Larping, a youthful slang term for mocking those who pretend to be something they are not

It’s time for ‘Larping’. A new term from the Great Generational Labeller, the one that started with ‘boomer’ and ‘woke’, and other inventions – some rather nice, others rather unfortunate. The latest hot water, the discovery of recent weeks, is: Larping. Mocking those who pretend to be something they’re not. I understand them, the young people, who, like every generation, have to reinvent at least three things: they’re not managing it with sex; with melancholy, they’re muddling through without finding any convincing artistic outlets; and then there’s conformism, where they fare better with this game of “let’s give it a definition, so it looks as though we’ve invented it ourselves”. And so they come up with new names for age-old stories, and pass them off as brand-new phenomena. We older folk let them get on with it, with affection.

The term ‘Larping’ derives from those medieval live-action role-playing games, the sort I always watch with a certain sense of bewilderment: some enthusiasts don their cloaks, grab plastic swords, book a castle for the weekend and turn it into a carnival. ‘Larping’ – which here takes on a broader meaning – pokes fun at many people: those who, last winter, went for a run in the city wearing a bandana and no T-shirt, after watching "Love Story", the TV series about the last, dashing Kennedy, and pretended to be John-John on Corso Garibaldi. Those who spend two weeks in New York and explain to you what it’s like in New York, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Those invited onto a yacht by their rich friend who feel like Gianni Agnelli off the coast of Capri.

Young Americans are unfamiliar with Vanzina and have only just discovered the ‘poser’, that iconic Italian character who deserves far more than ridicule. They wish to categorise this national epic of putting on airs – the attempt to appear a little more attractive, cultured and sophisticated than providence has allowed – amongst the pathologies of the modern age. It must also be said that Instagram has thoroughly commercialised pretence; it’s now a little game within everyone’s reach. Once upon a time, the whole business was more complicated: those were meticulously planned acts of pretence. You had to have the right friends, frequent places that your background and bank balance wouldn’t normally allow, and develop Darwinian skills of adaptation and sheer nerve. Either you were brilliant at it, or you took a massive tumble. For connoisseurs of the Italian ‘poser’ breed, there is a magnificent parody: Monicelli’s Count Mascetti in "Amici miei", a film that is our very own Greek myth, featuring characters who do not exist yet telling a story that has always existed.

This generation, obsessed with authenticity, seems terrified by the idea that there are people who don a cloak and work on an identity they haven’t yet earned. If you do something without the credentials, you’re LARPing. It’s the ‘be yourself’ police. Utter nonsense, because the idea that we’re all here to be authentic is a rather modest agenda. It’s the second opposable thumb of Homo sapiens: pretending to be better than one actually is. It’s the very construct of hypocrisy: a mortal sin at twenty, then it becomes civilised behaviour, until it’s ‘hypocrite – but who isn’t?’ for the rest of one’s life. Hypocrisy, unfortunately for itself, was born under the wrong stars in the dictionary; it has a dreadful reputation because you immediately think of a sleazy moralist. But there is another kind of hypocrisy, more common and far less open to judgement: the hypocrisy of those who behave better than would come naturally to them. Virtuous hypocrisy: you smile graciously at the unbearable and have to say ‘interesting’ to a fair bit of nonsense. Hanging out with smarter people in the hope that something sticks: strictly speaking, it’s all LARPing. But it’s also the only way to make it. The opposite imperative – never to pretend – is far more dangerous. Remaining forever true to oneself means only one thing: that you’ll forever remain stuck in whatever position life happens to throw your way.