"Leftism" as LARP: Mass Retreat Into Fantasy

[Sayon]

An amusing exchange on Twitter:

Mart ✡ on Twitter

“There it is, I knew it would happen https://t.co/5lvAWrIL7g”

twitter.com

Another one:

https://twitter.com/ScottMcConnell9/status/1266223242429304834

The key point is that the Leftie mart linked to couldn't resist sticking in a mention of Harry Potter and Hunger Games and Star Wars. All he had to do was include Marvel's capeshit last.

I'm arguing that Current Year Lefties are overall living out fantasies rather taking a detached look at the world.

Leftists are LARPers. Antifa and BLM are LARPing as anti-establishment revolutionaries despite their support from celebrities or ties to the likes of George Soros. The Dems are LARPing as resisting an "authoritarin" supervillain. Lolberg and Cuckservative apologists pretending the riot Nigs are modern day Paul Reveres. Shit like Harry Potter is brought in since they need to read other books.

The Last Psychiatrist used to talk about narcissism and ego defense, and that might be what what we're seeing. They can't let go of the narratives they use to assign themselves greater moral worth or reconcile how they see themselves/the noble savages with reality. That it's the dynamic behind all those screaming how they support BLM while negroes burn their favorite bar. It's the dynamic behind Dems with the means refusing to crack down on Antifa, or else they'd have to admit there's no fascism to resist. To abandon this farce and take practical action is too terrifying to contemplate. Once you lose your self righteousness, you're a sinner who deserves judgement. It's better to let the cities burn.

What led to this? Perhaps it's the loss in "religion"? Maybe we would be better off without Christianity and other forms of Abrahamism...

 

[Rand /pol/]

I'm arguing that Current Year Lefties are overall living out fantasies rather taking a detached look at the world.

lol I'd argue that applies more to current year right wingers who've been talking about "MUH 2ND CIVIL WAR, MUH FIGHTING TYRANNY!" for decades yet they all did nothing while there was mass rioting and DC was burning.

 

[Sayon]

"Righties" aren't the ones who're supported by big business and celebrities. So they aren't the ones who need to be brought up here.

 

[Marco Fucko]

Political ideologues are stupid and don't have a mind for political strategy.

The neo-nazis/wignats showed their hand when "their" President has a Jewish son-in-law and Jewish grandchildren and has been decreasing deportations as compared to the Obama administration. They kept pushing and their demagogues are persona non grata on mainstream platforms, further limiting their potential reach.

Leftists refuse to engage in any electoralism because they're retarded LARPers, meaning they are pissing away any potential institutional support for their ideals. The Democratic party being pushed to the left is solely because of actors within the party infrastructure and yet they think local elections and spreading theory will do anything for their cause.

Until the autists that read books written by worthless aristocrats get a degree and become experts within the system that can affect change they won't achieve anything they hope for.

 

[Doctor Placebo]

Political ideologues are stupid and don't have a mind for political strategy.

The neo-nazis/wignats showed their hand when "their" President has a Jewish son-in-law and Jewish grandchildren and has been decreasing deportations as compared to the Obama administration. They kept pushing and their demagogues are persona non grata on mainstream platforms, further limiting their potential reach.

Leftists refuse to engage in any electoralism because they're retarded LARPers, meaning they are pissing away any potential institutional support for their ideals. The Democratic party being pushed to the left is solely because of actors within the party infrastructure and yet they think local elections and spreading theory will do anything for their cause.

Until the autists that read books written by worthless aristocrats get a degree and become experts within the system that can affect change they won't achieve anything they hope for.

The two groups reinforce each others' delusions too.

Wignats believed that Trump would make America white again and throw all their enemies in camps because they took all the spin by the nutty far left media about him at face value. That's why they're a lot more pissed off about him than people who just voted for him because they thought he was the lesser evil to Hillary.

Likewise, Antifa shitheads love to find pictures of wignats wearing Nazi logos and waving swastika flags and loony internet rants by incels with rage to show that the Nazi takeover of America really is just over the horizon, and the hordes of anarcho-communists smashing trash cans are necessary to prevent the mass genocide of all non-white, non-straight people and women being turned into enslaved baby factories.

 

[Sperghetti]

You're not wrong.

People in our culture love feeling like they're the underdog taking on the big, bad system because we tend to conflate experiencing hardship with morality. They know that if they can make the case that they're a Litte Guy and some Big Guy is keeping them down, they're going to be seen as being in the right. And if they can spin it as them leading the charge against said Big Guy, then they're a hero.

This Leftist LARP is just the easiest, safest way to get that high right now. Like you said, there's no shortage of celebrities and politicians and companies backing this narrative up. And really, what average person in 2020 is going to proclaim be for racism and fascism? Proclaiming that you're protesting these things is not exactly a risky viewpoint. You might as well say you're protesting kicking puppies.

That narrative is not unique to those books and movies, by any means. It's just that the LARPers are largely a bunch of kids obsessed with shallow pop culture, and that's the only reference they have.

 

[Hux]

Everyone thinks they're the hero of their own long, boring, shitty story

 

[DumbDude42]

they're literally just acting out their programming

there are people who have been fed this narrative since the day they were born. they're reading harry potter books while young, watching star wars movies, getting an education that amounts to little more than WHITE MAN BAD in school and university, and having it constantly reinforced on social media.

like, what else can you expect from them? they've been fed this worldview of 'heroic underdog rebels fight against the evil white man empire to win peace and justice for minorities' for their entire lives, so them trying to re-enact it IRL is the logical conclusion to it.

