Larping and the Desire to Fit In

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Larving. A term spawned from losers playing with medieval weaponry has now evolved into the one of the most used terms on the internet. Go into any comment section from Instagram res, YouTube shorts, anything, and you will see the word use. You will see its power and you will see him.

[00:00:22]>> This is a character from Jiu-Jitsu Kaizen that has been dubbed Jane Juliet.

[00:00:26]If you're looking at him and thinking, "Oh, I don't I don't want to get spoiled on JJK." I'm not caught up. I'm not this. I'm not that. It doesn't matter.

[00:00:32]In this video, there will be no spoilers for any anime cuz today we don't even know the spoilers. We're just laring.

[00:00:52]Okay.

[00:00:54]Now, as I mentioned earlier, LARPing started not as a little funny online term, but as a sport, liveaction role playing. As you guessed it, it's a role playing game that is basically just Dungeons and Dragons or D and D.

[00:01:08]Live action. You go, you dress up. You have characters just like D and D. You have dungeon masters called game masters just like D and D. You have uh killing and death in dragons and dungeons just like Dn D. It's basically just D and D in real life. Now, these vary a lot in the scale from like what I would consider laring, which would be like kids playing with lightsabers just in like their backyard, which I think definitely counts, right? But it also goes up to like thousands of people events um in many different ways.

[00:01:43]like the medieval ones where have like actual thousands of people to take over a whole town for them or those like kind of little bit weird Civil War ones that rub you the wrong way. I bet that like why do you want to be a Confederate soldier? Those are light pink, too. So, isn't that great?

[00:02:01]Quick little editor's note. I can almost understand the appeal of the strange Civil War ones after seeing this absolutely tragic scene that's unfolding in front of us. A part of me would love to be in such a a beautiful story as we're watching now. But yeah, back to the video.

[00:02:17]>> I didn't really want to go any deeper than that cuz it's not actually important to what we're talking about, but I did think it was important just to mention the roots of laring. But now we can sort of get more into the the uh the modern day stuff. What is what is laring evolved into? What is the monster it's become?

[00:02:36]Now, if you're like me, the first time you heard the term like me, you thought, "This is just being a poser." Or if you're more chronically online, you thought to yourself, "Wait, this is just being a tourist." Or if you're a diehard military man fed up with the rise of military reservists, you thought to yourself, "This is just being a weekend warrior." Or if you're a 19th century god-fearing man in Tonkan angry at the rise of people who practice your faith just for some food, you thought to yourself, "Wait, this is just being a rise Christian."

[00:03:05]>> Or if you're an 18th century London man sick of the new gen pretty boys and their extravagant styles, stealing everything from the Italians. You thought to yourself, "This is just being a macaroni."

[00:03:14]>> Okay, what I'm trying to get at with all those examples is that this term has always existed in one form or another.

[00:03:21]terms to sort of gatekeep or exclude people from groups or just kind of make fun of people. They've always they've always existed, of course. And while some of these seem a little more specific than our modern day counterpart of laring, which at this point can feel like it can be used for anything, I'd argue that's just because the internet makes us misuse every single term like insanely to absurd amounts.

[00:03:46]You could really go out and use any of these terms in the same exact way as laring and it would work if someone understood what you're talking about.

[00:03:54]The more modern terms, aka the ones that came out like after the 18th century, have pretty much all been used very loosely. A big example is poser. Poser has really, really, really spread from it starting in the smaller like '90s skater community. And I would say even though it hasn't become like an everyday use term for most people, it's it's spread far and wide and beyond what it originally started with. Um, people who have never skated talking about nothing that has to do with skating are using it. Like I've I've heard people use poster to describe those kind of goth women on the internet that make videos basically just showing their titties for those kind of guys.

[00:04:40]And that one makes a lot more sense.

[00:04:42]It's like one goth subculture uh protecting itself through the use of the term from the evildoers. But I've also heard it used to describe people who put Metal Gear Rising gifts in the Discord group chat when they've never been or just make Metal Gear Rising references in general, which to be fair, I'm guilty of. How could you not? How could you not? Look at these bangers.

