NPC the Meme and The Progressive Reaction To It

What is an NPC? NPC stands for Non Player Character and the term comes from the world of video games. In video games NPC’s are the characters who you, the player, do not control.

Typically they have stock responses when you talk to them and pre-set reactions to things you do. For example you might talk to ten different NPC’s and they will all say “Hello, crazy weather we’ve been having lately.”

They will also all get angry at you if you do something they do not like. Again they will have a canned reply for this behavior as well. If you go somewhere they do not want you to, they will all say “Hey! You need to leave now before I call the guard.”

Meme Magic

The NPC meme has gained popularity lately. This is due to the observation that these ‘protesters,’ Progressives, and Antifa parrot the same talking points. They all use the same chants regardless of what it is that they are protesting or where they are protesting.

They all use the same language, such words as problematic, marginalized, patriarchy, people of color, Nazi, Drumpf (or some other insulting variation on the name Trump), fascist, my truth, privilege, rise up

, and misogynist.

Worldwide you can hear the same chants or slight variants. Chants like ‘hey hey, ho ho, subject has got to go’ and ‘cops and klan go hand in hand’ and ‘ACAB all cops are bastards.’ Though this meme has really taken off with the introduction by the left of mob politics.

Mobs as NPC’s

Part of what make a meme great is how it is able to use humor to check off and bring together so many ideas under one image. Recently we have seen mobs of people in the nation’s capital screaming at and harassing politicians, chasing them out of restaurants, or pounding on the doors of the Supreme Court.

These mobs have rightly been called out as such by many Republican politicians. In one of the great way that shows how connected the word mob and the NPC meme have many connections.

First if you take the word mob and add one to each letter you get NPC (m+1=N, o+1=P, b+1=C). That is not where the connection stops either. In the world of video games, especially in online role playing games, mob is used to describe a large group of the same or similar monsters. These mobs are also NPC’s because they are characters that you, the player do not control.

Initiate Program Outrage

Of course those on the left are upset over this meme. They say that it dehumanizes and marginalizes people. The same people who are willing to liberally apply the term Nazi to anyone who disagrees with them while saying it is okay to punch a Nazi. The same people who will call anyone who supports Trump online a Russian bot and then advocate for all the Russian bots to be banned from social media.

 

The NPC meme is a comedic criticism of the Progressives so it is expected that they would act as they always do when criticized. Instead of laughing and understanding the joke, they follow the programing and get outraged, which is exactly what is expected of them, thus making the meme even funnier.

Twitter even started banning accounts who were using the NPC image to create parody accounts for famous people. As we have seen before, the harder you push against a meme the more popular it will become.

So do not be an NPC, think for yourself and be the hero in your own story.