What If We're All NPCs?

A theory to kick some tires on.

This one might be tough to set up terminology-wise and context-wise, so I will do my best.

“NPC” refers to “non-player character” or “non-playable character,” and it comes from characters in video games who are in the background. They are essentially automatons and controlled by the computer. You cannot play as them and they do the same things in the background relative to what you are doing.

Sometime after COVID, “NPC” became a right-leaning slur towards the left. And yes, it absolutely has kernels of truth around left-leaning people being more deferential to authority and changing their social media profile banners to support the latest thing, and Schumer and Pelosi kneeling in African garb for some reason. The slur is real.

However, now the definition of “NPC” is muddied, because, well — let’s look at Congress for a second. Whatever Trump wants to do, they will essentially let him do. That was also true in wide swaths of Trump 1.0. They don’t have a super-mandate of 60 Senate votes, no, so some stuff dies that way. But Republican Congressmen/women, for fear of “being primaried” and fealty to Trump, essentially became NPCs in their own way. They are just background characters in the story of one almost-octogenarian’s quest for relevance and legacy and a few rich guys’ desire to get more and more for themselves.

This video has too many esoteric SAT words for a normal person, but it explains how we are all basically NPCs now: