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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28346 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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[EDIT: At 24 hrs after my initial post I'll collect all the responses and decide what I want to do with them]

This is a poll question. The idea is to get and understand the people reading this, their takes.

In the optimal scenario, answers wouldn't contaminate the others' responses or reference others' definitions and understanding.

The question: In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC? Again, I'm not looking for any other thinker's or pundit's definitions of the term, but you, the commenter who responds to me. I already know the concept has already been discussed and mentioned, at length, elsewhere.

If you've never heard the term before, give me a guess of what you would think the term means and what information you pull from. Ideally, answers would be spoilered using the double-pipe notation, IE wrapping the answer with a pair of: || around their responses, without referring to anyone else's response.

To avoid contamination, I'll post my own definition as a response to this comment later.

Late to the party but responding before reading other replies.

An NPC is someone who doesn't meaningfully engage with thought on political topics and simply parrots what their peers believe in order to fit in. If tasked with writing anything on their political stance the entire corpus would consistent entirely of empty slogans. Despite having no real political thoughts they still might actively fight the culture war in a kind of zombie state where they're very sure of the correctness of their slogans because they've grasped their shallow message but cannot actually handle any pushback because of how trivial is it so inflict cognitive dissonance on them with just a handful of pointed questions.

They're probably not inherently bad people, they trust their peers are good people and the slogans they're given seem pro social enough that they must come to the conclusion that their opponents are simply evil but they're none the less destructive because it makes most of politics about herding thoughtless voters rather than hashing out substantive disagreements.

The NPC bit is the most fitting in describing the degree to which, once you've identified someone as an NPC, you can almost perfectly assume all of their positions on all topics. Just like NPCs in games these qualities can be abused easily and is the source of many time tested content formats like man of the street being tricked by content creator to make silly statements.

With apologies to Christopher Lasch's Angry Ghost, who said it better than I ever could:

Cultural and linguistic changes rolled out seamlessly and ubiquitously, like overnight operating system updates. No memory or recognition of previous states. Synchronised, technologically enabled cultural obsolescence.

Describing the process describes the people.

When someone calls a real person an "NPC" it usually means that they don't think for themselves. Their opinions on issues are told to them from outside sources, and they don't know how to adjust them when they are exposed to new information.

They are like an NPC in the sense that they behave as though they don't have any agency over their own beliefs.

A person who reacts to a political provocation by mindlessly repeating "party line" statements, usually shibboleths for their side, seemingly without understanding how they are inherently self-contradictory, or without really thinking about their implications at all. See also "sheeple".

I'm just gonna jump on this one, but something like 90% of the replies echoed a similar sentiment.

IMHO, NPCs are not just "normies" or "sheeple" and partisans or run of the mill ideologically captured. These are people you are having a conversation with, which has such a schizoid discontinuity dropped right in the middle, it's like their cognition straight up glitched out. Not "Why does group X vote against (what I think) is their best interest?" pseudo hypocrisy. Not people with different ethical valuations of when the overriding interest of society outweigh a person's right to bodily autonomy. Just a massive, gaping, cognitive glitch. The NPC meme isn't about people repeating the same lines. It's about the jank most NPCs in open world games display.

Like, for example, early on in the pandemic, there was memorial day, a week later BLM riots, and then a week later a massive uptick in COVID. And my local news tried to claim that all the new covid cases a week after massive BLM riots were actually caused by a new variant that spread during memorial day which took an extra week to show symptoms. They, however, are not the NPCs. They are bold faced evil liars.

The NPC is my father in law who digested this whole sale. Who one evening was ranting and raving about all these evil fucking conservatives not quarantining at home (despite the fact that neither he nor his wife meaningfully changed how often they travelled, had family gatherings, went out to eat, saw shows, etc), wanting to go to gyms, or church, or grill outside, or have social gatherings. When I pulled up a photo of a BLM protest, people just piled on top of each other in front of a barricade, his response was that he saw nothing at all wrong with that.

An NPC is someone who does not question their own beliefs or make any effort to be less biased than they are by default. Below a certain IQ threshold, this is because they can't think at that level, but above that threshold, it's because they're too prideful to risk being wrong or too cowardly to risk having a socially unacceptable opinion. This is why I feel far greater animosity towards college-educated wokescolds more than I do ghetto blacks and latinos. Ghetto minorities are told they're a victim, and they don't know how to question it, so they don't. But triple digit IQ leftists of all races should know better. (I'd at least say the black ones were motivated by self-interest if Fox News and Turning Point weren't chomping at the bit to hire Based Blacks.)

Upon reading my above explanation, I realize that the ghetto archetype does fall under my definition of NPC, but I wish to emphasize that it is unethical to use NPC as a pejorative unless you're referring to those who are smart enough to think and choose not to. And to be clear, nobody is obligated to educate themselves. Ignorance is fine. The problem is stubbornly insisting that a popular explanation is the correct one and that people who disagree with it are ignorant or malicious without understanding the thing yourself!

A self-aware person wouldn't be an NPC by definition, no? They're just a PC who isn't roleplaying.

Then there'd be no reason to use it as a pejorative. They wouldn't be guilty of any moral failing, and so criticizing them would be unfair.

That's not how I think of blame. You can't accuse an NPC of anything by definition, they're not in control of themselves (by definition). If that results in the pejorative use collapsing... I guess think of another pejorative? We have pejoratives for players who don't play in the way one considers "correct" or "true".

You're taking the term more literally than I do. I guess I could call these people sheep, then? Maybe lemmings?

An NPC is someone whose opinions are simply received and retransmitted, regardless of political valence or source. Put another way, they are the equivalent of robots executing a speech program thought up and written down by someone else.

In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

Without reading any other replies: An NPC a person who has strong opinions about a given topic with very little understanding of why they have those opinions outside of a bumper-sticker or slogan worth of depth. This can be on either side of the political spectrum from "I support the current thing" to "I don't support the current thing".

what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

NPC. Noun. Internet slang derived from the term non-player character. Usually, though non-exclusively, used by right-wing extremely online types to deride political opponents as having the critical thinking capabilities of a non-player character from a video game, that is, none. Often used to describe those who post on social media about a current event, with the implication being that the individual poster is simply uncritically regurgitating talking points brought to their attention by the mainstream media.

Example sentence: "This guy just started tweeting about Ukraine, I bet he couldn't find it on a map before yesterday. What an NPC."

The idea combines two distincts phenomena in a way I find unhelpful which is why I don't use the term.

