It’s easy to forget in the constant churn of internet culture, but the NPC meme as originally conceived and popularized had no political content. The channers who came up with the meme used it to describe the majority of people who follow the crowd without reflection. Like the video game characters for which they’re named, real-life NPCs think and act according to pre-programmed scripts.
In one of life’s more amusing ironies, the NPC meme was warped away from its original meaning when NPCs got a hold of it. Most people now think the meme is shorthand for Leftists, thanks to Conservative NPCs.
The simple fact is that unexamined trend chasing knows no party. The Left were the first to figure out that 90% of people will go along with mass media narratives, or at least they were the first to fully exploit that reality. The NPC meme has come to be associated with Leftists because the overwhelming majority of social programming has a Leftward bent.
Conservative NPC scripts aren’t as prominent, mainly because leading Conservatives surrendered almost all cultural institutions decades ago, but they’re easy to spot if you know where to look and what to look for.
In general, Conservative media scripts instruct their NPCs to:
- Reject any person, tactic, or argument from the Right that’s proven to be effective against the Left.
- Embrace Leftist social positions from 8 years ago to keep up with the Overton window.
- Disregard cultural–and especially religious–arguments against the Death Cult in favor of exclusive focus on economics.
Thanks to recent advances made by dissenters from the Narrative, we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to examples of Conservative gatekeepers mobilizing to patch their NPCs’ software.
The righteous backlash against critical race theory, for instance, armed dissidents with the rhetorical silver bullet “antiwhite”. The Death Cult operates by claiming the moral high ground, and pointing out that they’re antiwhite unequivocally exposes their feigned moral authority as unwarranted. It’s a form of Witch Test that antiwhites fail for the same reason witches do–they just can’t hide the hatred that defines them.
On cue, Conservative media scrambled to update their NPCs’ firmware, lest they actually score a win against the Left. A bunch of Con Inc. coat holders even held an emergency meeting to anathematize the term “antiwhite”. Instead, Conservative NPC opposition to CRT must be predicated solely on its tenuous connection to 19th century political theories.
A defining feature of Conservative social programming is its penchant for steering NPC Cons toward Con Inc. counterfeits of popular dissident movements. Ever since the groypers gave TPUSA a black eye back in 2019, establishment Conservative media have been cranking out half-baked imitations of Nick Fuentes’ outfit. Jared and Ivanka, the debutante meddlers we have to thank for derailing the Trump presidency, are backing a shameless copy of Fuentes’ group, only this time–wait for it–focused on economics instead of the cultural issues that won Trump the White House.
You can tell these decoy orgs are coordinated by the predictable pattern that accompanies them. Some GOPe donor pays a PR firm to cook up an AF clone, hires some effete rootless Zoomers from central casting, and buys them a platform. Like clockwork, official Con Inc. organs put out puff pieces boosting the skinsuits’ signal.
And if you’re wondering whether the same grift applies to politicians, yes, it does.
Con Inc’s tactic of targeting successful anti-Left opposition, jumping in front of the parade, and marching it off a cliff goes back to William F. Buckley, but the most prominent current product of the Conservative surrender machine is Ben Shapiro. Astute readers will remember how Con Inc. concocted Shapiro’s career like a cynical Hollywood franchise.
Unlike Death Cult NPC programming, which constantly updates their unearned sense of moral superiority to champion new derangements, Conservative NPC programming remains the same. “Disavow [successful dissident A]. Don’t use [effective rhetoric B]. It’s notwhoweare.txt! Call every non-NPC a Commie™ instead.”
Calling these guys the Washington Generals fails to express the depths of their treachery. That team is fully aware they’re playing exhibition games, and they have no expectation they’ll win. Establishment Conservative media endlessly feeds Conservative NPCs losing game plans while assuring them of victory.
Another unintended addition to the NPC meme is that NPC-hood is some kind of disorder in need of a cure. In truth, it simply describes the normal human condition for most people throughout time. Humans are social creatures. Individual survival depends, to varying degrees, on going along to get along. NPCs just read social cues to keep up with the herd. It works.
The fatal flaw in Liberalism–and all its variants, including Conservatism and Libertarianism–is the false dogma that the wholly self-directed individual is normative, knows best, and is capable of taking on the mob. NPCs always have been and always will be the vast majority in any society. Leaders in prior ages understood that most people need to be ruled. The Left achieved total cultural dominance in the West by taking over the organs of NPC programming. That includes their controlled opposition in Con Inc.
