White Men Can’t LARP
A loud epidemic that must be stopped.
Thanks for being a subscriber to Let's Not Be Trash. If you’re new here, we (Stanley Fritz, Evan J. Mastronardi, and Karina Maria ) write about patriarchy, politics, race, culture, music, and ruminations. The goal is to talk about important issues, in a way that is digestible and relatable. Because nobody wants to read a Ted Talk.
If you’re new, please consider subscribing, if you’re already on the list and have a few coins, consider upgrading to a paid subscriber. If you have commitment issues but want to contribute, you can buy me and my son (cat) food at Buy Me a Coffee
If you like my Substack and want to discover other great writers, check out this directory from Marc Typo, called The Cook-Out.
TW: Sexual Assault
Last year, my cousin and I did a four-part podcast series on Larry Ray. A man that I can barely describe in one sentence, because he can’t describe himself in one sentence, but here’s my best shot:
Think: ‘the most interesting man in the world’ but it’s a commercial that does not exist for a beer that was never created—and yet, somehow, it leads to multimedia deals, his projects get green-lit, and then he uses the funds and his platform to abuse people.
That’s what happened shortly after Lawrence Grecco “Ray” was released from prison and touched down on Sarah Lawerence campus in 2010. Including to one of my closest friends from my childhood, Santos.
Ray was the father of Santos’ girlfriend, Talia. They would all ultimately share dorm housing with seven other students, with Larry making himself comfortable, staying over on their couch four days out of the week.
In a matter of weeks, he was able to convince most of those in the dorm, and many of their friends, family, and colleagues, that (strap yourself in for this one): He fought in Kosovo, is a Marine, worked with the CIA, advised Gorbachev, is being hunted by former convicted NY police chief, Bernard Kherig, and is an expert on psychiatry, sex, and combat, and is currently a target of an assassination attempt via poison. Including by some of the college students and their families who conspire with said Bernie Kherig.
All the while physically, sexually, and emotionally abusing at least six people, much of it recorded by Ray himself, and leaving a reign of terror that affected hundreds through the chain of trauma that ensued.
What hit me doing this podcast is that, while this insane man and the saga of his abuse can be described by a litany of analogies, the best way to describe him and what he’s peddling—is LARPing.
For those who don’t know, LARP means Live Action Role Play. It is usually associated with grown men in fields and the woods pretending they are the Dungeons and Dragons Warlocks of the Stone Age after their Sales Manager of the United States 2024 Age role ends.
Aside from rare occasions, this kind of LARPing is really just a hobby, and as long as no one gets hurt, and you’re not neglecting your actual son to be a Blue Eyes White Dragon’s baby daddy, we really shouldn’t jock it - whatever floats ya boat. Some people would think I’m insane for allowing my mental health to be tied to 26 men who hit and throw a ball in a walled sand garden.
But when LARPing goes wrong is when YOUR fantasy is imposed on MY reality. And, in turn, our collective reality.
And if you’ve lived in America for the past few years you’ve likely noticed something. Shit doesn’t even need to actually happen. The entire idea of something can captivate the public for years.
By the way, does Larry Ray sound a bit familiar to you? Does he sound like someone who is also currently re-elected to the United States Presidency? That’s because Larry Ray is not an outlier.
There are many Larry Rays. Larry Rays that wouldn’t even exist if white men couldn’t LARP for a living.
Yes, he finally was stopped, but he was never truly reigned in by law enforcement systems; when he finally was arrested, he already caused far too much damage. When his actions were reported to the police and Homeland Security and they were laughed out of the room. Larry even already has a felony for prior corruption. But he wasn’t charged with any crime relating to his decade of extortion, trafficking, and violent, emotional, and sexual abuse until someone wrote an article for a major publication detailing it. Essentially, only once law enforcement looked bad for not doing anything while this happened under their nose, did they finally act. Sarah Lawrence’s administration also did nothing when an email went out to students and school leadership staff, including a dean, discussing allegations of abuse.
There’s a reason for that. A large part of American society is grounded in white people LARPing, writing fan fiction, and our propensity to just allow it—if not promote it.
Trump’s famous border wall “that Mexico” will pay for—never occurred. CRT is not teaching “hatred to white people.” Rampant US voter fraud is imaginary. Obama, Clinton, Biden, Kamala, being socialists can’t be farther from the truth. Haitians eating animals outside was not a phenomenon. Immigrants and Arabs and Muslims being a main source of violent crime is patently untrue. Men falsely convicted of sexual assault is a very low percentage—not a likely event for some guy who’s just out here not sexually assaulting anyone. There is no epidemic of trans people harming or indoctrinating children. Background checks and military weapons being banned or restricted to civilians does not, and never has in our nation’s history, even come close to removal of the Second Amendment. And I can go on and on…
This is fantasy. Fictional narratives. What is the difference between these claims and a dystopian graphic novel? Neftlix limited series? Those movies essentially produced by that same dude with the same cast each time with the purpose of saving us from the woke Hollywood libs? The difference is: when white men LARP in powerful positions, fan fiction becomes policy.