The first one is ideological possession. The idea that people can be so devoted to a system of thought or so propagandized that they no longer have a will and have completely predictable behavior. You may have experienced talking to someone who just repeats talking points and thus has a set path for any conversation without thinking. Such conversation feel like talking to a NPC in a video game with predetermined branching patterns and, much like in a video game, if you start going off the predicted path, bugs happen and people will start to have erratic behavior because they're not used to actually having to reason.

The second one is the idea of the unthinking masses in general. The politically disinterested people that comprise most of the human population and are easily swayed by anyone's propaganda. They are not participants in politics in any way, despite whatever the propaganda would have you believe, and were the regime to change they would just support the new regime because ultimately they are not playing the game.

The problem here is that those two cohorts, while overlapping, especially in a democracy, are not the same.

I was going to make the same distinction, but disagree with you that people conflate NPC-dom with ideological possession.

Was just reading "Religious Nationalism and the Coronavirus Pandemic: Soul-Sucking Evangelicals and Branch Covidians Make America Sick Again," in which the author "addresses the wider implications of Christian nationalism on American politics, and capitalist ideology... (and) concludes that privatization, austerity capitalism, and ‘gig economy’ need to be replaced by socialist alternatives and seeks inspiration in theory and practice of Marxism and South American liberation theology."

This is a serious case of ideological brain-rot, but it's not "being an NPC." The author will completely predictably twist literally anything into advocating for maoist revolution, but will do so in creative and original ways despite much of the content being regurgitated stock phrases. And even more importantly he will never change his programming in response to outside input. He should be modeled as a limited AI: a paperclipper for leftism. And I don't think anyone would call him an NPC, despite recognizing him as a no-longer-human pile of brain cancer that exists only to single-mindedly carry out his programming.

The distinction is that NPCs are just making "mouth noises" they don't even understand to have meaning. They can't creatively use those noises to make arguments, even in a rote chinese-room manner, because they don't have a phrase dictionary. They often don't even notice that they're saying or doing mutually contradictory things, like a woman I know who talked about the need to ban gas stoves for the environment while a handyman was installing her new 50kBTU outdoor propane patio heater which feeds from the same tank as her removed gas stove.

So yeah, I think you're right that there are two very distinct patterns of behavior, but that people actually use "NPC" to refer to the correct one. We just need a new word for the other that isn't as niche as "paperclipper."

People use [cause]bot, I think.

like a woman I know who talked about the need to ban gas stoves for the environment while a handyman was installing her new 50kBTU outdoor propane patio heater which feeds from the same tank as her removed gas stove.

Some people are so lacking in understanding that they don't even know when they're using the wrong units.

Using "BTU" to mean "BTU per hour" is the accepted terminology for natural-gas- and propane-powered appliances in the US.

Stupid, but industry-standard.

Wrong unit? Her old gas stove did have the correct propane jets, if that's what you mean.

BTU is a unit of energy. The relevant parameter for engines or other energy-conversion devices is power, energy per unit time. Some quick googling indicates that the convention in the patio heater business is to quote BTU ratings with an implied "per hour", so a 50kBTU patio heater outputs 50,000 BTU per hour (for anyone still wondering what the hell that means, 50,000 BTU is about 2 liters of liquified propane).

This sounds pedantic, but this implied unit convention is far from universal. In some industries, the "BTU value" of something has implied units of energy-per-unit-volume or energy-per-unit-weight. I had enough context in your example to know that there was an implied "per unit time" involved, but I didn't know immediately if it was per second, per minute, per hour, or per day.

Hourly btu is a standard unit of measure everywhere. Air conditioners are always listed as some multiple of "12,000BTU" all over the world.

For reference, a gas range will also be about 50kBTU (per hour), if you turn all the burners on including the oven burners.

Without reading other comments: It's mostly just a snarl word like 'sheeple' that gets thrown at people with a high degree of social conformity, specifically conformity to the rules a tribe that the snarl-er doesn't particularly like. 'Our partisans are loyal and incorruptible, their partisans are brainwashed and radicalized', etc. If there's something useful to the term, its that some tribes and ideologies really do put outsized importance on loyalty and ideological purity, with cults being at the far end of the spectrum and generally recognized as a bad thing. But calling someone an NPC (or a cultist) only turns up the heat, which is seldom useful but particularly bad here as everyone's close-minded and defensive while participating in a flame war, which gives the actual zealots cover.

An NPC is someone who can be modelled well enough (like most useful ordinary English words, it isn't binary) as a "stock character" of some type or another. If you can describe them to a friend in ten words or less, and the friend can use those ten words plus standard stereotypes to predict their behaviour well enough, then they are a central example of NPCdom. For example, people who fit the stereotypes of "fat socially awkward programmer" or "MAGA Facebook Boomer" or "Person of Hair Colour" is a good description of someone.

The opposite of an NPC is someone who requires a bespoke model to predict their behaviour.

I think the term has value, but I also think most people who would unironically use it are in fact NPCs.

The useful Motte version of the term is someone who thinks not at all about issues and just regurgitates whatever talking points they have gotten from their side, such that they seem to be saying the same canned dialogue as everyone else in town, ala an NPC from a video game. This is a real phenomenon, and it is annoying to see. Even when people are not literally saying the same thing it is a ton of people saying basically the same thing. And it is particularly vexing that the things that tend to become NPC dialogue are the pithiest and least interesting things, and never the interesting content I wouldn't mind becoming widely talked about. Most commonly this is an insult which can be thoughtlessly deployed to explain why you don't need to actually engage with anything someone on the other side has said.

However, people who use the term have basically just received an insulting pithy meme about the left which they deploy as a thoughtless way to dismiss left wingers who disagree with them. Again, I think the Motte of this term is useful, and once it is explained you will see it in the wild, and it has explanatory power, and thinking about how to address the issue would be valuable. But I don't think I have ever seen it used except in the most blatant Baily fashion imaginable.

Literally, it means a character in a video game who is not controlled by the player.

In memes, it means an unthinking conformist, a person who accepts propaganda as if being programmed by it.

In practice, 90% of the time when it is used, the person who is calling someone else an NPC is a right-wing conformist who disagrees with his target's left-wing conformism.

Someone whose views are the average of the media they consume or the friends they keep. They do not seriously evaluate a given topic or problem and come to their own conclusion on it, instead preferring to delegate to trusted figures of authority. Often, their views are wanting to be seen as on the "correct" side of history or to avoid judgement from peers.