What taking back the culture really means, and what counterculture creators will have to get comfortable with, is retaking or building the means to program more NPCs with the truth than the Death Cult can program with lies.
Don’t give money to people who hate you
This post assumes that normies still exist to be made aware of leftist hypocracy. Haven’t the leftists already browbeaten them (or literally beaten them) into outward conformity? White genocide is also a gradual phenomenon, whereas losing your job with a leftist megacorp that already crushed its competition is immediate.
Bromides about Leftist hypocrisy typify the Con Inc. NPC programming this post is about.
The Left aren’t hypocrites. They’re fanatics.
The point remains. Pointing out leftist fanaticism doesn’t make leftists any less fanatical, nor can normies be persuaded against leftist morality when they allow the left to define morality in the first place. The only workable solution is literally in your last paragraph: to program children with the truth before the left can program them with lies.
I used to be a fan of one of these NPC’s. I read his books and his “news” letter was a weekly treat. These days I don’t bother. His columns are always of the “this is what the libs are up to, but you know Trump did it too” stupidity.
It’s like they all think this is just some high school basketball game, where teaching good sportsmanship is the main point. They honestly don’t see the danger of the mad forces being unleashed. They just sit there in their smugness while the nation burns.
Even I used to think guys like that meant well but were just misguided.
Now their willing cooperation with the enemy is impossible to miss.
At first, I thought your characterization of Medieval saints as NPCs was uncharitable, but after reading this, I think I still have some individualism to patch out, as it were. I was going to reply that they may have started as NPCs, but didn’t end that way, but now I see I was wrong. The path of heroic virtue that lies in obedience, not trailblazing. Hell is full of folks who said “Non serviam,” whereas Heaven is full of people who understood that the servant cannot be greater than the Master, and so took up their crosses, and followed.
I learned something today. I thank you for that.
Give the glory to God.
The same realization came to me only recently, as well. NPCs are normal.
What if certain sinners are just PCs who see God as another boss to defeat?
That was the Adversary’s sin, as I recall. That attitude is the on-ramp for the HOV Lane to Hell.
Sin diminishes us, until we hate the good and lose everything about ourselves that God intended for us. From this point of view, the path of the self-appointed hero and PC leads to damnation and NPC-ness, while the path of obedience to God leads consists of NPC-ness here, but also, becoming everything that God intends for us. Nobody who knows anything about them would confuse Dame Julian of Norwich for Saint Teresa of Avila, for example, or either of them for Catherine of Siena. Each lived a life of obedience. None would account herself the hero of her own story, I expect, yet we look to them as examples of piety and devotion. They were NPCs, but their obedience was more heroic than all the Mad-At-Dad fedora-tippers put together.
This is what makes the 24/7 news cycle so evil. Your average person gets their brain and nerves constantly scrambled by fear, lies, and half-truths, about what is going on Just Outside Their Door, all under the guise of Truth. So many Boomers instinctively parrot these people, and trust them wholeheartedly.
Yes, every time one of them unplugs, their health improves dramatically and their happiness quotient rises. All from just ignoring the media. This is how evil the 24/7 news cycle is.
When those in charge are actively and willingly harming the populace for their own gain, they have vacated any moral high ground or right as proper leaders.
It’s very difficult to get someone unplugged from the 24/7 news cycle, even for just half a day. But if you can get him off for a week or so it generally sticks, because inevitably when he checks back everyone will be obsessing over some dumb controversy which is pointless on the face unless you’ve been served a constant diet of news hysteria.
Used to be that you could do that by going on a camping trip, or just not turning on the TV during a vacation. But now people will insist on bringing their smart phones along.
The Devil’s vortex has turned more than one of my Boomer relatives into a sickly, paranoid wreck.
And the crowning irony is that they were driven to this loathsome state over fears for their health. That’s how you know it’s demonic.
Part of the reason that NPC became a lefty only term is that conservative NPCs view things in a “collectivism vs. individualism” way. So they’re convinced that they can’t be an NPC, because they are all individuals (cue Monty Python clip.)
Yes, which is amusing since they were programmed to make moral judgments in terms of that false binary.