Taylor Lorenz: the quintessential LARPer

Substack has its newest rent-seeker

Rhetorical LARPing

The archetypal LARPer — donning a cape with a plastic crown to boot, clad in faux-armor — is harmless. The hobby itself is a trivial ode to medieval times, and nothing worth ridiculing or even criticizing. In fact, there’s a nobility and certain unabashed creativity to it that brings joy to its community of practitioners. Enthusiasts, whose simulated battles play out in a forest clearing or a suburban park, are best left to their own devices (or foam swords). And they generally are — bullying is uncool and, like, who cares?

LARPing (Live Action Role Playing), even in the nontraditional sense like when men salaciously present themselves as women at drag queen shows, is rooted in playfulness and is, if benign, harmless and trivial.

But in the digital age, a more malignant version of LARPing has emerged. A version that trades foam swords or penis-tucking for alarmist language or suppression of dissent, and harmless escapes for ideological crusades. I’ve come to think of this (largely online) phenomenon — this sensationalistic posturing devoid of substantive discourse — as rhetorical LARPing. That is, talking (and writing) heads Live Action Role Playing as independent thought leaders and objective arbiters of truth.

Unfortunately, rhetorical LARPing is widespread: legacy news outlets LARP as fair and balanced; corporations LARP as supportive of social causes; politicians LARP as champions of their constituents’ concerns. In essence, rhetorical LARPers are Trojan Horses: outwardly virtuous and sympathetic, inwardly conniving and nefarious. These cons, when executed skillfully, carry little risk to the LARPer but promising rewards.

In economics — or the study of allocating scarce resources — there’s a framework for this type of behavior called “rent-seeking.” Rent-seekers are entities who endeavor to increase their own wealth without generating any contribution or benefit to society. Often characterized by a low-risk, high-reward calculus, it involves extracting economic gain by exploiting systemic inefficiencies or manipulating institutional frameworks. In the U.S. government’s case, one form of this is regulatory capture, whereby agencies or legislatures are co-opted to serve the interests of specific groups at the expense of the broader public interest.

A classic example might be defense contractors channeling campaign funding to politicians under an implicit quid pro quo: once in office, these politicians advocate for policies — legislatively, rhetorically, and otherwise — that divert taxpayer funds toward superfluous defense initiatives (i.e., wars and invasions) conveniently aligned with the defense contractors’ financial interests. (Sound familiar?)

This manipulation by rent-seekers of political priorities, detached from economic value creation, inflicts real social harm: capital and resources that could have been invested in innovation, skilled labor, or other factors of production, are instead funneled into unproductive endeavors like jockeying for political sway and influence peddling. The result? Economic inefficiency through misallocation of resources, and a net loss to society.

In the marketplace for online discourse — a kind of economy of ideas and perspectives, where belief systems are shaped — rent-seeking behaviors can manifest rhetorically. Here, the resource being exploited is information, and the output is content designed for consumption. Conceptually, the process could be understood as follows:

1. Information: set of unique facts and logic

2. Idea: cluster of information synthesized through reasoning

3. Perspective: cluster of ideas shaped by individual disposition or worldview

4. Content: cluster of perspectives refined for public dissemination

In a rational marketplace,¹ content’s value would be determined by its informational robustness, novelty of ideas, and clarity of perspective. Content that combines truthfulness, insightfulness, and scarcity would naturally command greater demand, fostering a marketplace that rewards intellectual rigor and thoughtful analysis. However, the rhetorical LARPer disrupts this ideal model. Instead of producing content through the allocation of robust information and reasoned ideas, LARPers employ a top-down approach, optimizing for sensationalistic traits at the expense of truth, novelty, and substance.

While I don’t believe that most consumers of online content are particularly gullible, and that they are savvy enough to evaluate claims against their existing belief systems, the marketplace for online discourse is far from rational. Social media platforms — from being riddled with confirmation bias driving users toward content that reinforces trite narratives, to having a latent culture that prioritizes trolling and playfulness over truth-seeking — are, in reality, laden with inefficiencies. And inefficiencies render these platforms ripe for exploitation, allowing for rhetorical LARPers to take full advantage.