Example: I will briefly talk about a colleague I work with. At the start of 2020, when Covid was emerging on the scene, he was making fun of another colleague for looking at the Covid death toll. He dismissed concerns about China's handling of the virus as it being worthy of concern, saying that "China is always like that" Fast forward 6 months, he has become a staunch supporter of lockdown measures, demanding that the government keep schools closed and expressing scorn on the wishes of some people to perform outdoor activities like sports. This disdain was not extended to the BLM protests. It is nearly 2 years on from the end of Covid. He now jets out to other countries almost every weekend.

Someone whose views are the average of the media they consume or the friends they keep. They do not seriously evaluate a given topic or problem and come to their own conclusion on it, instead preferring to delegate to trusted figures of authority.

This definition is inadequate because it describes everyone. Do you think it's an accident that 99% of your objective beliefs and moral opinions are those of a 21st century educated westerner rather than, say, an 8th century BC Scythian herdsman? Did you personally validate your belief that Jupiter is a gas giant with several moons or did you trust an authority figure? Are you an NPC because you did?

IMO the litmus test of NPC is receiving "updated information" from trusted figures that contradicts previously received beliefs/values, and not experiencing any kind of cognitive discomfort. The 2020-2022 period was full of these sorts of War with Eastasia/Eurasia heel turns from the tastemakers, which is why the meme emerged then.

which is why the meme emerged then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) the term was first used in a political context in 2018, it predates Covid.

The 2020-2022 period was full of these sorts of War with Eastasia/Eurasia heel turns from the tastemakers, which is why the meme emerged then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) the term was first used in a political context in 2018, it predates Covid.

I checked the Google Trends data. "NPC" had a spike in 2018, returned to baseline, and then was revived in late February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, and has been double to triple baseline since.

It's a bit like how "gaslighting" originated from a 1938 play. The term was lying around dormant and picked up later. In the case of NPC, it was the mass fast turn of online progressives from talking about covid vaccines to talking about Ukraine.

I also see a small spike around May 2020. I wonder did this coincide with the "protests are bad because they'll spread Covid (unless they're pro-BLM, in which case they're fine)" flip-flopping from public health officials?

I also see a small spike around May 2020. I wonder did this coincide with the "protests are bad because they'll spread Covid (unless they're pro-BLM, in which case they're fine)" flip-flopping from public health officials?

This would be a good explanation if the spike didn't peak the week before George Floyd died. I think it must be general disdain for Covid conformism, or for democrats becoming the most strident proponents for NPIs after opposing anti-Covid measures as xenophobic up until February.

Objectivity does not factor in to whether someone is an NPC or not. NPCs are primarily concerned with morality over all else. Whether the Scythian Goat Herder goes along with the decisions of his clan in all cases or whether he can manage to question some of the poorer ones, that is what makes him an NPC, not questions about a planet he cannot adequately see with his primitive technology.

This definition is inadequate because it describes everyone.

I consume large mounts of progressive media. This media does not make me think like a progressive; mainly it makes me very angry a lot of the time.

Your point on trusting authority figures is well-taken; we all have to do that, but who you pick as an authority figure and why matters. People who uncritically default to assigning the media they consume as "authority figure" are doing it wrong, and such people are not hard to find.

Let me give an example that I think really highlights NPCism.

If you've played any Bethesda role playing game, you've seen it. These games have hoards of NPCs, with a generic pool of NPC phrases. You'll hear dozens of random NPCs echoing the same 6 phrases in a given location over and over and over again. But we aren't to true NPCism just yet.

There will be a quest giver in this town. He is the specific NPC that tells you to act on one of the 6 or so "rumors" you've heard all the other NPCs repeat ad nauseum. Like maybe you've heard over and over again "I hope the princess is ok" muttered as you pass by various NPCs. You walk up to this guy, and he confides in you that the princess is dead, however for the stability of the kingdom, a lookalike has been found. You must escort her, secretly, into the castle. This must be done because an impending marriage/alliance requires a living princess. You close the dialog, about to partake on this important quest, and then the NPC mutters "I hope the princess is ok".

MOTHER FUCKER! WE JUST HAD A 5 MINUTE CONVERSATION THAT THE PRINCESS IS FUCKING DEAD!

This is true NPCism. And the number of times I have no shit had that happen to me in real ass life has black pilled me so fucking hard I'm beyond recovery.

…are there any elder scrolls games that actually have a princess?

CHECKMATE, MONARCHISTS.

Sir, this is an Empire.

I think Daggerfall certainly had. That game was a true gem, also the only game in the series as far as I know that had prostitution (without mods).

Daggerfall didn't have prostitution in the final release. At one point it was meant to but this was removed to lower the age rating. The assets themselves were kept, hence why whenever you walked into a temple half the characters therein were dressed in a priestly fashion and the other half weren't wearing any clothes.

I think princess Elysana of Barenziah fame.

Motte: someone who does not have the ability or interest to analyze a political issue for themselves, and instead repeats whatever arguments or slogans they have received from their 'side' and cannot make much of a considered argument past this.

Bailey: Someone who disagrees with me and doesn't immediately change their mind when I offer my one stunning comeback that should demolish their position.

Someone whose opinions and actions are purely formed in response to their informational environment; who toes the line about anything from COVID origins to which movie to watch. They are thus merely reactive to the world around them, like an NPC from a videogame.

i did read the other replies so consider me contaminated. But it’s remarkable to me that no one seems to have given the original meme meaning someone who does not possesses an inner monologue. I guess there is little cross polination here and the places where these memes generate.

I’ve never come across this idea. Isn’t that the definition of a P-zombie?

But it’s remarkable to me that no one seems to have given the original meme meaning someone who does not possesses an inner monologue.

I think that's implied in many of the definitions I've read.

That said, slurs have a gravitational pull towards incoherent raw disdain. Karen went from "Entitled middle-aged woman who abuses lowly customer service employees because she thinks she's important" to "Woman I don't like" in a couple months. NPC is well on its way.

NPC is well on its way.

It became that almost instantly, you mean.

Someone whose political opinions are entirely derived from and dependent on "programming" by authorities or community leaders, rather than own deliberation. Accordingly, they get distraught or angry if confronted with an argument or asked to take a position on a topic that they have not received guidance on (i.e. don't know the safe/accepted response to), resulting in what's derided as "going off script".

I take 'NPC' to mean someone who can talk to you using canned dialogue, but can't understand what you say or meaningfully respond. They can respond with a set of canned clapbacks if you use one of the 2-5 lines they have a prepared response to, and they can be reprogrammed with new canned dialogue, but they can never have a true conversation because they can't (or won't) seriously engage with a discussion and come up with novel responses of their own. Hence, NPC, because it's like talking to a video game character.

