Part crackpot social theory and part elementary school insult, the NPC meme originated from a deeply comical medley of bogus physics and stupid religion found on the messaging board 4Chan. Originally posted in 2016, it resurfaced last month. I have a theory that there are only a fixed quantity of souls on planet Earth that cycle continuously through reincarnation, a 4Chan poster wrote. However, since the human growth rate is so severe, the soulless extra walking flesh piles around us are NPCs [sic], or ultimate [redacted], who autonomously follow group think and social trends in order to appear convingly human. NPCs arent even worthy of a classic wake up, sheeple. They cant!
Heres where things get interesting. Around the time a lot of us were assigned to read The Catcher in the Rye in middle school, it was normal to have edgelord thoughts about phonies or being one of the few who is capital-A awake. The NPC meme takes things a step further into a political zone where mass outcry against, say, serial harassers, racial injustice, or Trumpian ideas is dismissed as not just inherently uncritical but prima facie evidence of a lack of human consciousness.
NPCs, the poster continued, say the same shit, including SPORTSBALL, THE NEW ADELE SONG XD OMG and JUST BE YOURSELF. The poster also cites a political example: TRUMP IS HITLER, adding:
If you get in a discussion with them its always the same buzzwords and hackneyed arguments. Theyre the kind of people who make a show of discomfort when you break the status quo like by breaking the normie barrier to invoke a real discussion. its like in a vidya [game] when you accidentally talk to somebody twice and they give you the exact same lines word for word once more.
Essentially, some large portion of society (normies, pop-culture fanatics, and Trump-haters, among others) who speak in cliches are, in fact, NPCs with no internality, agency, or capacity for critical thought. Like townies in Pokemon idly parked outside the same house day and night, constantly ready with the same contrived one-liners, these IRL NPCs arent thinking for themselves. They cant.