Why do most of you come here? From the content, I think it’s for the pretty normal, understandable reasons of wanting to vent, find community and promote understanding around the notion that life has dealt you a terrible hand.Why would a LARPer, claiming to be successful with women, come here? A LARPer can’t get any of those rewards.

Yet it does happen. Every one I’ve personally confirmed has been pretty low-effort though: either a relatively new account, quickly erased after a rapid slew of posts; or a real account with a post-history littered with biographical contradictions to which anyone can point and say “This you?” These guys are acting out a fantasy, the appeal of which doesn’t usually last very long or tend to be executed very well.

But I’ve seen people accused of being LARPers who have years of consistent, effortful contributions to back them up. It's certainly not impossible--and out of the billions of people on the internet, has logically happened here and there--but it is an extraordinary undertaking. Why do you find it easier to believe they’ve been in-character for years than to believe they’re just describing their lives?

It has been suggested to me recently that no one should believe a success story without proof. But we believe failures without proof all the time. One might ask, why would someone pretend to be worse-off than they are? But we’ve already answered that: “for the pretty normal, understandable reasons of wanting to vent, find community and promote understanding around the notion that life has dealt you a terrible hand.” Surely you have seen someone upset exaggerate the reasons for their upsetness before, right?

I think the way this community treats the potential of LARPing is a double-standard built entirely on the extent to which the views of a user align with whatever you already believe. If you think you can refute that point, please be my guest. I only ask that you try to do so sincerely—I don’t want to trade insults or try to defend claims I’ve never made about “5’2” janitor Prajeet and his harem of supermodels” or whatever.