I think the term is basically just a sneer word, akin to "chud," "normie," "incel," etc. So in that sense the definition is flexible. But I think the intended meaning is "a person who uncritically follows consensus (especially PMC consensus) and avoids thinking independently."

If I was asked to explain it to someone unfamiliar, like my grandmother:

It’s calling someone predictable to the point of mockery. The idea is that they’re regurgitating phrases from the media instead of thinking. Basically an updated version of “sheep,” and like that term, really just a pejorative.

I think that’s a good enough definition for someone who only heard the term because, I don’t know, MSNBC called it racist.

NPC: A person who acts in the manner of an automaton. One where their actions and communications fail to show individual agency.

While people are answering the poll question, I've seen little commentary on the history. As I remember, NPC first became a term from a tweet that went viral in certain dissident right spaces (at least that's how I heard it).

It was a study about self-reported internal monologues, and how a surprising (to some) fraction of people report "not having an internal monologue." I think this tweet went viral among people with a certain personality trait, I would guess: unusually introspective, high verbal IQ people who have some sort of emotional baggage that make them feel scorn for their more ape-like peers.

The term NPC as opposed to sheeple or anything else probably resonated with this audience because it is a videogame term and lets the group bond. If a more general term was used then the meme would not have been as viral to this audience.

You still see viral tweets really similar to these ones, for example, one involving a survey and glass of water rotated, and something else i can't remember. These tweets usually have un-PC results, like clear differences between how men and women answer the questions.

This audience is anti-woke so naturally NPC would become applied to more partisan politics, especially with how the modern information landscape quickly changes mainstream narratives about COVID, protests, etc.

Considering the point of the comment was a poll where I asked for off-the cuff, personal definitions, it would seem natural that people who wanted to participate in the conversation would avoid going unspoiled and meta in their initial response comments.

We've had some excellent responses, and most everyone seems to have gravitated toward a similar definition!

At 24 hrs from the time of my post or so depending on how buys I am, I'll post a more full examination of my comment and from where I picked up my definition. Obviously, I had far more time to think about my answer before I made this comment.

My Definition: when I think of the term NPC, I think of a person who explicitly has no (or low) moral worth. It is a pejorative, if perhaps, one of the strongest-grade pejoratives I can sling. NPCs are to be used for benefit of the player character, otherwise able to be ignored.

NPCs are not just predictable. Adding randomness to an npc doesn't make it any more interesting or agentic. They pick up an exact script- not just regurgitating the arguments given to them by others/the gods/more agentic, but the very conversations you can have with an NPC are limited to what the script allows. The things they say, the way they say them, and the things the NPC does are all limited to what the script allows the NPC to talk about. You may talk to them, and they may only have the same things to talk about as anyone else or it might be unique. But come back in a month and they'll still be talking about the same things. Therefore, people who cannot escape NPC-hood are people who get magnetized on to certain topics, and can only talk about things within the script's allowed overton window.

I think you’re spending too many words to say it, but I agree that one of the key ones is pejorative. The main reason to use the term is to convey that the subject is Bad; the specifics are secondary.

After the 2nd sentence of my definition, the rest is just additional flavor and contextualizing details, yeah.

I basically take it to mean uncritical consumers of mainstream media, they'll see something on CNN, and let it form their opinions without thinking 'is this something I should believe?' (obviously this is very common behavior, and by no means particularly confined to mainstream media, plenty of people treat Fox News or whatever else is their favorite input similarly, the terms specifically, is cultural war coded to mean consumers of mainstream media though, especially during the Trump era, hear a specific bad thing about Trump, accept it as truth without doing any filtering)

NPC: A person who adopts and discards ideas based on social status rather than truth status in his/her own internal system of values.

An NPC is someone who doesn't form their own opinions, who reads off a script or recites rote platitudes as if designed by a central developer. This is most common in cases where there are thought-terminating cliches to rely on (trans women are women, my body my choice, expand the franchise, believe women).

Since I read the Comments feed by default instead of the posting hierarchy, I got contaminated by one other reply initially, but I think I course-corrected back to my own internal definition. (If you’re doing the same when you see this, read the context first. It’s a sort of game/poll.)

An NPC is someone predictable who goes through life behaving as if they don’t have agency except over specific things they’re allowed to change. They may feel they’re the main character in their own lives, but to everyone around them, and more importantly, to the government and to major corporations, they’re as predictable as a scripted townsfolk character in a video game. Even their contrariness ends up expressed in predictable ways; they go for a predictably rebellious attitude against the wrongs they perceive from the government, corporations, and others with power. When someone acts as if their worldview isn’t the only and true world, or makes a choice that’s off-script, or calls out the NPC’s predictability, they get confused and possibly upset. I’m a libertarian and Objectivist, in case that aids in the data collection.

After reading other replies, I’ll add the key is memetic thinking and memetic believing. I’ve made a conscious effort, ever since reading Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie, to examine my thoughts for memes and, when found, deconstruct them into their logical and emotional components. This is how I can loudly declare myself both a libertarian and a Trump supporter, for instance; they’re memetically incompatible due to emotional dissonance, but I find these stances logically compatible.

I wouldn’t mind hearing more about that compatibility.

Trump has a couple standout policies (especially regarding the border) that don’t seem to fit. His foreign policy was a mixed bag. Everything else on his platform is non-unique, and basically just imports the RNC planks. Paternalistic on social issues, libertarian on regulatory issues.

But you don’t need Trump to do that. I think a block of wood could do an equivalent job, so long as you nailed a list of Federalist Society judges to it. It’d probably spend less money on golf, too.

There are three main aspects to every successful enterprises: production, logistics, and marketing. Trump is the loudest marketer of Republican policies and paleo-libertarian and republican ideals since Reagan and Limbaugh; his great accomplishment has been awakening the Republicans, conservatives, blue-dog Democrats, independents, class-conscious freedom-conscious liberals, and right-libertarians to the depth of the deep state and the breadth of its control.

The Republican Party has marketed itself to its voter base as “We’ve got clear perceptions of the world and the best policies. Vote us into power and we’ll fix everything.” But at the top levels of state and national politics, they’re all centrist blue tribers who read WaPo and watch CNN, and get their ideas of Republicanism from The Atlantic.

The Libertarian Party is a perpetual joke except when the progressives need a spoiler against the conservatives. Online, the anarchists have taken over from the lassaiz-faire advocates.

