I started to refer to Bigfootery in general as Woods & Wildmen. A hilarious adult roleplaying game in which people indoctrinate themselves like Scientologists with a set of absurd beliefs. BLAARGing is the way you refer to it now.
I'd like to start with terminology because then neither of us misunderstands the use of it.
I think that's a great name - Woods and Wildmen. What we started to do in your absence was start following conventions for naming activities like these, to wit:
Live Action Role Playing. LARPing.
Your description of woods and wildmen is no different from what I saw the Society for Creative Anachronism doing: dressing up in ancient garb and armaments; acting out roles like rescuing damsels in distress or re-creation of battles and so forth. Harmless stuff. W&W or SCA both. As described.
And when someone playing Woods and Wildmen or SCA encounters someone else who doesn't LARP, what do they say?
The people in the SCA did their LARPing at the same park I played frisbee golf on. I was on the first state championship Iowa frisbee golf team so we were out practicing all the time and so was the SCA.
They were fun people, and told us what they were up to. You had drama and band type people doing that sort of thing. They didn't try to convince me they really were in the 15th century, and that they really were at war. Role Playing. LARPing.
Your description of BLAARGing will be forgiven out of diplomacy but let's not try to use emotional manipulation in our rhetoric please. When you do your best to put the most pejorative connotation on a description it is the straw man, not coming to an understanding of a position.
There is a great deal of differene between Alternate Reality Gaming and LARPing. And it is here I ask for your concentration upon and acknowledgment of:
Alternate Reality Gaming is
defined by the refusal to acknowledge that it is a game.
Unless we not only agree upon that as the difference between LARPing and BLAARGing, there is no point in discussing it. Because it is not just some little inconsequential matter. It is the entire matter.
My acquaintances doing Society for Creative Anachronism "skits" pretended, among themselves, that they were in the 15th century. But to the exterior world they were honest about what they were doing.
A skeptical mind can take upon itself a premise it does not actually agree to for purposes of argument.
Do so. BLAARGers are
defined by the principle of refusing to acknowledge they are playing a game.
Nobody here says 100% of every person who ever said they believed were lying ******* serial killers. Please no emotionally charged straw men, this is a science we are applying here: the distinction between Woods and Wildmen, LARPing, vs. BLAARGing.
A reasonable person would concede that some people are true believers, having stumbled into a harem of bigfoot hotties posing as a strip club. He believes for many years, the peer pressure you know.
Then some are LARPing, some BLAARGing.
I assure our moderators that this is an important insight into the PGF, and in fact the motivation of the PGF is BLAARging for profit. Roger refused to acknowledge it was a hoax. He did it for profit. Or did he donate all that money to charity? Charity Yong Ho, in Bangkok lol.
Take care.