For these LARPers, the critical steps in content production — substantiating facts, synthesizing ideas through reason, and developing nuanced perspectives — are often bypassed. Information is cherry-picked without scrutiny; radical (or unrefined) perspectives are amplified without context; ideas are driven more by reactionary impulses than reason. In the most egregious cases, LARPers will skip these foundational steps entirely, delivering content that amounts to little more than a projection of their own biased worldview. These performative artifacts of sensationalism masquerade as insights but lack any meaningful connection to truth or intellectual rigor.

Such behaviors parallel rent-seeking in at least three key ways:

1. Rhetorical LARPing requires minimal intellectual risk, avoiding the laborious investment required to create novel perspectives grounded in robust information and logical reasoning. Instead, it amplifies preexisting ideas and banal perspectives without adding nuance or differentiation to the diversity of thought. Just as rent-seekers avoid the risks of market competition by lobbying for subsidies or protections, LARPers sidestep the risks of intellectual innovation, opting for performative amplification.

2. LARPers jockey for positional advantage as they compete for perceived intellectual authority by arbitrarily presenting perspectives as imperatives without satisfying the burden of proof. This mirrors the tactics of rent-seeking entities that manipulate narratives — such as government officials invoking “national security threats” based on unverifiable evidence — to legitimize their positions and influence public discourse.²

3. Financial gains are realized through allegiance via signaling (using rhetoric) to curry favor and induce reciprocity. The rewards can be substantial, particularly when the LARP is institutionally subsidized³ or ideologically adopted by a fervent faction of society.

Perhaps the most salient instance of rent-seeking behavior in online discourse (and satisfying all three of the above elements) was when, in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder and the resurgence of BLM, Hollywood elites and mainstream celebrities participated in the #BlackoutTuesday trend by posting black squares on Instagram. The gesture (and the rhetoric surrounding it), while widely adopted at the time, was criticized as performative slacktivism, offering no tangible support to the cause while signaling alignment with social justice.

Once publicly exposed and scrutinized on the basis of merit, these rent-seeking behaviors — or rhetorical LARPs — are abandoned and disowned. Once the corrupt nature of the BLM organization was exposed, online influencers swiftly jumped ship, one after another removing #BLM from their social media profiles. This is par for the course. (Think companies abandoning DEI initiatives, or celebrities and corporations removing the Ukraine flag from their social media bios even as the war rages on.)⁴

The list goes on, but even the least insidious rhetorical LARPers peddle ideas and perspectives that fail to add anything of substance to the collective discourse. Instead, the LARPs only serve to drown out genuine, substantive narratives and worse, amplify preconceived notions or reinforce prevailing biases. These practices rarely illuminate meaningful truth; they obscure it.

The barriers to entry for profitable rhetorical LARPing are high, requiring either an existing audience-base or significant resources to build one. But once established, the practice is a low-cost, high-reward game. LARPers need only maintain a veneer of credibility while recycling the same performative content to an audience that’s willing to consume it.

The consequences for societal discourse are dire. LARPing doesn’t produce unique perspectives; it co-opts them. It doesn’t add depth or robustness to the marketplace of ideas; it amplifies artificial signals of thought. The result is a discourse ecosystem flooded with malignant and sensationalistic perspectives — mimicry masquerading as insight, conformity dressed up as novelty. This comes at the expense of genuine dialogue, entrenches echo chambers, and devalues the currency of good-faith discourse, leaving little room for rational or reasonably informed worldviews.

Rhetorical LARPers are, in essence, Trojan Horses: outwardly Live Action Role Playing as righteous and just, while inwardly menacing. Their performative grift undermines the forward advancement of dialogue, replacing thoughtful analysis with colorless theatrics. Among the worst offenders is Taylor Lorenz.

Taylor Lorenz, queen of the rhetorical LARP

King Argotron, portrayed by Ken Jeong in the 2008 comedy film Role Models, takes any form of opposition/criticism as an affront to justice — not unlike Taylor Lorenz in real life.