Trumpism as a movement is about trying to reinstall the republic as the power center of America, the constitution instead of the cathedral. His speeches and his foreign policy are about America as the last bastion of freedom from tyrannical governance, and tyrannical governments react to him and his as if this is true.

He succeeded at tax cuts toward the Laffer Curve until 2025, keeping America out of new wars during his term, and a historic shift in Supreme Court judgeships including keeping Merrick Garland out of office. He also exposed the suspicious voting irregularities and surprisingly legal election strategies which resulted in more votes being counted for Biden. He made it clear just how big the fight against communism-in-all-but-name is.

He’s done more publicly for marketing the cause of liberty (the purpose of America) through memes than most people with power over policy. That’s why I voted for him the second time.

He also perfectly embodies self-interest as a virtue, something libertarians have gotten away from since Ayn Rand. I trust him to work for his own best interests far more than any public-minded politicians, which is the primary reason I voted for him the first time.

The question: In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

I'm not a huge fan of the meme, since it tends to be pretty dismissive in the same way that the Bingo Cards are, but I think there are a few different variants:

  1. A speaker is presented who has a shallow, simple political perspective, which they repeat often as a slogan, usually with the expectation that no one could reasonably disagree or even that a factual basis is relevant. The NPC meme here references the Welcome to Corneria problem in video game design.

  2. The speaker has a shallow political perspective which has been 'programmed' into them. This doesn't necessarily mean a sinister sort of way -- it can be a perspective that they already agreed with and the 'programming' is just a bunch of snappy slogans -- but it's usually meant to imply that the speaker at least hasn't really investigated the principles underlying that slogan. See here for a parody of the perspective. For a steelman, see the criticisms here of even counterculture speakers often reacting to whatever becomes the mainstream media focus de jour until it gets dropped for a new shiny.

  3. The speaker lacks agency or principles to want anything but whatever script is given to them. Cfe here for an explicit example, here or here for more typical usage.

In point #2, I think the second "here" is missing a hyperlink.

Someone who regurgitates a script written by someone else, implying a lack of ability or inclinaison to think for themselves. Instead they will typically repeat what they heard on TV or read in a book (NPCs can be well read too) and resort to fully general counterarguments if pushed outside of their script.

In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

That the person using it is a pain in the backside that thinks they're so deep and intelligent, unlike the sheeple. Contempt for the ordinary person. Loves to talk about 'low-information voters' and 'IQ 90' and 'normies'. Waste of my time reading whatever they have to say.

IQ 90 as an insult? True brainchads consider "IQ 130" to be an insult.

Sounds like that person has a script for political discussion, as if they were a “contrary”-type townsfolk programmed to give predictable dialogue. An NPC, as it were; after you’ve spoken with them once, you never need to again, as you know approximately what they’ll say as the culture war unfolds.

Someone who is generally in line with the latest orthodoxy but doesn’t really have any convictions. The kind of person who could easily say “we’ve always been at war with East Asia” with zero cognitive dissonance. They don’t really care about politics from a policy perspective but do care from a signaling perspective.

Generally today “liberal.” There are NPCs though on the political right.

I recommend using the double pipes (||) at the start and end of each paragraph, as requested by the OP.

An NPC is somebody who makes statements or has beliefs but doesn’t have the basis to derive those beliefs on their own.

For instance somebody might say that we should support Ukraine in the war, it wouldn’t be able to reach this conclusion on their own from first principles.

Or they might say something about coming climate catastrophe, but be unable to articulate why, or how, or what that means, or why it’s bad.

An NPC’s worldview is entirely made up of received opinions. A great example I think most people here are familiar with are internet atheists. These are people who will make very strong claims about morality or philosophy, but generally refuse to detail why they think these things or what these things might mean. Another example (although I think it’s basically the same group) is the “I fucking love science” crowd.

I recommend using the double pipes (||) at the start and end of each paragraph, as requested by the OP.

I don’t understand the point of that.

So that a person's knee jerk response doesn't get contaminated by reading other people's first.

I made the change but I just responded before reading anything else

Is there a single person reading the motte that hasn’t heard the term NPC?

You can just read the text by clicking on it. Hiding it all behind “spoiler” blocks breaks the purpose of a forum and seems pointless and honestly just seems like OP being cheeky in asking people to do something pointless and counterproductive, on a post about NPCs, without explaining why.

“Hey guys explain what an NPC is and also do this completely pointless thing which is detrimental to the function of this place and also I won’t explain why. Have fun.”

Do what you like, it was only a suggestion.

I can't say I've ever heard it. That being said, I have no basis for responding because, as far as I know, it could be anything.

An NPC is someone who takes their opinions from their local friends circle and the media. They generally believe what TV, social media and mass media tell them to. They tend to have entirely crafted their hobbies and interests around the most popular things in their social circles and social media spaces. They don’t have any eclectic tastes, no indie music or media, no offbeat fashions, no weird hobbies, no unconventional sports or activities.

The reason I think this happens is partially that we exist in a media-saturated world in which simply turning on any media will soak the viewers in the opinions of professional tase and opinion makers. The popular stuff is easy to find on TV and radio (thus, even for self-confessed nerds, the fandom of the big two sci-fi franchises is orders of magnitude larger than the rest, and the same happens with Anime and fantasy series), the top 40 hits are easily found on streaming services and the radio, and the top books of any genre are available just about anywhere. The other reason is that most people have never really been taught critical reasoning skills unless they major in a subject that requires them to use it. K-12 schools like to talk about how they “teach critical thinking”, but they actually don’t. What they teach is canonical fallacy lists, trust of cathedral approved sources, and to belief whatever the consensus opinions on science are at the moment.

I am assuming you are not asking what I think others mean when they use the term NPC but rather what kind of person I think would be somewhat fairly described by it. You asked for an off-the-cuff definition rather than an exercise in conceptual analysis, so here goes:

Being an NPC describes a particular mode of relating to hot-button cultural or political issues. An NPC is someone that does not only go with the flow of popular opinion but feels the need to uncritically regurgitate it, almost as a social reflex. NPCs do not think about the principles behind their opinions, they simply download the newest set of socially approved talking points from twitter or acquire them through social osmosis. Notably, this leads to a lot of internal contradictions in their thinking that they do not seem to care about at all. NPCs hold their opinions to gain social approval or to signal their membership in the tribe of good people, not because they arrived at them via critical examination.