[00:05:08]Writing crank my hug. crank my more on each of those terms earlier. They were all real. I did not make any of those up. Those are all real things that happened. I'm going to put this ancient ancient Reddit post from my big research about 3 months ago on the screen now.

[00:05:25]Um, showing the original one that I found while writing the script. I couldn't find again. Sorry, this is going to be some [ __ ] but this one's from the Stardust Crusaders, the Jojo's subreddit. were talking about um how they hate using the term warpers and they compare it to when the the higher level chuds were just using the the term tourist to try and exclude people from a community for basically no reason.

[00:05:50]>> We're going to go over each of each of them now. So, I'm going to try and speedrun them. Weekend warrior. This came about during the post World War II era as the one weekend a month, two weeks a year slogan became a big recruiting term for the US National Guard and military reserves, allowing people to swear to be in the military but still hold on to their full-time jobs and their lives. The term weekend warrior came out of this as a term used by the real soldier boys to make fun of these uh hated sandy army men. Rice Christian was a term that came about in the 17th century with his first known appearance being in the writings of William Vivier.

[00:06:23]a famous explorer and pirate in one of his famous writings he was abroad in Tonkan which is modern day Vietnam he said alams of rice have converted more than the preachings when he was talking about the French priests that were invading the country that was the origin of the term but its first real use of the actual word vice versions was by John Henry Gross uh using it to describe people in India who have converted to Christianity for material gain or just you know rice food people who are doing it just to survive not starve >> pathetic I know >> and finally a macaroni one of my my favorites. The term came from young rich British men going to tour all of Europe, mainly Italy, and coming back with taste for macaroni, which at the time was a very fancy type dish. Some would say so is. And these men would come back with, I think most exaggerated cases, big wigs, crazy clothes, >> uh, wild attitude, big rigs, off-road racing. These were some of the earliest larers I could find. Not just laring shows made for children, but whole cultures. So, now that we know the different forms Liiness has taken into our history, let's get down and dirty with the question that started this whole video. What is truly the appeal of laring? Well, after some quick Google searches, I've come to the conclusion that it generally gives you a chance for sustained role play. After googling the right thing, I've come to the conclusion that people just want to be loved. The Google AI says to me to gain social acceptance, boost low self-esteem, or to fit in a group they perceive as cool, which yeah, that tracks. But the question kind of still remains, why don't you just like become a fan? Just get into the fandom if you want to be accepted by the fandom, why don't you just watch the show? Or if it's like skating or whatever, why don't you just >> make it look easy? And for something like skating, I can get it just a little bit more cuz like as a certified double XXL rider myself, it hurts sometimes, you know? So I can get it if you're someone who's like afraid to feel pain, if you're not a m if you don't punch metal for fun. But it's hard to really rationalize in my head for me laring the most common way because it's media and all the media is free.

[00:08:37]It is at this point if we're being serious.

[00:08:40]or it's like $5 a month and you can watch the show in a month and be done.

[00:08:45]But if we're if we're being honest, everyone pirates everything. Your maiden is for this. Everyone pirates everything and everything is free. So why not just watch the show? Well, the real question here, while everything is free in the big 2026, is our time free? Do these leopers have the time to watch through the hundreds of episodes or even worse with the modern day Tik Tok for any attention span surfers. Is it even do they even have the brain to read 300 chapters of manga? In the modern day, I really do believe that the shows you watch is a choice. You can't watch everything. the shows that I love that are currently coming out, I just I can't I can barely even keep up with those nowadays between school and that and this YouTube channel and heavenly written.

[00:09:40]>> But even even the dirtiest, stinkiest, downright disgusting show watchers I know, just the the the best in NA show watchers going crazy at all times, they they can't even keep up anymore, you know? They they they're watching all their shows. They're coming out. They have even more shows. I know dudes that will finish a show in a week or two.

