Some people role play to escape the dreariness of their day-to-day lives. Some people role play to bring back childhood memories. Some people role play to explore fantastical worlds of their own creation. I role play because I want to know the answer to the question “What if powerful and intimidating Bar Rescue host Jon Taffer interrupted anime demons having cybersex on Twitter?”

For those who are unfamiliar, Bar Rescue is essentially Kitchen Nightmares, but with bars and clubs instead of restaurants. It is the greatest show on TV. Jon Taffer is like if Gordon Ramsay was from New York and gesticulated wildly about a hundred times more often. He is my hero. For the similarly uninitiated, anime cybersex roleplay consists of people pretending to be anime characters, often with supernatural powers, and acting out explicit sex scenarios on Twitter. The worlds of anime cybersex roleplay and Bar Rescue are rarely combined.

At first, many of the role players just ignored me.

Eventually, they started to respond.

I understood the Twitter role play community to be quite open and accepting, but apparently the one thing they can’t abide is criticism of their bars - or the implication that they owned bars at all.

In fact, the more I role played, the less people wanted anything to do with me.

You can’t help those who won’t help themselves. But Taffer’s methods can work, if you’re willing and hard working, even if you’re chained to a wall.

I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration to say that my Taffer role play was the most important social exercise since the Stanford Prison Experiment. But what did we learn? Well, @Death_In_Red is still in denial about even owning a friggin’ bar. @_UkeSlave would rather be shirtless than run a clean establishment. @SparkJolteon was more concerned with “getting off” than “being financially responsible.” But at least I had my one success story, @JennyCasket. I’m proud of her, and I hope somebody has untied her.

Stefan Heck is on Twitter as @Boring_as_Heck. Portions of this post originally appeared on his website.

Top screenshot captured from inc.com. Illustration by z-pico.