This makes it extremely frustrating to talk to them because they will not respond to reasoning. And if they temporarily do, they will have reverted to their original position the next time you talk to them. This is because you, the autistic rationalist, and him, the NPC, speak two different languages. It is a bit like someone saying "What a beautiful day today" to cheer people up and signal their good spirits and you start with "ackshually, we are below the historical mean for sun hours this season". He will get mad because you entirely missed his point. It's not about the weather, it's about making nice and being a good person (TM). The tragedy is that he has to pretend (and sometimes believe) that he's really making a point about the weather.

"NPC" is a slur that implies the person mindlessly parrots the consensus opinion on every matter, the opposite of "I do my own research by reading Facebook"

I dispute your use of the word "implies". I think the term "NPC" is literally saying that people do that, not "implying" it.

I don't think it's wholly equivalent to saying it directly (like saying "don't be a Jew" is not equivalent to "you should share this with me"), but I don't think we disagree enough to warrant a debate.

Someone who gives the appearance of a human without being one. In other words, someone who gives the appearance of thought and reason, but is actually just outputting the latest script given to them by the Party, or else a weighted average of what they hear from other people. Because an NPC’s behaviour depends on scripting not thought, it can change at a moment’s notice in any required direction.

I should note that this kind of thing makes me very twitchy. The kind of people who talk about NPCs (including my friends) are generally smug jerks whose own opinions are far less impressive and well-justified than they think. However, I must admit that when I see the speed and inconsistency of people’s responses to Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, etc. I can’t help feeling that this does seem to be true for an awful lot of people an awful amount of the time.

There is an implication that the people using the term are not, themselves NPC's, however, even a cleverly written script that breaks the fourth wall doesn't mean the character is actually a complete agent.

Someone who talks about issues only on terms of memorized talking points, and who lacks either the ability or willingness to express any kind of original thought.

I was about to say that an NPC is an ideological basic bitch, but there are also NPCs whose memorized talking points come from non-mainstream sources.

Another failed attempt by largely reactionaries and people close to reactionaries in their 954th attempt to be the cool countercultural group fighting The Man, but then will be surprised again when the only people using the wording are online weirdos.

A bit boo-outgroup and antagonistic. Less of this please.

what happened in 2016 which saw every major platform weaponized in order to ban or heavily restrict those failed online reactionaries?

online reactionary weirdos meme a president into the white house and Principled Republicans will never forgive them for it

So failed Twitter literally had to ban back in the day.

It's just a vague term to, ideally, refer to people who aren't smart or aren't engaging with politics with the care and subtlety it deserves. People who enthusiastically embrace whatever the party line is of their subculture without thinking too much about it. But in practice, in the current_year, it's mostly "the other team is bad and wrong and they believe everything for stupid reasons", and the people who use the term are as much "NPCs" in an objective sense as the targets.

An NPC is someone who chooses their positions based on answering the question of "what would someone in my role/context believe" rather than "what do I personally think is best/true". Someone could be an NPC in the context of national politics while having strong opinions about how the local HOA is run, or vice versa.

Since we're now so low in the comment chain, no need to spoiler, but: this line of thought is something I had in mind while thinking about my own definition.

Obviously the term changes based on who uses it. If Peter Thiel or Elon Musk call a group of people NPC's, that has different connotations than if a fellow commenter on this forum use the term. "Everyone is the player character in their own story" and all that.

An NPC is a person essentially lacking in higher reasoning abilities who blindly accepts whatever propaganda they are expected to swallow and unquestioningly follows the herd on any political issue, fashion trend or aesthetic question. If they have ever had an independent thought, it was a long time ago, and the experience was so frightening that they are determined it shall never happen again.

They are rarely actively stupid, but have a paralysing fear of being seen to be nonconformist or being exposed as more stupid or uninformed than they present themselves to be (you will rarely encounter an NPC pleading ignorance on a political question), and hence are very keen to "read the room" and determine what the "consensus" is on any given issue as quickly as possible. Being seen to be "correct" and "one of the good ones" is far more important than determining the truth of a given issue. Indeed, it's not obvious that NPCs can even understand the distinction between "the truth" and "the (local/expert) consensus".

Because they acquired the opinions they hold through osmosis and social conformity, they have only a surface-level understanding of any given political issue. Hence, arguing with them is usually pointless, as attempting to push or challenge them on any position they claim to hold will quickly devolve into accusations of bad faith or attempts to shame or dismiss the interlocutor (as the NPC would rather accuse others of being racist or similar than risk being exposed as an intellectual lightweight or confront the possibility that the "expert" "consensus" on some issue might be mistaken or even knowingly deceptive). The only way they can be persuaded to change their minds is to change the minds of the people around them and/or to change the narrative being promoted by the powers that be. This also makes it extremely easy for them to adapt to sudden changes in the prevailing narrative: unlike a person who arrives at their opinions through debate, reasoning and reflection, they don't feel the sting of cognitive dissonance or hypocrisy when they change their tune. They can move smoothly from war with Eurasia to war with Eastasia without a second thought.

Their surface-level understanding of politics and middling intelligence leads them to be very heavily dependent on political slogans, thought-terminating clichés and deepities to shore up the deficiencies and cognitive dissonance inherent in their worldview. In this and several other regards, the term is functionally interchangeable with "duckspeaker", coined by Orwell in 1984, meaning a person who quacks like a duck, reciting political orthodoxy mechanically without any intervention from the higher brain functions: "it was not the man's brain that was speaking, it was his larynx."

In short, someone whose opinions and tastes are memetically absorbed, and who thinks in memes instead of reason?

I hadn't really thought of it that way, but that's certainly one way of looking at it.

This is probably the best answer so far.

The "off-the-cuff" remark by the OP implied to me some concern for brevity.

Brevity has never been my specialty, I'll admit.

Thank you. Certainly the most long-winded, at any rate. I was a little embarrassed after posting my answer to scroll down and see everyone else had answered the prompt in two or three sentences.

I've never been a fan of the word, and in particular I think the strong forms simply don't exist and are just pure insults. But if I were to offer a definition that describes a reasonable percentage of people (which nevertheless is still very negative):

Someone who's susceptible to peer-pressure to the degree that the majority of their social behaviour can be explained through it, and who has a strong tendency to backwards-reason their own behaviour (i.e. they first behave a certain way for one reason, and then later justify it, including to themselves, with another).

A person for whom having political opinions and “being informed” are the same thing, when they come across novel opinions, their primary emotional reaction is one of a tattle tale in a classroom “but that’s not what the rules say”

Mindless drone, though updated with the latest algorithm to parrot the right ideas

Other people with mainstream opinions that I disagree with.

