and ends up naked in a fountain or loses his car somewhere downtown. On the surface it's entertaining (and I used to really enjoy breaking out the ol' LARP stories), but no one ever says 'Hey, you know, maybe Blaine's an alcoholic, sounds like he's going off the deep end and really loving himself up'.

I mentioned the girls who whipped off their tops, or blew dudes in a cabin, or traded sex for rides to game. And the mind does boggle on a social level. But after that - what the heck is going on with these girls? Prudery aside, providing oral sex for random people while at a public campsite has to be at least a little indicative of a larger issue, if only being totally unaware the consequences of your actions - gossip, the possible shitstorm if some kid from another campsite wanders in through the unlocked door, the organizers having to do damage control. Coupled with the behaviors, health and attitudes I saw every game night, there is no doubt something was broken. I'm not going to play Armchair Psychologist and pick it apart, but there were many, many players who needed to get some real help, burying themselves in a culture that made them sicker. I look back, and there's a lot of guilt that I didn't try to help them, especially the ones I considered friends. When I left the global club because of how rotten it was, I never contacted the players I liked and said 'That is a bad, bad place for you. Please think about leaving'.

Have you ever seen the documentary DARKON? I'm pretty sure its about what others are referring to as boffer LARPing in this thread but it really gets at the heart of what you're talking about : Something is fundamentally wrong with these people's lives and rather then trying to fix it they're putting a bandaid over the problem with this fantasy escapism that takes over their life while it falls apart.

I've always been fascinated with this kind of stuff because it lines up perfectly with Sayre's Law, ultimately what was supposed to be a lighthearted way to blow off some steam with friends morphs into this huge melodrama that engulfs the person's life often with little to show with it by the end.

* # ¿ Aug 12, 2015 03:55
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# ¿ May 17, 2024 00:26
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F1DriverQuidenBerg
Jan 19, 2014

GWBBQ posted:

This is exactly it. The whole thing would probably be fun if not for the die-hard LARPers.

To be fair to the nerds I think the lifer thing applies to any sort of pseudo-competitive make it up as you go along activity.

I got really into racing in university and ended up scrapping together enough money to buy a mildly sporty rusted out 30 year old hatchback to take to autocross. I met alot of cool people there but almost all of them were out for only a few events a year. I ended up leaving last year fuming that it was basically a club of 5 or 6 high up guys in the club with deep pockets bending the rules as they want, doing favors for each other and looking the other way at infractions.

The parallels between autocross lifers and LARP lifers minus sexual deviancy are pretty frightening, it was the exact same issue described in this thread. Newcomers don't know poo poo, casuals don't give a poo poo and the lifers take advantage of that. I'm sure there are plenty of activities like that, it usually just doesn't involves a cat elf giving blowjobs in a backwoods cabin to a bunch of fat nerds.

* # ¿ Aug 13, 2015 05:12
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about LARPing destroying my life and my soul.