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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28725 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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The question: In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

I'm not a huge fan of the meme, since it tends to be pretty dismissive in the same way that the Bingo Cards are, but I think there are a few different variants:

  1. A speaker is presented who has a shallow, simple political perspective, which they repeat often as a slogan, usually with the expectation that no one could reasonably disagree or even that a factual basis is relevant. The NPC meme here references the Welcome to Corneria problem in video game design.

  2. The speaker has a shallow political perspective which has been 'programmed' into them. This doesn't necessarily mean a sinister sort of way -- it can be a perspective that they already agreed with and the 'programming' is just a bunch of snappy slogans -- but it's usually meant to imply that the speaker at least hasn't really investigated the principles underlying that slogan. See here for a parody of the perspective. For a steelman, see the criticisms here of even counterculture speakers often reacting to whatever becomes the mainstream media focus de jour until it gets dropped for a new shiny.

  3. The speaker lacks agency or principles to want anything but whatever script is given to them. Cfe here for an explicit example, here or here for more typical usage.

In point #2, I think the second "here" is missing a hyperlink.

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