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Comment by viscanti | Hacker News Reader

> These standards will likely make officers go after more genuine LARPers than before. These tips are very problematic if police officers start to follow them.

It sounds like it might be a dangerous time to LARP about and plan terrorist acts. That could be very problematic for those who enjoy that as a recreational hobby. But in some ways there's a precedent for it with flying. Lots of people used to love to LARP about taking a bomb on a plane and that recreational activity has been significantly curtailed. Maybe we're heading for a world where it's no longer safe to plan the kidnapping of state or national government officials and then practice the steps necessary to carry it out, and where we can no longer joke about a bomb look-alike device that we want to take on airplanes.

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I have been interested in planning a bank heist (but obviously not following through). It's sort of the same motivation for lockpicking, LARPing, or even homesteading- an exploration of the criminal world, the fantasy of being a Ocean's 11/Clooney type, the (admittedly, likely false) comfort of being able to make a difference if fascists/Russia/China invaded and took over. I have never given this much thought, as I've assumed this counts as conspiracy to commit a crime or similar.

So, counter to your (ironic?) point, I think the existence of this article will make me more likely to explore this avenue- I have a reference for what I would need to do to avoid crossing the line. And counter to what I suspect may be your actual point, I think it is totally reasonable to want to do things like this.

I guess your best bet would be to have someone design a fictional bank to rob.

Yeah, if people who want to LARP as bank robbers could be paired with people who want to LARP as bankers, tellers, and cops, that could be an answer to the incipient commercial real-estate crisis. Just a matter of getting the right people in the same room together.

I would pay money for this, but probably not as much as it would cost (assuming that people who want to LARP as bankers/tellers and can't get those jobs don't really exist).

Perhaps, after the AI singularity, it will become trendy for us all to LARP our former jobs for amusement.

...bank robber?

After the 'happy ending' version of a singularity, nobody will care if you were a bank robber in your previous life.

I would also love to do this, but the closest we'll probably get for a long time is some VR heist game (Payday 2 had a VR mode that was alright, but it comes with all of Payday's unrealism, which is sort of the wrong kind of unrealism for me). It's in that category of "wait for the Holodeck" things.

Not live action - but a lot of this goes on in GTA roleplay servers - you can watch it on Twitch, for example https://twitch.tv/uhsnow

> Lots of people used to love to LARP about taking a bomb on a plane

Really?

He’s making fun of the absurdity of the parent comment

Was there a bombing plane map in Counter Strike? I vaguely remember a not so popular hostage map from way back the day...

The examples were absurd. Take lockpicking hobby as an example and it's a different picture.

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