Stop LARPing

Borrowed credibility is debt

A founder recently told me they’re going shoe-free in their new office. When I asked why: “Well, everyone else is doing it.”

I scrolled my feed that night. Another founder working from a pool. Another 996 announcement. Another “frontier lab” with three engineers.

None of them have shipped anything meaningful in months.

Everyone’s LARPing. Live Action Role Playing their way through the AI gold rush, adopting costumes without substance.

I know this sounds like old man yelling at clouds. But I can’t shake it. Time is the only thing you don’t get back. Why spend it performing someone else’s rituals instead of finding your own?

The founders I respect don’t have time for this. They’re too obsessed with what they’re building to notice what everyone else is wearing.

The problem isn’t copying. It’s copying signals instead of principles.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal” gets weaponized to justify this. But Picasso didn’t copy African masks. He saw something in them, internalized it, invented Cubism. Copying is wearing the mask and calling yourself a sculptor.

The opposite of copying isn’t originality. It’s observation.

Copiers look at what successful people do. Observers ask why it works, then build from first principles.

Midjourney didn’t copy how AI companies launch. No website. No waitlist. Just a Discord bot where artists already hung out. They asked why artists needed a website at all. Turns out they didn’t.

Before adopting any ritual, ask what problem it solved for the person who invented it. If you don’t have that problem, you’re LARPing.

Borrowed credibility is debt. Eventually someone asks you to show your work.

If you’re going to borrow credibility, borrow it from customers who can’t stop talking about you.