LARPing Our Way To Armageddon

The intense and present danger of fantasy

a thread

One of the interesting things about the scifi / fantasy writing community is that it contains many people who have much higher tolerance for fantasy than the norm.

People who can be around fantasy a lot, without losing track of reality.
Counter intuitive perhaps. But people who deal with fantasy at a professional level become expert at recognising its stench.

That's a useful skill in 2021, when the world, and particularly America, is being sucked into a vortex of unreality.
Because human beings do not, as a rule, have good tools for distinguishing fantasy from reality.

This isn't a bug of humankind, it's very much a feature.

Humans are what we are because of our ability to engage in the shared fantasy we call society / culture / civilisation.
Homo Sapiens are the species that LARPs

Which has always brought with it some structural issues

That just got waaaaaaaaaaay more serious
It's a common observation that the Capital mob was like an insurrection LARP

That's not to be used as an excuse. These morons really were mounting an insurrection

while believing the whole thing was a game, fantasy, or LARP
Which is the second tier worrying conclusion from the events of the 6th

Not only are there people who want to pull down democracy.

There are people who have become so untethered from reality that they will participate in the insurrection LARP
And when you look at the reasons why the MAGA LARP was possible.

You start to realise that giant chunks of the population are detaching from reality, like ice bergs drifting into an ocean of fantasy.
Our main guide to "what is real?" isn't reality itself, but what the people around us agree is real.

If everyone in your village believes in Odin, you're gonna believe in Odin.
Humans have to prioritise our shared reality over actual reality so that we can mainstain constructs like tribes, nations, corporatiins, sport teams.

And most people accept the constructs they are given as reality. If we didn't, they wouldn't work.
The latest iterations of the internet perform a worrying short circuit on the human fantasy systems.

YouTube is terrifyingly persusive because it hacks our belef circuits.

More from Writing

SHORT THREAD!

Simple Writing Trick to Avoid Plagiarism when using Templates

This may be useful for anyone but the examples here are more relevant to scholarship applicants

In other words, how to avoid the copy & paste syndrome.

Kindly RT to help others.

The past week brought some concerns about plagiarism in scholarship documents. For example:


Plagiarism is unacceptable at any level in academia and may lead to several undesirable outcomes, including revocation of admission offers or conferred degrees. So here is how you can prevent or rid yourself of the copy&paste syndrome


1. Don't use any template at all.
Just follow the darn instructions, or use helpful tips scattered all over the internet. Worry less about perfection.

I understand this may be hard for less experienced scholars. So if you must use a template, continue with the thread.

2. If possible, find more than one template.

This helps you identify the flow of ideas and the commonalities in the template. You can then develop your own unique document from this knowledge.

If you are still confused and must use a template, continue with the thread

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