 

[dopy]

Leftists are LARPers

compared to all the right-wing MAGAtard patriots who are putting a stop to the riots while the police forces stand down, and the 2A geniuses who "stormed" (aka sat in their own shit) outside the Virginia capitol while their rights were taken away from them and they just complained?

america itself is a LARP of a real country at this point

 

[Linako 2.0]

What the fuck does larp even mean anymore?

 

[Syaoran Li]

What the fuck does larp even mean anymore?

Not gonna lie, I miss the days when LARP was simply the more autistic cousin of tabletop RPG's and historical reenactments and wasn't "Current Year" jargon for being a poser on the internet.

 

[Garm]

The left likes to LARP on Twitter and Tumblr. No one will call them out on their bullshit. They can retreat further into their hugbox with no repercussions.

 

[An Account]

I don't give a shit if even 90% of these faggots are all bluster. A good number of them are going out and throwing bricks, beating people senseless, burning down buildings, destroying other property and wrecking lives. Also the term 'LARP' is gay.

 

[Sayon]

You could also call it Christianity Without God as some Pagan Twitter users say.

 

[Lemmingwise]

Everyone thinks they're the hero of their own long, boring, shitty story

It's the greatest information bias we all have. We are at the center of every single experience we have.

 

[Made In China]

True, but I'm afraid this doesn't only apply to leftists.

 

[Distant Stare]

99% of gun owners also LARP as revolutionaries. They claim that the reason why they own firearms is for defending against a tyrannical government, but when the time comes to use them they do nothing.

Most people use politics as a means to feel like they are in power, or are important. They chose a side which best fits their personality, and then adopt the arguments and positions of their new peers.

 

[ConfederateIrishman]

lol I'd argue that applies more to current year right wingers who've been talking about "MUH 2ND CIVIL WAR, MUH FIGHTING TYRANNY!" for decades yet they all did nothing while there was mass rioting and DC was burning.

@Rand /pol/ is right; There was a kiwi last night who got angry that people were saying that the right was losing the culutre war that lashed out and told people to kill themselves while repeating that social media did not matter. Before that he was posting giant paragraphs about how the riots would surely usher in new conservative super majorites (what about 2024? you should not think so far ahead we are LARPing here!).

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

It’s easy to virtue signal and point the finger at someone when you’re not doing anything productive towards society.

 

[Dread First]

I genuinely believe that social media on the whole is responsible for this LARPing mentality. It truly is a cancer upon the internet at large, but we won't see actual systemic change until social media giants are held accountable for prioritising interactivity with their platforms.

In the golden age of forums and image boards, you did have people LARPing on some measure but such users were often ridiculed to the point where nobody took them seriously. You could take comfort in the fact that at least you were interacting with real people. I don't mean real as in actual human beings, I mean real as in "this is who I am, warts and all." You were able to actually joke around and have other people understand "hey, this is a joke and isn't meant to be taken seriously." If you say something stupid on a forum, there wasn't really any way to tie it back to your identity unless you were retarded enough to use the same alias across multiple platforms.

Social media is intrinsically tied to your real-world identity. Thus, anything you say, even if it's in jest like a stupid doge meme can be held against you with actual, real-world consequences. That's only the tip of the iceberg though. Social media giants like Twitter and Facebook have been extensively documented through their myriad of scandals as trying to force interactivity with their platforms whichever way they can. This type of algorithmic manipulation can be traced as far back as 2011 when Eli Pariser specifically warned about the consequences of Facebook prioritising what you clicked on vs actual, real time news feed updates from all of your friends. The end result now is a more polarised internet where you're not even likely to come across an opposing point of view unless it's a point of view that's morally reprehensible to your own standards that other people you generally interact with are sharing.

Contrast that to the way that a simple BBS/forum/image board works: only the most recent posts would make it to the top of the page. I mean in the case of the Farms here, Josh does provide major updates on prolific cows on the home page, but the end user doesn't have to interact with those posts if they don't want to. That type of model wouldn't work for Facebook or Twitter from a profit perspective because at the end of the day, they don't have control over who engages with what.

You would assume that this would no longer be the case in a post-2016 world where people now know that Facebook, Twitter, et al have been responsible for influencing an election through their desire for engaging users no matter the cost. But no, this hasnt' changed at all. In fact, it's only become worse with the advent of fact checking. Because why invoke actual systemic change with your platform when you can just say "hey, we're now gonna say what is and isn't true just to keep you guys engaging with us?"

When you combine the fact that social media ties your real-world identity to your internet life along with how they manipulate feeds specifically to generate the most interactivity, it's no surprise that we've got a polarised internet. LARPing is now basically the norm specifically because nobody wants to stick their neck out if they disagree with the majority opinion. Extreme reactions to opposing points of view, no matter how minute or insignificant is now the norm specifically because these platforms encourage it.

If only the "woke" retreated to the cool kind of fantasy with dragons and elves, instead of the "insanity is progress" one.

The woke crowd have thoroughly infected D&D and they're trying to do the same thing with WH40k. Don't give them any more ideas.