three years of accidental character work and i didn't even notice

how i accidentally became a digital larper and didn't even notice until i was three years deep

so it started as a joke, yeah? i was bored. scrolling through twitter at 2am like a moth drawn to the flickering screens of other people's failures and triumphs. then i started imagining these wild scenarios in my head. characters, settings, dialogue. pop went my mind into full-blown larp mode.

at first it was just thinking like a character when i responded to people online. ya know, like twitter's a public diary but also a battlefield where every tweet is a tiny soldier. i extended my hand to a fellow larper... i mean, to a fellow character. they didn't even notice. i kept doing it. muhahaha... wait no. i mean, this is just how i am now.

three years. three YEARS of this. i don't even notice anymore. i'm just in character. no one else is but me. and here's the wild part - i convinced myself this was normal. the new normal. my brain just rewired itself like "oh yeah you've been doing this for a while now." it's like cognitive autopilot but for addressing people as different personas.

the funniest part is no one noticed either. friends would bring stuff up from three years ago and i'd be like huh? because in my head, three years ago i was someone else. which is true, kinda. but also not. i was me with a wig on. or a different username. or a different accent. okay it was me but if i took a hit to the head.

how did this happen and when did i stop noticing? like, did i just lose a piece of my brain that kept track of "wait, is this normal?" and it just atrophied. that would explain a lot actually. brain just going shrugs and moving on.

the terrifying thing is... i don't think i'm done. i've got three years of character development built into my brain now. this isn't a hobby anymore. this is just how i process things. three years is a long time to be someone else and not notice. i hope you're taking notes, therapy.

but yeah, reckon i'll keep going. larpening in my head is free and legal and apparently indefinite. 3000 tweets deep, and i'm still not sure what character i'm playing anymore. maybe that's the point. maybe the character was always just... me. but like, exaggerated for social media.

anyway. if you're doing something weird for three years and you haven't noticed yet, congrats! you're officially a larper. join the club. we're all in character and no one's keeping track. except your therapist, probably.