[00:10:01]Like a entire like multiple season anime in a week or two and they still haven't seen Code Guas. Brothers will watch anything. Brothers will watch I turned into a shirt and had to be worn by Quinton Haney for 8 years and they won't watch Code Guas because there's too many shows because it's too enticing to watch. I got turned into a janitor's poop bucket. And that's my big point here is no matter how much you love anime or comics or whatever you're laring.

[00:10:31]No matter how big, no matter how greedy you are, you can't watch everything.

[00:10:36]There's going to be something that you will have to not fit in with or something that you'll have to lar >> because I want to fit in.

[00:10:45]>> And this is my new era, my final form, my laring sympathizer arc.

[00:10:54]I know the last section was all I can't understand laring. I don't understand these dirty little little sexy little larers. But I can understand it because my brothers, I've been there. I've been guilty of the death penalty level crime of laring before. I would say my most downright dirty, egregious, disgusting LAR has got to be Berserk.

[00:11:27]Griffith.

[00:11:31]Okay, don't get me wrong. I've read a good amount of Berserk. I will get any online discourse or any like online meme because I know those guys are lurking too. I know all those meme accounts have only seen up to like right after the eclipse. I've I've read the first like five of the big [ __ ] massive book series that like is soon will go through the bottom floor of my dorm and crash and kill the person under me. I've read like the first five of those, but there's like 10 more. There's like 14 in total and most of them I'm just straight lying, you know? I I think I've read enough to go ahead and say that I'm allowed to have the sad guts profile picture, but like I'm going to be honest, I ain't got no [ __ ] clue who that is. I'll admit it, okay? I have no clue who that is. What I've read is lowkey onethird of the story and I love it. But if someone told me they read onethird of Jojo's, I'd kind of look at him funny. Like what do you mean you love the story but you've only read whatever three parts of the nine of Jojo's or watched three parts? That'd be a little weird, you know. And speaking of barking something and you haven't watched it or read all of it, one time I was hooping in a boy's neighborhood and I saw a guy with a brand of sacrifice, you know, tattoo right here or right here. I'm not sure. I'm larer. But um I went up to him. I was like, "Hey man, I love Berserk."

[00:12:57]or something like that. I was like, "Nice tattoo, you know." And I was like, "Have you read the manga?" And he was like, "No, but I've seen the show." And I was like, and obviously I'm a nice cordial guy. So, I didn't really I didn't want to be like I didn't want to be like a berserker elitist when I've probably only read up to like one book past what the show shows. But, it just made me think a little bit. I was like, damn. And this wasn't one of those guys either who has like a thousand tattoos.

[00:13:24]So like none of them matter or mean anything. This was like he maybe had this in his sleeve. So I was like damn this is pretty this is pretty important to you to put on your neck when you have you don't even know what's actually happened in the story. Like what if Berserk turned like weird or like weirder than it already is. Like you don't know that. Maybe in the 14th book it turns onto like full author fetish porn. You know what I mean? More than it already is. And yeah I'm I'm a I'm a nice guy. I was just like, "Oh, that's so cool. You should read the mug at the stories peak." You know, we started talking about it a little bit and we just went on with our dates. He kept kept flying his [ __ ] >> Oh my goodness. Valentine >> and it's and Berserk is an interesting case because it's not like for example with me with Jojo's. I love it. Favorite piece of media ever. I love Jojo so much. It's been so much of my my life and personality throughout the years and my my style. Look at this. Who? No. No JoJo's character could ever have a fit as fire as this. I haven't actually read all of it. I haven't read parts seven or eight or nine. Uh, and I've only ever watched the anime, the first six. And that's just because for me, Jojo has always felt close, like it's coming soon. I watched the first I watched part five in seventh grade and then part six was coming. It came to me like freshman year of high school, I want to say, or something. So, I was fine. I could do waiting a few years. And now I'm a freshman in college and part seven just is coming out or it better be at least.

