Gen Z has a new favorite insult.
LARPing, or live-action role-playing, might conjure up visions of Dungeons & Dragons costumes and renaissance fairs. But across the internet, young people are repurposing the word “larping” to call out someone they think is inauthentic.
Going to a fitness class just for the photos is larping being a pilates girl. A summer internship is larping a corporate 9-to-5. Coming into Manhattan from Long Island for the day is larping New York City.
The latest slang to capture the Gen Z zeitgeist is a way to say poser, try-hard or fraud.
“It’s someone who is performative in the way that they're dressing or acting or doing something, and it's not actually authentic to who they are as an individual,” says 24-year-old Morgan Hurlock
of Philadelphia. “It's almost like you're calling someone out.”
What does ‘larping’ mean?
Remember the performative male trend, which referred to those matcha-drinking, tote-bag carrying young men reading books on the subway? Or Gen Z insults like “NPC” and “industry plant?” Experts say this isn’t all that different.
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“The word ‘larping’ is really just switching places with the old definition of performative,” Gen Z linguist Adam Aleksic explained in a TikTok.
Most people use the phrase jokingly. But when creators exaggerate aspects of their identity to boost their online presence – say, by pretending they have more wealth, friends or exotic trips planned than they actually do – it can reinforce unhealthy comparisons, says Don Grant, a media psychologist who is the National Adviser of Healthy Device Management for Newport Healthcare.
As the first generation to grow up entirely online, Gen Z developed with “comparing and despairing,” Grant says.
“We learn about ourselves and where we stand in the world only from the reactions and responses we get from others,” Grant says. For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, that public sphere is online. “They grew up with everything online becoming their social currency and the litmus of who they are.”
Sophia Weber, 20, assumed larping was another satirical trend until she started hearing it around the University of California, Santa Barbara campus.
“All my friends seem to be using it,” Weber says. She’s studying abroad in Europe this summer, and recently used it with friends to describe a day trip to London. “We said, ‘Oh, we're larping London, because we were just there for a few hours.’”
What ‘larping’ says about Gen Z
From the curated Gen Z pout to the polished "influencer accent" that have flooded TikTok’s For You Page, young people place a lot of focus on being nonchalant, constantly editing themselves and trimming anything that might come off as try-hard, awkward or embarrassing.
An April Yahoo/YouGov poll found that more than half of adult Gen Zers have avoided expressing themselves online for fear of coming across as cringe.
“There is a pressure amongst Gen Z to always appear authentic, but not authentic to the point where you could be considered cringe,” Hurlock says. “You're expected to sort of know how to do everything and be perfect the first go around at something.”
The rise of larping also reflects Gen Z’s heightened concern around authenticity, say Grant and Hurlock. With the rise of the influencers, artificial intelligence and ad-driven social media content, young people want to know a person is real before taking their story at face value.
“I think everyone, especially in Gen Z, scrolls inherently with this feeling of distrust for every video,” Hurlock says.
Hurlock says she’s noticed larping used frequently in fitness and gaming communities, where someone that’s clearly a newbie is called out as larping, and worries this pressure has contributed to her generation’s insecurity around trying new things.
“You want to be real and down to earth, but if you show too much of yourself, you've got to wrap it up a bit and not be loud or obnoxious or whatever people are afraid to be perceived as,” Hurlock says.
Rachel Hale’s role covering Youth Mental Health at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Reach her at rhale@usatoday.com and @rachelleighhale on X.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: All of Gen Z is larping. It's not what you think it is
