The future documentary Idiocracy has a scene where an average person tries to solve a problem in a room full of idiots. It’s one of the best scenes in modern cinema!
We’ve all experienced this. One side is trying to suss out rational solutions to an approachable problem. The other side isn’t necessarily opposed to a solution but they’re not helping. They keep circling back to a small list of slogans or factoids which lacks the depth to help. Even if they have the best of intentions it’s pointless.
It doesn’t have to be about politics. It’s common for members of Curmudgeon Compound to encounter folks where the situation hits the wall and we just have to ride it out. Among ourselves we mutter “plants crave electrolytes” and everyone understands.
“What happened to the anchovies? There are three of us and we agreed to get anchovies on one third of the pizza.”
“The pizza guy couldn’t do 1/3 he could only do half.”
“But he’s right there behind the window! I can see him putting toppings on the…”
“Plants crave electrolytes.”
“Yeah, I get it. Fractions.”
“Sorry man.”
It’s not that you hate the person you’re dealing with, it’s not that they’re deliberately trying to mess up your pizza, it’s just that they’ve hit a cognitive wall. You have to let it go. It’s probably been that way since the dawn of time.
Enter the meme of the NPC.
NPC, as all nerds know, means “non-player character”. In a video game it’s often a character programmed to give one of a handful of responses. NPCs are only slightly more interesting/useful than the scenery. Unlike players, they’re not a full participant in or driver of events. Ideally, an NPC moves the game along but, since the NPC only has a few responses, it’s going to be utterly useless for anything but the simplest situation. If you have to deal with an NPC more that the bare minimum it gets frustrating.
Player: “I need a spell of healing immediately!”
NPC: “There’s a legend of dragon’s gold to the north. I’d get it myself but I took an arrow to the knee.”
Player: “I just shoved a pork roast in your ear.”
NPC: “There’s a legend of dragon’s gold to the north. I’d get it myself but I took an arrow to the knee.”
See the pattern?
The NPC meme was fermenting in some vat of troll until the last week or so when it lurched into the national consciousness as a crudely drawn, grey, blank faced entity. The ultimate nothing. Neither angry, nor sad. Simply a thing that will do what it has been programmed to do.
“Meh.” Says the Curmudgeon. It meant nothing to me.
Then NPC was applied to the social justice warrior (SJW). The wokest of the woke, SJWs do indeed move, act, and speak with a hive mind uniformity that many of us deplorables find disturbing. Speaking for myself, I find it terrifying. A flock of birds or a school of fish, all moving in unison may be beautiful, but a thousand shrieking snowflakes wearing identical vagino-symbolic hats and bawling that Trump is literally Hitler is just… yuck.
For example, I wasn’t happy about the Christmas Eve passage of Obamacare, but I didn’t put a dildo on my head and stomp around the Lincoln Memorial shouting that Obama was literally Stalin. Who would think that way?
However, it’s not all about politics. It’s about uniformity. Get a thousand green clad Green Bay Packers fans in one space and I’m looking for the door faster than you can say “cheap beer in a can”.
Also, I pay attention to the degree to which uniformity is enforced. In Sturgis, where the religion is Harley and the the uniform is a black t-shirt, I wore blue and rode a Honda. Everyone was as nice as peaches to me. Good crowd really. (I wouldn’t try the same experiment with a Vikings shirt on a day the Packers lose.)
Anyway, the NPC memes arrived and I found them somewhere between “no shit Sherlock” and mildly amusing. Big yawn from me.
Surprisingly (to me), NPC caused SJWs to freak out. (I’m assuming there are things that don’t make SJWs freak out.)
How interesting! Direct hit to the inflated ego. As they say, you know you’re over the target when you start taking flak.
Apparently, the NPC meme poleaxed the self-esteem folks who enjoy gathering in big groups to act identically; which apparently is nothing like the NPC meme and a clear demonstration of their thoughtful exercise of free will. GO PACKERS!
As always happens with snowflake butthurt, folks posting NPC memes were declared racist, violent, misogynist, capitalist pig dog, poopy heads… and probably literally Hitler. Then, of course, came the banning.
Voltaire said: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” Last I heard some 1500 Twitter accounts were toast. So there you have it. Deplorables are meanies and SJWs spoke truth to power by using their power. Shutting down a wad of Twitter accounts wasn’t censorship because it’s not censorship when SJWs do it. Etc.
I have no dog in this fight; I don’t have a Twitter account and SWJs have been hurling insults at me so long I hardly notice. Each new insult (“all white males are racist dickheads”, “math is sexist”, etc…) is just another drop in the ocean of insults that folks like me wade through daily.
However, I’ve started to love the NPC meme. Like all humor, it grows from a seed of truth. I see humor as more important every day. Never underestimate the power of laughter to keep the vainglorious in check.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going squirrel hunting. Hopefully, the NPC meme will keep growing in my absence.
