what is roleplaying?

Being a roleplayer is a tough thing really. It requires extremely high intelligence, a lot of money, structured thinking, effort and iron will. You have to remember to bring your dices along (I always screw up this part, though), you have to spend a lot of money on stupid rulebooks full of errors, you have to color your hair and lips and cloths and whatever black all the time.
You somehow have to get your hands on goats in order to sacrifice them to the devil, you need a lugubrious and sound-proof, yet well-ventilated basement in order to fulfill these dark rituals, and last but not least manage not to get too fat whilst mainly feasting upon sweets and coke all day (read: night) long.

People always bug you to fix their computers, which is rather annoying, because they somehow firmly believe that you don’t have any friends and are very easily exploitable as long as offered a little tiny bit of social company as reward. The truth is: roleplayers don’t like people. So … screw you!
Except for when you’re female. No matter how you look, or what other skills you have. Bug me! Being a roleplayer, I shall always do your bidding.

People laugh at us. We’re not the most beautiful subgroup of the human species. As if we would care!
We don’t really fancy showering or brushing teeth. What’s the problem with that?

However, there is one horrible, abominable, detestable, gruesome et cetera (you get the idea) thing that comes automatically with being a roleplayer.
People ask you 5 times per day what roleplaying actually is.

Thank god there is an alternative to arduous explanations now: this summary (in English and German).