January 22, 2004

• Interesting, although I'd rather not believe the couple truly thought they were in another world/time and not simply that they had wandered into a group of demented people with a few too many Ren fests under their belt. However, I find it disturbingly possible if one considers a)the couple really didn't get out much and was perhaps more "mundane" than usual and b)the 75 role-playing participants (which is a considerable number) were zealously into their role-playing. From observing zealous fans, this seems highly plausible. Of course, if an unexpected visitor were to challenge their portrayal in extreme or violent way, such as picking up a sword and using it, I suspect the veneer of medievalism would rapidly fade. This leaves me with the two feelings. One is really wanting to see some sort of reality show based off this concept of wandering into another world and the other fearing that some unfortunate accident will occur from nimrods organizing live role playing adventures. Does anyone else remember that story from a couple years ago where some live role players in this Florida spy thriller game were actually arrested by police before they realized the cops weren't actors? I remember thinking the organizers were nimrods for not thinking through the repercussions of having actors with guns running about public places...
• I really hope this is true.
• Not so brief aside: When in high school, I was a Marching Band geek (Surprise!). En route to a Marching competition, I undertook a psych experiment on an unsuspecting freshman to convince her that the field we were going to march on would be without hash marks, the yardage markers that Marching bands use to determine where they are headed and where they should be on the field. The rest of the band (cheeky monkeys) also joined in the subterfuge, but when we arrived at the competition, this young girl defiantly pointed to the field and said "You are so full of it! There are TOO lines on the field!" I held my ground, refusing to acknowledge what she saw. Everybody joined in lockstep and she couldn't find anyone to support her assertion. Of course there WERE lines on the field, but we huddled for twenty minutes discussing how we were going to have to alter our routine since there were no lines, using all sort of arcane and complex fake terminology to plot our march; all for the sake of further confusing the poor frosh. When she got indignant, I grabbed a random passerby, briefly whispered "Just play along" and then asked him "Why are there no lines on the field? Isn't it because the rules don't allow for hash marks in this competition?" He nodded, said yes and kept moving. We did this three more times and everybody stuck to the party line. An hour and a half later, the freshman was huddled in the bus crying hysterically, positive that she had lost her mind. I was shamed into an intervention by a few sympathetic girls. Finally I told her that there were lines on the field. She looked up with tears on her cheeks and said, entirely serious and baffled, "But there's NOT lines! They're not there!" All of which gave me a healthy respect for the natural gullibility of the public and taught me that I was a bit of an asshole. I've been working on it.
• Sounds plausible to me. Reminds me vaguely of a long-ago birthday when some friends grabbed me on emerging from a bar, blindfolded me, and dragged me to a long subway ride, keeping me from hearing the stops by bellowing into my ear announcements like "Red Square"... "Irkutsk"... (the conceit was that I was being abducted by KGB agents and would be shot when we reached our destination). On emerging at Brighton Beach (announced to me as Vladivostok, I believe) our little party ran into a couple of cops, who wanted to know what the hell was going on. The ringleader told them "fraternity initiation." They nodded and moved on, satisfied, and I was hauled on down to the beach for a last look at the world, whereupon we went to a Russian restaurant and drank so much vodka that I just have flashes of memory (like being carried around in a chair to the tune of loud, badly played Russian versions of pop songs). The point of comparison was our mild role-playing, but it occurs to me that if I'd stumbled into a back room of the restaurant and into a serious group like the one described, I probably would have been convinced I'd gone through a portal before too long. After all, anything can happen in Vladivostok!
• What you don't realize, languagehat, is that you are talking to real monkeys here. We tolerate you just because you seem to speak very well our language.
• I'm a great ape thank you kindly.
• This also took place in the 1980s, when mundanes might have been less aware of Larps, or Renfests for that matter.
• I don't think you have to fully commit to a reality to operate in it. People can percieve things as a joke (fitting in entirely with their idea of reality), or start to 'believe' in them. But at what point do they entirely relinquish their previous worldview? Do they ever have to? I think these are good examples of how subjective our worlds actually are. Our whole idea of reality is just a construction of 'what appears to be true from past experience'. If suddenly evidence appears to the contrary, we have some options: our past experience is wrong, our current experience is wrong, the experiences in fact can be reconciled, or our brain just plain does not work. As fork's story shows, this subjectivity goes both ways in that we can affect others', and perhaps even our own, reality. The pen is mightier than the sword ...because it says it is. I'll shut up now, before my head explodes all over my keyboard.
• Languagehat: you did go though a portal. Monkeyfilter would never have existed in that other world. You can tell by all the pointy parentheses that show up in this world. Three kinds were enough in the world I came from! (), [] and {}really ought to handle all needs.
• Maybe the wedding guests were just being polite - or enjoyed the spoof. up to a point. Or, maybe they were better at role playing than the role players? If they were even a marginally older than the teens in forksclovetofu's story, they'd have to have developed at least a minimal bullshit detector.
• This is pretty much the way the world works, isn't it? What's the difference between this and believing in a religion or philosophy? Or, the difference between this and politics? If you say something loud enough and often enough people start to believe it, or at least start discussing it on your terms (gay marriage?, patriotism? your favorite topic here?).
• Incidentally, I mostly agree with path's assessment. The girl in my story was no wondertwin, lemme tell ya. And if there wasn't cannibus involved somewhere in that wedding/d+d story, I'm a pink assed baboon.
• One of my greatest concerns is 'breaking reality' (plainly: I do not want to reason myself out of my mind), so I go out of my way to watch out for behavior which does not fit a reasonable perception of reality: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
• *Arrives on summit, dusts self off* Wow. I know Path mentioned 680 being the magic number (twice even), but like a guy refusing to get directions, I didn't want to jump out of line and find out what the link was. But now that I am here, I'm going to run around and celebrate a bit. Woo Hoo! Anyway, I am pleased at where it turns out I made my first comment. And it's the first comment and also that it is a substantial comment (y'know, like something better than, say, "woo hoo"). And I'm glad the link in question is still there and it covers a topic that I enjoy very much, that being the nature of reality. And I enjoy the fact that I still come to the same conclusions as the comment two years later. (And I enjoy irritating grammarians eveywhere by beginning sentences with 'and'). As John Cleese might say whilst in Sherwood Forest, "Jolly good!" Many thanks to nickdanger for starting the whole thing off and supporting my continued insanity, as well as Medusa, Lara, BlueHorse, Path, and assorted others for comments and monkey comradeship along the way. And of course Tracicle for putting up with this shenanigans, or, dare we say it?, monkey business. Those of you who have enjoyed the tour are welcome to stay here and continue musing on the nature of reality and social perception. My second comment is, thankfully, not far up the road. I also suggest visiting this little gem of a thread further on, as it looks like it's ripe for a few more comments. Thank you all, I'm off for a run and then lunch.