What millions of Americans want is a good story. They want someone to consistently tell their story. This especially goes for men, especially white people, and most specifically white men. Evidence, meaningful statistics be damned.
Granted, these stories are somewhat based on reality. Select, incomplete realities. Working class plight in the US is real. People really are struggling economically in rural and urban America. Trouble affording food, healthcare, school, rent is a real national issue and has been for a very long time. Homelessness is real. Certain cities are receiving an influx of migrants. Police violence. Gang violence (though decreasing). Disenfranchisement. Sexual assault. All real.
Where the genre changes from nonfiction to fantasy—is with blame. LARPing, fan fiction needs a villain. It needs entertainment, like any comic, movie, TV show, that reaches our best or worst innate emotions. Fear and hope being dominant ones.
Most people don’t need data, logic to show us a plot, a story that resonates. They need characters to fill that role. A known character to become the villain. They need someone to dress up as Voldemort if we’re gonna LARP Harry Potter in the woods in Putnam County. They need Latino immigrants to be the villain if we’re gonna pretend the true culprit isn’t American capitalism.
Generally, when someone lies, or lives life on their own ‘alternative facts,’ it’s only a matter of time before the other Timb drop. After some point, the scam is put on blast and the scammer loses money. Sometimes those who lost money in the scam get their money back through litigation. And usually, only the people who buy into the scam lose money and time.
But this LARP strain is well beyond just an ordinary scam. It has roots. When millions buy into the same premise, it becomes not a scam, but a social pact, a cult. The person we call a lunatic on the 6 train may be the mayor of a rural town not even 50 miles out of NYC, where his conspiracy theories aren’t theories but canon material to the local community.
No, we are living under a metastasizing scam. And it’s spread throughout our nation’s nervous system.
Because white men LARPing and their enablers of all genders, creeds, and colors, is an ecosystem. Yes, it stays alive in part due to those who voluntary inhabit it, but that ecosystem can truly only exist when even people who are breathing fresh, nonbasic-ass air are forced to live within its confines, too.
Trump’s election serves to validate his fiction—by his fans. The over 70 million who voted for him. It doesn’t make his lies the truth. But it does make his story, their story, the US’ national narrative. One which we all live under, regardless if we believe it.
One of my favorite analogies to use to evaluate whether people’s reactions to something would change based complexion is from A Time to Kill. Before his closing statement, Samuel Jackson tells Matthew McConaughey (Jackson’s attorney), in reference to the all white jury that could convict him for shooting his daughter’s rapists (paraphrasing here): I didn’t pick you because you’re different than them; I picked you because you are them. You know them. Talk to them.
McConaughey, thinks about what his client told him. The next day in his closing statement he opens by saying: “Close your eyes. I want to tell you a story.” Then he lays out all the conditions of the case. With the jury knowing that a father is on trail. A father who sought revenge into his own hands after his daughter, a child, was raped, brutally beaten, and left for dead. McConaughey goes into the graphic details of the assault. Then, he ends his closing statement, the whole time having the white jury think he is describing Samuel Jackson’s Black daughter.
“And now imagine: she was white.”
There is an audible gasp in the court, who did not react with the same level emotion when the details were given to them about the Black girl who was in fact the victim of all the atrocities he just listed. It forced the jury to see their bias.
So let’s lay out all the conditions:
Imagine a felon who misused funds to silence an affair with a porn star, a sex offender with dozens of accusations, someone who interfered in a US presidential election, someone who supported insurrectionists and violence against protestors and political opponents, if not inciting it himself - and has a history of housing discrimination spanning decades.
Imagine someone in their 50s who coerced college students to have sex with him in their dorms and his apartment, who lied about being in the marines, lied about being an intelligence officer, sexually abused women, trafficked women, abused men he deemed weak and extorted them and their working class families to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Now imagine either of those people are a Black man. Or Latino. Or Arab.
Does he get away with any of this? Probably not. It’s nipped in the bud. At the first suggestion he discriminates against renting to white people. At the first time a Dominican man with a darker complexion and an accent is seen too often in a dorm with white co-eds on an elite institution’s campus.
In wake of Trump’s re-election, we can talk about a strategy to reach the majority of the electorate. With or without the Democrats. With or without a third party. But before we can get into any of that—we must acknowledge the problem. The cult of LARP. The cult of white men, and those perpetuating white male supremacy, acting out their fantasies on our time and money and to our detriment.
We must nip White American LARPing and fan fiction in the bud. I’m not saying take every battle. And the onus is certainly not on BIPOC Americans to do such. But, when we can, we must offer a different story. One of a hopeful reality, with blame going to systems not people, to even the most lost, hurt, bitter, and destitute—because without hope, without connecting a better future to their present, there is only desperation. And when people feel desperate, any story will do.
