Or it could be a matter of perspective. Some capsuleers cling to their old lives, and their old sense of self before they were in the pod. Some capsuleers might find their minds turned inwards in the isolation of their lives, and in the darkness of their own minds become monsters made of men who utter to themselves: "Well, you know what this is all rather silly and absurd I'm going to go and drink a vodka red bull".
What's the point in playing a broken character, if you never made up anything whole to be broken in the first place? An individual is still shaped by their background, even if they reject it completely out of force or circumstance.
And here you're presenting it as a choice, but a few posts back, you were sort of condemning roleplaying anything outside of the mechanics as "silly". So it sorta feels like you only really consider one anwser "correct", if you'll pardon the presumption.
Veik, I don't mean to be rude, but your current outlook to this is frankly a bit puzzling to me. MMO roleplay as a general rule almost always has a an on again-off again relationship with the mechanics - In fact, Eve is probably the game in which the two are
most integrated. In pretty much every other MMO, the status quo is to keep the two almost totally divorced when it comes to anything remotely serious. IC conflicts are most often resolved by standing around
writing at eachother. Even /duels are considered a faux-pas in terms of conflict resolution, since the sentiment held by most is that something like
player skill shouldn't get in the way of the story people are trying to tell a story together.
Eve is a lot rougher then that, but it's still a leaf cut from the same branch. It's a good bet that a fair chunk here hold developing their characters and their associated stories as being just as or even more important (which is interchangeable with "fun" here) then the game itself.
Why does that seem to irk you so much? People wanting to make up their own pointless fluff is what makes them roleplayers to begin with. They have a desire to integrate an enthusiasm for creative writing in with their gaming hobby. Just passively playing a character that is essentially only a sockpuppet for ones OOC ingame actions isn't going to scratch that itch in the least. And besides, what one wants to write isn't always the same as what one wants to play.
But if you find that silly, I'm not really certain what to say. I mean... If I might be a little frank, are you sure you actually like MMO roleplaying, such as it is? Do you enjoy the community? Are you having fun, here?