Tuesday, July 14, 2009

A dubious honor.


Nearly four years after it was taken, this photo can now be seen on page one of the google image results when you look up the word "larp."

LARP stands for Live Action Roleplay. If you want details feel free to check out my video on the subject.

The point is that my friends and I find ourselves in a rather ironic situation, where the popularity of the photo is slowly snowballing for entirely the wrong reasons. Like any eccentric icon, many folk look upon this image as the face of LARPing. It reminds me of how some people feel that Chris Crocker is the archetypal gay male. He really isn't. We really aren't.

The irony comes in by the fact that we weren't actually LARPing, but rather making a satire of the act. My friends and I are a bizarre lot. You might even call us "counter counter culture." When we set out that day, the idea was not to mock LARPers so much as to have fun at making fools of ourselves while pretending to LARP. I realize how that sounds, take it or leave it.

It's sort of like how hipsters wear ugly shirts. The idea is that their coolness defeats the lameness of what they are wearing. Only with us we had no pretense to assume that. We knew what we looked like, and were damn proud of it.

It's a shame though (I guess) because now people look at this photo and think that everyone who LARPs is as crazy as we are. Which, I'll add, is either not the case...or very much so.

So it is with nervous smiles that we come closer and closer to becoming internet oddities.

Funny how life works out sometimes.

We actually did it again and took photos but Blane was too embarrassed to put them up. Lots of speedos.

No comments: