By Don Hall

I once went to a nerd-party that required everyone to dress as and pretend to be vampires.

A loft apartment on the west side of Chicago filled with doughy, overweight men and women cosplaying this entire code of conduct while drinking wine coolers and eating from buckets of Cheetos. The only signal I remember was the one I used for most of the night: crossing my arms across my chest indicated to the rest of the Nasferatu that I was invisible and thus they pretended not to see me.

I've never truly understood the fascination with this sort of thing. This dress up as someone cooler or sexier than you are and join a gang of sorts thing. I've never wanted to be anyone but myself although I was a stage actor for some time so I suppose I sort of understand.

Not to be disparaging of cosplayers but, in the brief time I spent involved in Renaissance Fairs, the type of person who gravitates toward non-paid dress-up are generally looking for some sort of escape from a life that isn’t measuring up to promised expectations. 

When I was in high school, a friend convinced me to go to the Wichita Renn Fair for an afternoon. I relented but would not dress the part. He did. In full Medieval garb, he greeted me at the entrance and I paid the two dollar admission.

It wasn't bad so much as it seemed excessive. Guys with mullets speaking pigeon-shakespeare selling crafts made of metal and leather. A knife pop-up. Big turkey legs on grills. Flagons of lemonade. A five-piece band playing vintage-like instruments.

An hour or so into walking around, my friend guides me to a large space used for a battle tournament of sorts. Knights in armor wielding Ratan broadswords. He had entered my name into the contest. My name was called and rousing cheers went all around. He pushed me to the prep area.

"Doth thou possess armor, milord?"

"Armor? No."

"We then shall array thee with garb fitting a knight!"

The "garb" was a series of carpet squares bungee'd around my legs, torso, and arms plus a metal bucket with an eye slit cut out of it. They handed me a wooden broadsword as long as a Volkswagen bumper and told me to fight "with the heart of a lion."

Across from me was a fully armored knight. I mean, this cat had spent some serious cash on his outfit. Chrome and sparkling and looking like he walked right off the set of "Excalibur".

A horn blew and the knight raised his wooden car bumper and ran at me. No one had bothered to tell me this was fake, that it was for show so, in a moment of terror, I clocked this guy. He fell and I proceeded to beat the living shit out of him with my stick. His wife came running over to stop me and took his helmet off. He was shocked and crying and I was permanently banned from the Wichita Renn Fair that day.

These weren't bad people by any stretch but they were folks on the fringe. Dressing up and playing fantasy is one thing but a few of them embrace the lifestyle so firmly, they never find ways to blend into the rest of us.

Conspiracy theories grow during times of institutional failure. If you can't have the life you were promised by your personal and flawed interpretation of the "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" clause at least you can paint yourself as a hero struggling against a greater evil. You can be a knight or a superhero or a great revolutionary.

Which is more plausible?

An evil, all-knowing cabal of pedophiles embedded into all facets of government secretly infiltrating and bringing down America and only a former reality TV star/botched real estate mogul can stop them; or...

The world is suffering from a poorly organized and highly politicized response to a pandemic we saw coming but did nothing to prevent and leaving millions unemployed and in poverty and committing suicide by opiates and rioting in the street for their cause of the day...

Which is supported by actual data?

900,000 employed police officers all harboring bigoted hatred for black people and nefariously finding opportunities to kill them with no regard for iPhone videos being taken of the acts because of systemic racism; or...

0.2% of police in the country entering with bigotry in their brains who are poorly trained and authoritarian in nature abusing a system that refuses to punish officers who break the law while the vast majority find themselves policing poor neighborhoods which are predominantly black in cities due to an entirely separate economic reality...

Who's nuttier?

The dude who fully believes that Trump actually won the election in 2020 but a dark force that includes voters, Republican legislators, Republican governors, postal workers, a dead Latin American dictator, the Republican Attorney General, and Joe Biden conspired to steal it from him; or...

The guy who understands that there are certainly a few mistakes made when tabulating the votes of 160 million people yet the overwhelming end of the vote was a clear Biden victory...

Yes. I am a believer, too. I believe that both extremes are equally lunatic. I believe that the Woke are just as batshit crazy as the Proud Boys. I believe that Scientologists and Flat Earthers and Critical Race Theorists and Baptists are all on the same platform of nutters. I believe that these zealots for specific theories that have almost zero basis in reality are ideological cosplayers, dressing up as the heroes struggling against a great evil they have conjured like a guy in a suit of armor who works as a barista during the week.

I do not recommend we take them too seriously because, ultimately, that gets you banned from the Wichita Renn Fair permanently.