Are you an NPC? This may disturb you. (Real Life Non Playable Characters EXPLAINED)

I get asked a lot from people in the comments about what I think of the idea of NPC’s. What the flip does NPC mean?

NPC is short for Non playable character.

But here’s the question…

Do they really exist? How do you know if someone is an NPC? Am I an NPC? Or am I the only one who exists and everyone else is an NPC?

It would certainly explain the success of James Corden.

Tell you what — let’s start with what an NPC is, then I’ll tell you exactly what I think and know about the idea of Non playable characters.

What are NPC’s?

They are the non playable characters in video games. They’re basically any character that is not controlled by you. Maybe they’re the shopkeeper, or the character in cut scenes. They look and sound like a real character, but they have set responses, or a script if you will, to drive the main characters plot forward.

Could it be, that these Non playable characters exist in our world? Walking among us, going out and about without a thought in their heads. Merely Artificially Intelligent flesh robots. Be prepared to be more disturbed than when you first found out where babies come from…

NPC Started As a Meme

The idea of NPC’s started as a meme to categorise a certain crowd of people as un-thinking non-players — using this image of a robotic looking person.

And twitter banned anyone who used this meme — in the most NPC move possible.

I got banned from twitter for saying that the past tense of sending a tweet is actually a twat.

Mind you it’s more lenient than Facebook jail — because they give out shorter sentences.

One day YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook will merge… It’ll be called YouTwatFace.

Free Guy is a film coming out this year. The main guy played by Ryan Reynolds is literally an NPC. And realises this. He is shown that life or his world is actually a giant video game.

But what are the characteristics of an NPC? Can we tell them apart from normal ‘players’? How do you know that you aren’t one?

What about the Westworld TV Series. Westworld is a giant open world western game — bit like Red Dead Redemption — populated by robots that think they’re real living out the same life over and over. Their lines are scripted and their purpose is to make the guests have fun, or to provide them with a mission which the guests can choose to accept or not. Sounds like NPC’s to me.

NO INNER MONOLOGE?

One of the main reasons people think NPC’s could live among us, is the discovery that some people have no inner monologue. You know, that voice that talks to you during the day. That chatter in the skull that starts the moment you wake up

Researchers found that 5 out of 30 subjects had no inner monologue. Which could be 17% of the population if you extrapolate that out — which we shouldn’t, because 30 subjects is nothing. Could have just happened to pull in 5 psychopaths.

But this is the question it raises…

If they have no inner monologue, how can they have a mind? What the hell goes on in there?

You mean to say that you don’t have That chattering in the skull that keeps you up at night.

Are they simply robots living among us? If so, why and where did they come from? And why are they here?

NPC’s may appear real — but they could simply be a machine, artificial intelligence, with set responses which mimics a real human being.

THIS IS THE PART WHERE I TELL YOU NPC’S ARE B*LLSHIT

Now I’ve got you thinking about it all and made you all excited — I want to just burst your bubble like a Nazi Zeppelin.

I’ve not seen, found or heard any compelling evidence, whatsoever to point to NPC’s being true. This is the problem: there is NO evidence for people being NPC’s. Not one shred of sceitific evidence. It’s a nice idea but that’s all it really is.

The fact that some people don’t have an inner monologue is just a quirk of the human mind. But to say they aren’t real humans is plain inaccurate. Just because you want something to be real, doesn’t make it so. Just because you like the idea, doesn’t make it true. Technically everyone is an NPC to you, because they are not playable by you. You are the only one who is playable. But that doesn’t mean they are NPC’s in the way that they’re robotic non-thinking entities. That they’re expendable in some way.

SIMULATION THEORY

How does this relate to the Simulation Theory? If you think about a single player game like Red Dead Redemption, you control the main character, but all the other characters in the story are NPC’s.

What’s more popular today? Single player games, or multiplayer games?

Multiplayer games. Why?

Because, they’re more fun knowing that you’re playing against other REAL people. It’s more challenging and more rewarding. Each person exists in the game, fighting alongside or against each other in massive maps. Like the Oasis in Ready Player One.

I think, that we are all the main characters in this game. Occasionally we will play a role in someone else game,giving them a bit of script that they need to go on to do something — but that doesn’t mean we’re not real. It’s more complicated than that and it’s hard for you to wrap your head around the complexity of this giant video game.

That’s why the NPC meme caught on, it’s an easy answer to a complex problem. And people today are lazy. I mean if you’ve got some evidence that isn’t anecdotal — then I’d love to hear it.

Our world could be a simulated reality kind of like the Matrix,but more, in my option, akin to a giant multiplayer video game.

Do NPC’s exist in a multiplayer game? No, because they don’t need to. I know a lot of you would like to think it, but that’s a question of laziness on your part.

Lazy!

This simulation could have been specifically set up for billions of individual parts of one consciousness, we call God, to experience itself subjectively in this virtual holographic simulation multiplayer video game — to log in to an avatar and play the game (aka a lifetime). Interacting with each other increases the quality of the game — just like a multiplayer game.

IMPRESSIONABLE

When we say NPC, what we really mean is the particular human who has NPC qualities is going through a period of being impressionable — when I was in my teens and 20’s I was very impressionable. And often repeated whatever I saw. It was more laziness than anything. A shortcut to virtue, by parot-ing the beliefs of others.

That’s all it really means.

DANGEROUS

The NPC idea could be dangerous — for It can be an excuse to neglect empathy. But, there are no NPCs, just people. People on a different path to you.

Treat them with kindness and sympathy wherever you can as you would like to be treated. This give you more points when you finish the game. And won’t need to keep coming back in multiple incarnations. Because you need more points.

If the simulation theory is true of course. Which is it is.

Life is a multiplayer video game.

We are each players in each others game like Actors in each others plays. No one takes precedent or is more important than another. We could do, I think, with learning a bit more to care for our fellow humans. Whatever they choose to think at this moment and know that a little more care and love in the world is no bad thing.

Remember, it’s just a ride