The Society of the Larp

It is fascinating, and perhaps a little unsettling, how we piece our identities together—we imitate people we admire, adopt their clothes and mannerisms, and eventually begin to look at their lives as models for our own. As teenagers especially, much of growing up seems to consist of trying on identities before we find the ones that actually fit us.

Derived from LARP, an acronym for “live-action role-playing,” the word larp has taken on the broader meaning of projecting a version of oneself that is not entirely genuine in modern society. To larp is, in essence, to perform as someone you are not. As a personal example, I know countless people who larp philosophy on Instagram, posting quotes from Nietzsche or Camus, cultivating the aesthetic of an intellectual life.

Furthermore, everyone knows of the individual who larps professionally. They are the person who constantly talks about their career, productivity, or “grind.” There is, of course, a subtle elitism underneath all of their remarks—they look down upon us as ignorant. Yet as they ramble about “successfully executing a local optimization task,” what becomes of their identity? They become more tied to the appearance of success than to actually succeeding in producing anything meaningful. Why are we so insistent on being seen as sophisticated, rather than actually being so? Perhaps we flatter ourselves based on our image rather than our essence—a person is seen as more intelligent when posting a picture of themselves in front of a stack of books than playing video games.

Vanity, pretense, and the desire to be perceived as more than we are have existed as long as society itself. Every society has had its own vocabulary for it: the poseur, the phony, the wannabe. But in our current digital ecosystem, social media has transformed the ordinary vanity into larp by amplifying the immediacy of looking to others for models of what is desirable. This results in dissatisfaction arising from the difference between what a person believes they want to achieve and what they actually end up achieving. This gap has widened in the age of modernity. We are constantly exposed to an unprecedented number of curated lives—with the individuals leading them often larping as successful versions of themselves—seeing thousands of apparently successful people every day while doomscrolling. Consequently, faced with this disparity, modern life is one defined by the mask—we increasingly live life not only as ourselves, but as versions of ourselves rehearsing who we might become. As such, we begin to organize our lives around being perceived correctly.

But where does pretending end and becoming begin? The aspiring tennis player who buys an expensive racket before they are able to properly play is playing into an identity they have not yet earned. However, calling this person a fraud mistakenly labels the developing roots of an identity as fake, because by dressing and acting as a tennis player, a person gives themselves the self-confidence to continue playing the game. Why should we be unsupportive of people willing to engage in activities we enjoy? Authenticity is not the absence of imitation, for we are born into a culture of mimesis and learn to seek to be what others desire. As a result, we construct versions of ourselves based on what we see around us. The teenager’s idea of adulthood comes from TikTok; meanwhile, I am currently performing my own conception of what a “writer” is by writing this article. Performance and imitation are unavoidable—perhaps we can neither escape nor ought to escape the stage—but that does not entail larp. Thus, the definition of larp has an additional component separating it from aspiration: the substitution and subversion of reality with theatric appearances.

Yet there is an apparent contradiction that besets all our troubles. The structure of our communities unconsciously reproduces larpers.

First, society creates incentives to cultivate the appearance of desirable qualities. Since we are unable to directly observe someone’s intelligence, discipline, and ambition, we are forced to rely on signals of such traits—confidence, posture, clothing. However, once the signal itself produces some kind of reward, there is an incentive for us—by virtue of our human nature—to pursue the signal independently of the underlying quality. Thus, society encourages us to signal intelligence through appearances rather than actuality. This is seen particularly at Stuyvesant, where larping has become almost inseparable from the culture of achievement. We are often less concerned with being intelligent, ambitious, or successful than with being perceived as such; we transform everything from the resume, the internship, or the obscure book on the desk into props for a performance, to be displayed to colleges and eventually to the world beyond them.

Alternatively, the performative male who larps feminism does not need to read past the acknowledgements to post on Instagram and receive praise. He cracks open a weighty text, skims the opening pages, and calls it a day. Conversely, continuing the example, if it becomes known that he larps feminism, he is derided by a significant portion of society—functioning as a scapegoat. Inevitably, this is an indictment of our bizarre relationship with larp.

But this leaves me with an uncomfortable question: am I larping right now? I am writing an article about people who perform intellectual sophistication, using Nietzsche, Camus, and mimesis to explain my arguments. Perhaps I genuinely think about these things, but I also obviously enjoy the idea of being someone who thinks about these things. I crave the validation that comes when someone thinks of me as an intellectual. At the same time, I genuinely love philosophy and writing. The uncomfortable answer is that these motivations can coexist. I do not think this makes the article itself a larp, but it does make the distinction considerably less clean than I would like.

There is nothing inherently wrong with ambition, vanity, or even wanting to be admired. These may all serve as productive forces of creation, pushing us toward becoming people we genuinely want to be. The problem with larping is a question of what ultimately matters more: the thing itself, or the appearance of having it. But we should remain conscious of whether there is something under the performance. Larping cannot replace the soul.