Before looking at anything else my definition of NPC:

A human being who mostly uncritically accepts what his social environment tell him and comes to believe it without much skepticism. Someone who is able to do their job which they were trained for, but if you put them in an even slightly novel situation would end up "overloading". Someone not really able to think on the spot. Someone who scores lower than stuff like GPT-4 on tests which are proxies of IQ and thinks this is not an issue with themselves. Someone for whom "you are the average of the 6 people you spend the most time with" is true.

I think NPC-ness is characterized primarily as someone who contributes no cognitive work to a discussion or topic, and simply absorbs and regurgitates memorized lines that they heard from someone else. Not only can you not change their mind by talking to them, but you will not learn anything that you couldn't have learned by listening to pretty much any talking head on the same side of the issue. It's not so much that they're irrational or failing to be rational or even incapable of being rational: they're not even trying to be rational. They are not engaging the critical thinking part of their brain, at least with regard to the issue or set of issues at hand. X says Y, they trust X, therefore Y.

To me, the two first sentences are somewhat at odds, especially together with the last sentence. Using your definition, can't you gain their trust and then change their opinion?

The trusted people are often authority figures such as politicians, news anchors, or celebrities that they don't actually know in real life, and you are not and could never become. Though they can also be influenced by more close trusted people such as friends and family. Thus, if you befriend an NPC you can potentially change their mind on issues, but this is a package deal, you grind reputation which allows influence on all beliefs simultaneously, and requires an awful lot of effort if your goal was one particular idea. They aren't deciding on their beliefs based on the object level ideas of those beliefs, but on their relationships of the people espousing them.

I don't know that reputation copying is the only way an NPC can treat beliefs, The core characterization of the NPC is the ignoring of logic and object level facts about the beliefs because they're formed for completely unrelated reasons, so you could have different subclasses. And obviously pretty much no one in real life is literally a pure NPC to this extreme of a level, but the more similar someone comes to this archetype the more appropriate the label becomes.

An individual who unthinkingly repeats views and ideas popularised by other sources without any alteration or introspection.

someone who has put little to no thought into their political opinions, and can only parrot talking points that they saw on Reddit or twitter or TV or their friend group. When challenged they will >:^l as per the meme because they are incapable of arguing the point because they don't even really understand their own points.

Someone who repeats the same lines over and over without thinking.

Someone who does not reflect and critically examine their beliefs. It seems like they just parrot the views of the people around them. They didn't arrive at their views through reason, so reason is ineffective in changing their minds. Maybe this is just borne of my frustration talking to people IRL, and why I don't do it anymore.

NPC: An npc is an extreme conformist. An evolution of the sheep brought about by today's rapidly changing information space. Whereas a sheep may blindly follow a specific ideology an npc's beliefs can be updated, or patched, on the fly as new information is released. This gives them an incoherence that their ancestors such as the religious sheep lack, "Hey Wei remember how Dave went off on you last week for buying up those N95 masks and then tried to give you a hug despite covid spreading? I saw him at the grocery store today, he was double masking and had a disinfecting wipes holster on his belt. What an NPC."

Someone doing that today wouldn't be a conformist, certainly. Even at the height of Covid, double-masking, carrying disinfectant wipes etc. was not something I remember actually seeing anyone doing and would have marked the person doing it as not conforming to the social mores, which would have perhaps meant wearing one of those flimsy blue or white masks for a time and then dropping it when everyone else dropped it. Current zero covidians - whom I disagree with and have argued with repeatedly - are anything but conformist in the sense of conforming to current actual social norms, but I still keep seeing those gray NPC wojak memes about them implicating that they're what is meant by NPC.

I seem to recall you are in Finland? Is that right?

In the NY area, it was very common to see people double masking, masking by themselves in a car, masking and have a face shield, etc.

Sure, it might have been different in the blue areas in United States (probably the genuine epicenter of this sort of a reaction anywhere), but even then the point is that the clear majority of people, even in those areas, is not doing those things now. People who continue doing those things aren't doing it to be conformist, quite the contrary.

Current zero covidians are not NPCs, the NPC's have had their beliefs patched since 2022 and now don't mask.

A broken NPC in a town who regurgitates antiquated lines because they didn't accept their new Current Thing update is still an NPC who adopted their previous positions because they at least were an NPC.

Their understanding of the issues or the evidence didn't get better since; they're just stuck like a broken record.

That's true, they seem to specifically conform to authority figure narratives. It seems like more of a very online American thing, maybe they're still functionally conformists in the 'good neighbor', or religious sheep sense, but due to America's decaying social fabric lack any sort of social group to conform to and so tend to adhere mostly to w/e the prevalent authority narratives are.

The prevalent authority narrative has not told them to do this at least quite for some time, either.

I thought the hug an asian part made the time period of the quote pretty clear. There weren't many other time periods where we went from hugging Chinese people (Trumps china travel ban), to shaming people for buying up PPE (even trained professional don't always wear it properly!), to shaming people for not following strict PPE guidelines.

But they so loved that time they want to bring it back.

But, again, that's not NPC behavior by the common definition within the spoilered answers. Wanting to bring some specific era specifically clashes with the idea of just unthinkingly going with the flow and always adopting the currently fashionable views (indeed, by that definition most everyone on the right side of the political spectrum would be a NPC...)

I just intended it as a "use the word in a sentence example" way. Not saying it's specific to covid. I do think there are changes to the way information is disseminated in current times that make NPC different from earlier flavors of conformists. It's mostly the mindlessly following beliefs that rapidly change and are often contradictory though.

That was mostly the True Believer Zero Covidians, not the NPCs. Back in 2021 most Zero Covidians were NPCs, now the NPCs have moved on so you just have the true believers left. As such you'd expect the average behaviour of the group to change.

Someone who only ever expresses the dominant opinion of a particular social group. A proper NPC has to also genuinely believe these opinions and not have any controversial ones they self censor.

A person who is inherently unreflective of their own beliefs, i.e unwilling or unable to critically examine what they believe and why, thus usually adopting whatever beliefs and belief systems are in vogue in their social circles.

"NPC" is a synonym for "sheeple" - a pejorative that exists largely to make the speaker feel morally and intellectually superior while excusing them from having to intellectually engage.

IMO these are very different. Sheeple passively accept the status quo, while NPCs actively recite a script, which may or may not be supportive of the status quo.

The comparison to "sheeple" is good, but the definition covers just about any insult in the book, and sheds no light on what "NPC" means.

the definition covers just about any insult in the book

Does it? If I call someone an asshole or a pussy or an idiot, I am impugning different aspects of their character, none of which are really covered by NPC or sheeple. Moreover, the aforementioned insults are more outwardly focused. The purpose of saying them is generally to inflict emotional harm on the object of the insult or make them look bad to others. NPC and sheeple are more inwardly directed (certainly not unique in this regard or others) - they're foremost about how they make the speaker feel.

