I’ve been seeing these videos for at least a year, what I would call the ‘NPC in real life’ trend on TikTok, videos dealing with harassment, embarrassment or scaring people in public. Harassment is a staple of online life, something I calmly agree to YouTube “joke” channelsniche celebrity drama, and my Twitter reply guys. But these videos are screwed me in a unique way, as if watch them put my hand in a bowl with sweet gum tree seedsbecause their creators had a unique justification — it’s okay to harass other people, they said, because other people are nothing more than non-playable characters.
Above all, it seems embarrassing to think this way. When I see these videos trying to extrude entertainment from harassing elderlypossible unaccommodated people, and service employees, I feel that our cultural myopia is deteriorating. Being the ancestor of your own personal social media content doesn’t make you God, but seeing everyone around you as a thoughtless NPC, an easy target, makes it easier to give up empathy and believe differently.
Everything that defines a non-playable character is in the name. In a video game, NPCs are characters that you can’t play even if you really wanted to kill a man with NPC Princess Gwynevereis generous bosom in dark soulsas I know I would. Anyone who is not an NPC is a hero, the main character.
This kind of character arrangement may be inherently individualistic, but it’s not distinctive – it mimics that in the mythological one storyline known as the hero’s journey, in many movies and in the ubiquitous me in the first person of many songs. Nothing makes video game characters particularly prone to selfish metaphors than characters in those other art forms, except perhaps the fact that “NPC” is a more specific term than “background character” or “extra,” and more neutral than “antagonist.” ‘ or ‘the best friend’.
G/O Media may receive a commission
$10 or more
Humble Bundle – Starlight Bundle
Take advantage of the Starlight Children’s Foundation
For $10 or more, you can help hospitalized kids access video games — as well as some fun games for yourself, including Lego Star Wars – The Complete Saga.
Video game protagonists are also accused of a kind of affirmative action that you can’t find anywhere else, because their actions, with the exception of cutscenes, are linked to that of the player. If viewers could fire any gun in John Woo’s plastic surgery thriller Face/Offmaybe I’d write about the “Nicolas Cage in real life” TikTok trend instead.
So the origin of Urban Dictionary‘s snobbish 2018 interpretation of an NPC– “seemingly a man incapable of thinking objectively” – becomes clearer with this in mind. Other people? Animals, puppies in need of a leader, semi-formed people whose joy and aspirations are found in helping you find the right train, get to class on time. And you? you are the flawless protagonistunfortunate that all these strange personalities interfere with your quest.
Although the Urban Dictionary definition was born of lazy political discontent (it mentions both “Fuck Trump! Ban guns!” and “Fuck Hillary! Ban immigrants!”, as the NPCs say), the TikTok interpretation of NPC is more general, like other online interpretations going back already in 2011but equally sticky with condescension.
Searching TikTok for “NPC in real life” will show you results that have brought in millions upon millions of views, with the highest number of videos posted between spring 2022 and now. The type of content varies and videos are rarely about actual video games. One of the most watched NPC videos, with 16.8 million views, shows a group of guys pretend Grand Theft Auto NPCsbut another with 12.5 million views follows a boy who snarls at a passing classmate, ostensibly to help himself cope with life among “too many NPCs.”
Perhaps the most prolific anti-NPC creator is: British TikToker bigcthedonwhose full account and combined advertise 15.3 million likes NPC’S TELLING WEIRD THINGS, NPC’S TELLING WEIRD THINGS, SINGING SKEPTA ON TUBE TO NPCsand NPC’S TELLING WEIRD THINGS. These types of raspy expressions of unpleasantness are the most popular types of NPC videos, although teens often do “NPC interviews” as well with children at schooland Dazed writes that some NPC videos have more to do with an increased interest in simulation theorywith the creator performing robotic, game-character-like movements that should seem to an unsuspecting onlooker “almost unnerving, akin to swallowing the red pill.”
But for me, a 23 year old and older member of the lot–philosophized–about Gen ZI think TikTok’s unsavory use of “NPC” can be attributed to my generation who spend most of our lives living small, alone, and online.
In my most pivotal years, the tweens and teens, I shaped my identity and understanding of the community through chat rooms, blogs, and group texts. I never saw who I was talking to on the other end. I posted selfies on Instagram, stories on An Archive Of Our Own, lunchtime thoughts on Twitter, songs on SoundCloud. I saw other people’s selfies and other people’s stories, but in a physical sense everything was filtered out by my isolation – I could only get my face up and see in the reflection of my computer, it was only my typing that everyone was telling what I believed . Using a computer is no different from previous generations’ pastimes of solo TV viewing or letter writing, but only a computer allows one to dissect and transmute one’s physical and emotional self into neat digital packages. Also known as social media posts.
For some members of Gen Z, the first generation to access social media from birth, the way we understood ourselves was determined more by what we did, alone, lit by the light of a screen, than by other people. The internet, with its boundlessness, its Photo Booth filters that could distort your self-image even more than the unreasonable expectations of a magazine, impressed us more than sitting in a cafeteria and noticing that the people around us are anxious, loving , and alive too.
When I was younger and spent most of my time working on my internal and personal digital world, I guess I stopped seeing everyone around me breathing fully. They seemed like empty-headed NPCs to me, but then I grew up.
I have learned to listen to other people and take care of them. I learned that selfishness quickly diminished the status of a self-proclaimed hero: it hurts you and the people who try to help you on your journey. And ‘NPCs’, are they really that brainless? Is it so bad to be a helpful member of a well-meaning collective? NPCs also have stories, families, and feelings. Like everyone is not bad, so I don’t have to be the hero. Sometimes I’m fine with being someone else’s NPC.
0 Comments