NPC

A miner NPC in the video game Runescape.

NPC or NPCs (non-playable character) is an umbrella term used to describe people deemed by other as having pre-conceived notions and lack of critical thinking, and not having an internal monologue. Many normies fit into the NPC category because of their predictable social behavior and mannerisms. The term comes from non-player characters one can find in video games.

Spotting an NPC

NPCs on Twitter (gif).

NPCs are often obsessed with trending things, such as contemporary rap music, pop music, top 40 radio hits, fashion, clothing, sports, restaurants and travel. They will usually upload pictures to social media within the context of worldly venues and locations, food and pet animals, mostly dogs and cats. They usually publicly exclaim they are very tolerant of ethnic, sexual and religious minorities. NPCs typically label incels as misogynists and extremists.

Tribalism and group think

In a political context, NPCs tend to support whatever is in vogue in cosmopolitan areas. They have no strong opinions about anything, and they also tend to avoid objectivity when it’s presented to them.

Nowadays, they thus tend to support feminism, abortion, psychiatry, materialism, and/or atheism. In general, incels think of them as anti-intellectual in nature.

However, it must be noted that conservative and reactionary NPCs exist. The Traditional Catholic ones can be spotted easily due to their habits of endlessly copy-pasting 19th-century papal documents for whatever purposes, always praising Thomas Aquinas, stating in a zombie-like fashion that "Christ is King", and thinking of themselves as being very intelligent free thinkers for adopting a rigorous religion.

Criticism of the concept

Individual advantages of conformance

See also: Wisdom of the crowd, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, and Incel accelerationism

It may be argued that it is in the benefit of individuals to conform to the group in order for them to be accepted. If "free thinking" only leads to one's rejection of the group, or one's sadness, or both, then what good it it in being a free thinker? Having a special knowledge or questioning the status quo is not always a good idea and not for everyone. Moreover, it may be argued that having data, arguments and a community to support your minority point of view will turn what was a mild unhappiness—which could have been fixed with simple coping (bluepilling) mechanism—into a militant, conscious opposition to the group on some points. Being persuaded you are right while others around you are wrong, while not being able to impose your views, can create frustrations. Moreover, if the opposition to the group concerns one or more fundamental beliefs of the group (e.g. the existence of God or that all humans are equals), you can feel alienated with the group, unable to bond with them, and ultimately label them as stupid or sheep-like "NPCs". Dissidence may hence prove for some as a recipe for social alienation, exclusion, self-evaluated elitism, intellectual and social loneliness, and depression, nothing more.

For example, Søren Kierkegaard lived a sad life as a free thinker, and Thomas More was killed because he refused to obey Henry VIII and convert to proto-Anglicanism. However, some free thinkers considered today as martyrs of an intellectually close-minded society, e.g. Socrates, William of Ockham, Galileo Galilei, or Antonio Gramsci, either did not suffer much from their ideas, or had their ideas gaining some influence within years after they expressed them.

Why others may not share your ideas

Moreover, one can argue that the evolution of peoples' ideas and ideologies is not something one can predict or declare inconsistent, as those and their perceptions are linked to multiple factors, some of which might be unknown or not fully understood, such as world events (the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, Donald Trump's 2016 election), one's own biological state, and cultural, social and economical situations. It may be added that, in this optic, ideas are the product of psychology, not of having magically found the "truth" about something or of following the "right reason, agreeing with nature, diffused among all, unchanging, everlasting"; it follows that unless one is Platonicist (see Anamnesis (philosophy) and Theory of forms), one cannot assume there is intrinsic logic between ideas. Therefore, it may appear that what one calls "corollary" or "contradiction" are not really a corollary or a contradiction, as coherence between ideas does not exist in itself, outside of human brains, and is only the product of conventions or the brain's configuration.

Internal monologue

See also: Linguistic turn, and X-Factor Theory

Another criticism against NPCs is that they do not have or almost do not have an internal monologue, and, therefore, are not able to understand the world or use critical thinking properly. However, it may be argued that thinking in words is less effective than thinking with no words and acting using your instinct. Linguistic philosophy has long debated over whether language can be trusted to describe the worlds and express thoughts.

Moreover, are the world and thoughts not more complex than words? Maybe NPCs, using their instinct and intuition, are able to have a better grasp on what they perceive than using any language. To paraphrase by quoting Pope Francis out of context, maybe "life is bigger than explanations and interpretations." Even mathematics, a highly elaborated form of language, does not express reality faithfully; for example one of the most used systems, the Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory + axiom of choice (ZFC), allows for the Banach–Tarski paradox.

See also

• Moral Relativism