Well, serious in the same way cult members have to be serious.
If you crack and admit it’s fake, everything falls apart and it’s your fault. Expulsion out onto the street follows.
Even worse, now everyone else is going ‘how could you be so dumb to believe it’ and/or ‘you sure fucked up by admitting it was fake’ all at the same time.
I mean.. if you go into with the right frame of mind, it is harmless. It is starts being an issue when you take it seriously and someone ends up with back broken in someone's backyard.
Honestly, I'm really nice to the LDS when they drop by.
My experience has been that Mormons are generally self-aware, polite, and willing the engage in interesting conversation.
In contrast, LinkedIn influencers' eyes glaze over whenever you try to dig into the details of what they're purporting to talk about. Because, ugh, nerd stuff that's beneath them.
It's not because "nerd stuff that's beneath them" but because to a significant portion of the middle management class, the bullshit IS reality. The bullshit is how they get their job, how they function day to day, how they explain themselves to others, how they THINK about themselves etc.
It's much the same as the people who get books ghostwritten and say "I wrote a book". It doesn't matter if you understand someone else wrote it, if you say that in your head or out loud enough, your brain will treat it as reality and you will think it to be reality, and that will effect future thinking and feeling.
It doesn't matter if you are playing a character. Play it convincingly enough and it WILL bleed into your reality.
If you crack and admit it’s fake, everything falls apart and it’s your fault. Expulsion out onto the street follows.
Even worse, now everyone else is going ‘how could you be so dumb to believe it’ and/or ‘you sure fucked up by admitting it was fake’ all at the same time.