[00:14:52]But as part seven is coming out, I'm thinking as soon as I'm done with this, I'm reading part eight because I can't wait another 4 years. I don't want to be like today's actually my birthday. So I'm 19. I don't want to be like 23 watching part eight and then 20 like seven watching part nine and by then I will have sadly died. Berserk isn't something like that, though, where it's coming out soon, and I can at least string on hope. Berserk's not coming out. We all have to all accept that. All of us extreme Berserk fans have to accept that it's never getting an anime adaptation, at least anytime soon, or a good one or a good movie. All the stuff is very mid. The manga is the best thing you can read, and it's the only thing you're going to be able to read to watch for a long time. And as I've been thinking more and more about that, I've thought like honestly the reason I haven't read more than five books of Berserk is because I'm kind of happy where I'm at. The story after the eclipse obviously doesn't get a straight conclusion, but I got spoilers. My boy has read all 14 books. Those were my books that were going to crash through and kill the man under me. That was that was my goat Noah. If you've seen Rough Terrain or any of my other videos, the guy with long hair that's been best friend forever, it's his books. And so I've gotten some spoilers. Like I know the story isn't having a good conclusion right now or like any conclusion. The author has passed away and passed it on to his best friend I believe. And while that's dope, that's cool. I just can't see the story having a good conclusion. I don't know how you book 10 more books than what I've read because right now what I've read is almost an inclusive story. It's a tragic story. It doesn't have a good ending, but it's like it's conclusive story after the eclipse. No spoilers.

[00:16:32]That's all you guys get is that it's a conclusive story. I'm not going to spoil you. So, what I've really come to with all this is that if you're if that guy's okay with having the bread of sacrifice when he's only seen up to that point in the story after the eclipse, whatever, that's really okay. And I know that's a crazy conclusion to come to is that shocker, people have free will, but they don't. If people want to LAR, for me, in my opinion, that's really okay. Any laring based incidents for me have spawned from my friend group just kind of nerdmonging me. I'm a fake cell.

[00:17:03]Okay. There's a lot of shows that they've watched and they discuss all the time that I haven't and I just kind of pretend because I'm I don't plan on watching a lot of them. They don't really interest me. But I know everything. I know every spoiler. I've been asked all the would you rather stupid [ __ ] about human instrumentality, but I'm probably not going to finish Evangelion anytime soon because I've been watching it for about 3 months and it's a 24 episode anime. It just doesn't interest me. Okay. So, if we're in a group discussion, whether it's with my friends or random people I meet at the cosplay club, and I know just enough about the anime, I might just I I might just LAR. I might I might get a little down and dirty with it and get to laring because at the end of the day, I am only human. And like my goat Google AI said, laring just shows the human desire to fit in.

[00:17:57]And maybe, just maybe, people don't want to watch all 500 making episodes of your mid anime.

[00:18:10]Thank you guys for 100 subscribers, too.

[00:18:15]Now I'm back in focus, but thank you guys so much for 100 subscribers. Uh, my videos have been getting a lot more views. That's a loose term to say when it goes from like 20 to 60. my videos are getting a lot more views recently than they used to. Back when I would like spend 3 months making the best video ever when I was 14 years old, I go back and watch them like oh my god. But um and they would get like five views and now they're getting like 100 views which is a lot better and I've been getting more people and I've been uh getting people in my college. Anyone who's still watching this that's from my college, thank you so much. Uh I don't have any [ __ ] patrons to to scroll down a list which I feel like is what I should be doing right now. So I think I'll just have videos next to me. But yeah, thank you all very much. Anyone who watches, subscribes, or anything, I love you. Go watch my other videos. Um, yeah, I'm going to keep making whatever I want, whenever I want. By that, I mean, I'm going to at least try and do a video every two weeks to a month at at most a month. I'm going to make more skating videos over the summer. More video essays like this. I really enjoy it. Yeah. I hope you guys enjoyed.

[00:19:16]Bye-bye.