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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.
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?
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