Does it? If I call someone an asshole or a pussy or an idiot, I am impugning different aspects of their character, none of which are really covered by NPC or sheeple.

They're all "pejorative(s) that exists largely to make the speaker feel morally and intellectually superior while excusing them from having to intellectually engage". That they're different from "NPC" and "sheeple" is my entire point. Your definition does not show where that difference lies.

Someone whom the speaker believes subhuman - in particular in the moral sense of "if you harm or kill this person, it is less bad than normal".

"if you harm or kill this person, it is less bad than normal".

This is true for people who don't have to even be NPCs. Killing David Reich is a crime against humanity in a way that even killing one of his graduate students would not be. I wouldn't consider Reich or anyone good enough to work in his lab to be an NPC.

Where did you get that definition?!

It's what you'd expect -- people who don't like the term or its users define it in a way that throws shade on those who use it rather than those who are referred to by it.

NPCs in video games aren't real people and you can kill them for fun.

Yeah, but who used it this way in relation to real people?

It's a figure of speech. They're NPCs, I don't respect them.

That's a decade old now, so predating the NPC label, but expressing a similar sentiment as the OR.

I mean, if I ever call someone an NPC in earnest, that is an intended connotation. I don't think I've ever done so, though I have made the "do not give rights to this thing" argument in the case of misaligned AI.

I'll admit that reading the bit after the dash into other people's use is uncharitable, but given the original meaning is literally "a character in a game that's not controlled by a real human" I don't think "subhuman" is at all a reach.

I'll admit that reading the bit after the dash into other people's use is uncharitable, but given the original meaning is literally "a character in a game that's not controlled by a real human" I don't think "subhuman" is at all a reach.

Given that when someone labels someone else as an NPC, it's generally to contrast them with others - such as themselves in their eyes - who are Playable Characters (PCs), I don't think this really tracks. PCs are just as subhuman as NPCs, in that they're both equally electronic fictions concocted by humans for entertainment, they're just subhuman arrangements of pixels/bits/whatever abstraction of computer code you want to go with being controlled by humans, in contrast to NPCs that follow programmed routines.

but given the original meaning is literally "a character in a game that's not controlled by a real human" I don't think "subhuman" is at all a reach.

Sure it is. There's no reason to assume this meaning over the alternatives, and given how extreme that position would be, it is quite a reach.

The impression I get is less that users of the term want to machine gun people they call NPCs and more that they feel if someone else did so nothing of value would be lost.

As opposed to words like “orks”, “scum”, and “vermin” where I 100% believe the speaker would rampage if they had an opportunity.

Mmm, "would rampage if he/she had an opportunity and no better options existed" would be much closer to correct. Checking back through some of the various times I've earnestly called people scum, most of them fall into "plan A is removing these people from power, plan B for things that don't need power is throwing them in jail, but if I only have the options of killing them or letting them keep ruining everything then killing them is the less-bad option".

An NPC is someone whose beliefs are not deeply considered, who absorbs beliefs from others without critical thought. It's a caricature used to disparage the outgroup and avoid ceding legitimacy to opposing views.

An NPC is a person who can be relied on to adopt the opinion of their ingroup when there is one, that is, a person who mostly only has socially-acquired opinions.

If you asked Thiel's interview question of 'what is the most unpopular thing you believe' they'd be stumped. All their beliefs are popular and mainstream. Or they'd be 60-40 matters that are subject to constant media attention.

A person lacking free will in the broadest sense. Which I guess could be all of us at some philosophical level.

In the online version a person incapable of molding the world around then into their own vision. Musks being the ultimate playable character. He gets a vision and it becomes a thing in the world.

Something about it also seems to have a moral component. Can you have a correct balanced version of the world and work to the moral good? I think grifters fail this test like on the left I think people like Kendi etc; I have a lot of difficulty thinking their message is actually in their beliefs as a benefit to society; therefore not a playable character. Though now neolib AOC (from college girl liberal AOC) seems to be growing as a person and getting a broader view therefore a playable character. So something about being capable of evolving.

How do you distinguish the ultimate playable character from a DMPC, a vehicle with no real personality that only exists to put the plot on whatever rails the owner of the game wants at the moment?

I guess I don’t believe there’s a DM.

Then who's puppeting the NPCs?

As requested I came up with an answer before scrolling down.

An NPC is someone who gets their opinion directly from the top. The platonic form of an NPC would go from hating Eurasia to hating Eastasia the moment they got the signal from the Party organs. An IRL example of people pretty close to that platonic form are people who believed Blasey Ford was credible, but Tara Reade was not. On the otherhand, Zero Covidians are not NPCs. As much as I disagree with them, currently they are definitely going against the grain.

Funny enough I also used a reference to Orwell. Perhaps we are both NPCs?

Joking (hopefully) aside, Zero Covidians were NPCs in 2021. They are not now. To give a timeline:

  1. They had a Twitter profile with a mask in it.

  2. They added a Ukrainian flag after the Russian invasion.

A lot of people (apparently independently) made the Eastasia/Eurasia comparison, but I think I'm the only person in the thread to date to refer to a different Orwell term, "duckspeaker".

Indeed, I could almost believe you're actually read the book.

1984 is the Harry Potter and MCU of the dissident right.

I used to prefer Brave New World as I thought it more realistic — no need to exert external control; you can control people by frying their will with simple hedonistic pleasure.

The last five years has made me think “why not both” is the choice made by people desiring power.

My impression is that Orwell never aimed to realistically describe a totalitarian political system, but the psychology of people living in one, and I think he got that spot on.

Well I think he described the psychology of both the people living in it and some of the methods that can be used by the ruling class.

Amusingly, it's the book Brits are most likely to claim to have read when they haven't.

The question: In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

Nuclear Proliferation Concern.

what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

I think of that one Paul Graham piece.

If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think what you're told.

So my definition would be: "The NPC is fundamentally incurious and only holds socially approved opinions."

They are not capable of understanding that some people can look at all the same issues and facts as them and genuinely come to a different conclusion to theirs. They frequently tell dissenting interlocutors to "educate yourself", under the mistaken assumption that everyone educated agrees with them, and so only uneducated people can disagree with them. Their responses to debate are frequently disjointed and not-quite-relevant, because they're mostly only repeating canned arguments that they were given to respond to dissenters with.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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