Why do people larp online? Five motives, and what the research says about each
Someone posts as a soldier, a fund manager or a millionaire, and the replies ask why. Psychologists have studied the parts of that question for decades: performance, experiments with identity, approval, hiding, and the pull of a costume. Here are five motives, the studies behind them, and the point where the role stops being harmless.
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The question behind the question
To larp online is to play a part you do not hold: a trader, a fan of a series you never watched, a soldier, a rich person, someone with a condition or background that is not yours (the hobby and the slang). Forum threads asking why are mostly irritation. The research on self-presentation is calmer, and it says there is no single reason. There are at least five, and they do not end in the same place.
Motive zero: everyone is already performing
Before any motive, there is the stage. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, published in 1956 in Scotland and in 1959 in the United States, Erving Goffman likened social life to theater. People steer the impression others get of them through their setting, their look and their manner. A front region hosts the performance. A back region is where roles are prepared or dropped, and the props include the furniture.
A profile, in that picture, is a front region with unusually good props and no backstage visible. Larping is therefore not a separate activity from self-presentation. It is the same one with the link to the real person loosened, or snapped.
Motive one: trying on a self
A good deal of larping is rehearsal. In 1986 Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius proposed "possible selves": the ideas people hold about what they might become, would like to become and fear becoming, which push their next moves. A role played online is one way to test such a self.
Data on the young supports it. In a 2005 study, Patti Valkenburg, Alexander Schouten and Jochen Peter had 600 children and teenagers aged 9 to 18 fill in a classroom questionnaire. Half of the ones who used chat or instant messaging had experimented with their identity online. Self-exploration, seeing how others react, was the chief motive, ahead of beating shyness and making relationships easier to form.
Motive two: pleasing people, or hiding
Pretending is not always exploring, and the reason matters more than the act. In a 1996 study, Susan Harter and colleagues asked teenagers why they behaved in ways that were not their "real me".
| Why they did it | How they fared |
|---|---|
| To experiment with different selves | Best mood, highest self-worth, most hope, clearest knowledge of the true self |
| To please or impress parents and peers | Midway on each measure |
| Because they devalued their real self | Lowest mood, lowest self-worth, least hope, least self-knowledge |
A 2015 study of 261 young adults on Facebook, by Minas Michikyan, Jessica Dennis and Kaveri Subrahmanyam, found a similar pattern. Most people showed their real self more than an ideal or false one, and those with a less coherent sense of self and lower self-esteem showed a false self more. The account that larps hardest often has the least comfortable backstage.
Motive three: the internet feels like a game
John Suler named the "online disinhibition effect" in 2004: people say and do online what they would not in person. Two of his six factors suit larping well. Dissociative anonymity makes the online self feel detached from the real one. Dissociative imagination makes the online world seem like a game with its own rules, where a character can be played without consequences. Suler also noted that disinhibition is not just the "true self" breaking free but a move to another part of the self.
The costume also works on the wearer. In Stanford experiments, Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson placed people in virtual reality avatars. Those with more attractive avatars stood closer to a stranger and disclosed more, and those with taller avatars bargained more confidently. They named this the Proteus effect: people live up to the role their appearance implies.
The Batman effect: when the role helps
Sometimes the part does real work. In a 2017 study led by Rachel White, 180 children aged four and six had to keep at a dull task while a tempting video game sat nearby. Those who pretended to be an exemplar character such as Batman lasted longest, ahead of children who referred to themselves in the third person, who in turn beat children who just thought about themselves.
That is the honest core of "larp it till you make it": a role practiced in private can shift behavior. It works as rehearsal, not as display, and evidence for the display version is thin (when acting the part helps, and when it is a lie).
Motive four: for the bit, or for the money
Some larp in the open, as a joke, as parody, or for a skit. Others do it because a staged identity sells. Wealth earns status only when seen, so larping rich is the cheapest status signal around (why people flex money online): a rented car, a borrowed watch and, cheapest of all, a screen showing a balance. When that screen becomes evidence for a course or an investment, the role has become a pitch.
