-me, probably
Go to the road, and ask any passing traveler,
that soul-stirring companion, where did he go?
-Rumi
I read this Substack post recently and enjoyed it. It formalizes the ostensibly ridiculous in taking an artifact of online culture, which has the flavor of a joke, and gives it a serious treatment. The author creates an analytic typology of “NPCs", short for non-player characters, a term borrowed from the world of video games. NPCs, by nature, do not think for themselves, but rather are objects of reaction, who behave according to predictable and repeated patterns, as determined by the structure of their environment. The piece is engaging, because while at first it seems funny and cute and very online, it ultimately gets at the deepest goals of human expression, whether online or elsewhere: authenticity, originality, and humanity. Since NPCs are unpersons, the piece shows the reader the pitfalls of being one and how to mitigate that risk.
Referring to other people as NPCs is common practice, and this article is not only helping us identify their characteristic behavior in others, but also in ourselves. Gurwinder rightly recognizes that the world of information is far too vast for us to have informed, realistic, and authentic opinions on every topic or issue that comes across our minds screens. Since we’re naturally “cognitive misers,” we resort to shortcuts in thinking to find a comfortable, established marina of opinion to moor the small craft of our public opinions. The vast sea of cyberspace is not readily navigable to our small primate brains, so we rely on strength in numbers and conformity to find our way.
I don’t think Gurwinder is wrong on the merits on any of the above, and I admire his work is redirecting vague conformist energies to more authentic ends. And I don’t know how with how much ironic distance the piece should be read. But I’m going to engage with it earnestly, not to critique the typology, but to examine and react to the frame.
Calling other people NPCs seems to reflect their manipulation, inauthenticity, and insignificance. This kind of thinking is intoxicating, as it allows one to cheaply and easily (cognitive misers!) dismiss masses of opinion, and the people that endorse it, in convenient and sweeping judgement. And we can avoid being one ourselves if we just recognize it! The piece tells me, after all, that I am “probably an NPC.” Thinking or behaving like this, however, is counterproductive to realizing more humanity in our online counterparts. It’s reifying the virtual world, and taking as reality the world that is presented to us online.
Rather than granting us freedom from NPCdom, categorizing others as NPCs perpetuates the tendency to succumb to the flattening incentives of the internet; it contributes to and strengthens solipsistic suggestion of The Machine itself. Rather than seeing the shadows or whispers of an actual person, we more fully inhabit the shallow, flat, textureless binary of avatars and 180 character “opinions.” NPCing might imply a manipulated mind to a greater degree than being one ourselves; It contributes to an atmosphere of, and a user experience characterized by, dehumanization.
Driving a car flattens our perspective experience. While we know the other cars on the road contain people going somewhere specific, what our miserly congition often sees are simply other vehicles. These cars are subject to the rules of the road, and we engage with them as if they were pieces on a chessboard: we’re shielded from the acutal humans behind the windows, and their presence is easily reduced to their function. Since we have our own destination, other people playing the game of driving “poorly” (texting or scrolling at a red light as it turns green), or even breaking the rules outright, can reduce them to mere objects, or even obstacles to our goal.
Being online, and particularly on social media, similarly encourages us to flatten our perceptions and experience of other people. It’s an architectonic fact that we don’t encounter their person, but rather a profile or avatar. We typically simply see text rather than experiencing their language or thought. Posters with large followings can definitionally only experience some portion of their audience as numbers: numbers of likes, new follows, comments, etc. And these reactions, when examinned closely, are ultimately still dampened in texture. They do, however, provide richness in their quantitative immediacy: either someone clicked like, or they didn’t. They reposted, or they didn’t. Redditors upvote or downvote. Comments are counted up, and while they offer greater differentiation, they’re also easily categorized as negative, positive, trolling, or sincere. Moreover, we’re fed often statistics on the status or internet capital of these reaction’s authors: how many followers each commenter has, how many likes they got, who retweeted, and so on.
Because of this quantitative availability, categorizing a “take” or a tweet or an idea seems inextricable from its immediate context. Even the most profound, original idea will very unlikely stand out from a mass of opinion if it is buried as the 700th reply to a Taylor Swift tweet. This is relative to our own position: if we’re driving a heavy truck full of precariously packed glassware, the guy speeding seems rushed and inconsiderate. If we’re in a supercar, he seems like he’s in our way. That profound reply to Taylor has all the contextual markers of NPCdom, so it isn’t usefully categorized through Gurwinders typology.
Equally, a banal or even outright false expression may readily appear in a major newspaper or on cable news. But the people espousing them are certainly not NPCs. Culture war mercenaries, maybe. But they have name recognition, prestige, and other markers of social capital. In other words, they are distinctly presented as player characters, with agency, voice, and independence. In our effort to circumvent thinking, we rely on these cues to sort our perceptions. These are ultimately distractions from the information itself.
I am by nature a contrarian. I often make choices just because they’re not what everyone else is doing: you might say I’m subject to the whims of a kind of reflexive anti-mimetic desire. I guess i’m saying I have a tendency towards a contrarian NPC. So of course, its tempting for me to reject popular ideas by virtue of their popularity. Neatly categorizing others into NPC-buckets facilitates this type of judgement, which feels good because of my evident difference and implied superiority. Luckily, as Gurwinder writes, this tendency can be overcome, and of course I rationally recognize that just because a stance, idea, or opinion is popular does not make it false or immoral. This makes me question how useful it is to disregard an opinion merely because it aligns with “the current thing.”
I hestiate to use the term “invalidating” because it has culture-war connotations and mood affiliation. But calling someone an NPC is as direct a step as one can take in rendering the other an unperson. NPCing simply fails to meet the humanistic standard of recognizing another “I” or subjectivity. It invalidates them through subjugating their online expression.
Each human is object is also a subject, addressing us in looks, gestures, and words, from the transcendental horizon of the “I.” Our responses to others aim toward that horizon, passing on beyond the body to the being that it incarnates…[T]he “overreaching intentionality” of our interpersonal attitudes is not an unalterable given; it can be educated, turned in new directions, disciplined through virtues, and corrupted through vice.
-Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World
To be fair, Gurwinder clearly isn’t advocating dehumanization. He is arguing against a distinct and powerful breed of media manipulation, against the apparent requirement for us to all have betting opinions on all issues. His work calls to mind the excellent work of Ben Hunt on Fiat News, which is something like the curated dissemination of information in the service of some institutional vision. As Hunt writes, “To counterfeit is DEATH.”
This is, of course, a noble and worthy cause. And I don’t think the offered solution is bad either. It’s fine to stay silent on the issues you don’t care, or care to know, about. One obviously should prioritize where they spend their intellectual and emotional energy. It’s a strange thing, nobody has to post, really, ever. While we aren’t “compelled to spill out our lives,” sometimes we behave as if we do. I merely want to suggest that silencing ourselves out of shame for the apparent inauthenticity of our opinions actually worsens the problem and contributes to an ahuman atmosphere in dialogue and interaction. So just don’t think of yourself, or anyone, as an NPC.
I’m not trying to create reaction content, or somehow throw shade on the stimulating work of someone I’ve never met. I think this issue is fundamental and I’m hoping this small essay is a contribution rather than a distraction. As I note, I think Gurwinder is addressing a real problem. I just want to caution about the potential reinforcement of antihuman incentives on the internet. And I’m worried about dehumanization in all its contexts: the effects of bureaucracy, systems of enormous scale, the efficiency drive, materialism, anonymity, and so on. I want people to have original opinions, but that is too high a standard to meet for someone to earn the dignity of a player character.