The same screen has honest uses in skits, explainers and parodies of exactly this culture, as long as viewers are told what it is. A larp wallet, or crypto wallet app simulator, draws a wallet screen that reads as real from figures you type yourself, for a video, a sketch, a pitch deck or a demo. It holds nothing and reads no chain.
Flexdger Wallet is one such app, which we make. Label it as a mockup on screen, a prop and never proof: our terms forbid presenting it as a real balance to obtain money, an investment or anyone's trust.
What staying in costume costs
The biggest study here argues against the role. Erica Bailey, Sandra Matz, Wu Youyou and Sheena Iyengar compared what 10,560 Facebook users said about their own personality with what their likes and status updates suggested. The closer the two, meaning the more authentic the self-expression, the greater the users' life satisfaction. A preregistered experiment then found that posting authentically lifted mood within the same person. A role can be a good place to visit. The research suggests it is a tiring place to live.
Why the word turned into an insult
The hobby runs on agreement: everyone at a LARP knows the knight is a player in costume. Calling someone a larper online says the agreement is missing. They kept the costume on and expect others to play along. That stings more than "poser" for some people, and the word also works as a joke against oneself, as in larping as a morning person (larping vs posing, grifting and cosplay).
An entire account built on a role has its own name and its own tells (what a larp account is).
Experts, soldiers and cops
In everyday slang, larping as an expert, soldier or cop means acting out an authority you do not hold: talking like a fund manager after one lucky trade, wearing military gear without having served, playing police in a comment section. That is how the word is used, not the result of a study, and we found no research on those three roles in particular. The motives above are the likeliest explanations: borrowed status, being listened to, and a costume that works on its wearer. The role stops being harmless when it is used to get money, trust or access that the real person could not.
Not affiliated with Facebook, X, TikTok or the owners of the Batman character: they are named only as they appear in the studies and in the slang.
In tech, the same motives produce a specific type, the founder who performs the role instead of building: here is what tech larping means.
Sources
- Wikipedia, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Erving Goffman), 2026
- Markus and Nurius, Possible selves, American Psychologist 41(9), 1986
- Valkenburg, Schouten and Peter, Adolescents' identity experiments on the internet, New Media & Society 7(3), 2005
- Harter, Marold, Whitesell and Cobbs, A model of the effects of perceived parent and peer support on adolescent false self behavior, Child Development 67(2), 1996
- Michikyan, Dennis and Subrahmanyam, Can You Guess Who I Am? Real, Ideal, and False Self-Presentation on Facebook Among Emerging Adults, Emerging Adulthood 3(1), 2015
- Suler, The online disinhibition effect, CyberPsychology & Behavior 7(3), 2004
- Yee and Bailenson, The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior, Human Communication Research 33(3), 2007
- White, Prager, Schaefer, Kross, Duckworth and Carlson, The "Batman Effect": Improving Perseverance in Young Children, Child Development 88(5), 2017
- Bailey, Matz, Youyou and Iyengar, Authentic self-expression on social media is associated with greater subjective well-being, Nature Communications 11, 2020
Questions
Why does everyone call things larping now?
Because the word spread. Larp moved through X and TikTok as slang in 2026, so posts once labeled fake or try-hard now get called larping. The behavior, showing an edited self to an audience, is far older than the word.
Is larping bad for you?
Not in itself. A 1996 study of adolescents found that those who acted unlike their real selves to experiment with roles reported the highest self-worth and the best knowledge of who they were, while those who did it because they devalued themselves fared worst. A 2020 study of more than 10,000 Facebook users linked more authentic self-expression to greater life satisfaction.
Why is "larper" such a sharp insult?
Because it names a specific failure: playing a part without the agreement that makes role-play a game. In the hobby everyone knows the knight is a player in a costume. A larper online has kept the costume on and expects everyone else to go along with it.
Is a larper the same as a poser?
Nearly, but not quite. A poser claims to belong to a scene. A larper acts out a role, often with props, a vocabulary and a story. In everyday slang the two blur, and both become serious only when the role is used to get money or trust.
Why would someone larp as an expert, a soldier or a cop?
We found no research on those three roles in particular, so this is an informed guess. The motives above fit: borrowed status, the wish to be listened to, and a costume that works on the person wearing it.