La Voz de Galicia – February 21, 2025 →
I’m so ignorant, and so out of sync, that I didn’t know what an NPC was. While reading this week, or rather, watching an opinion video-essay by journalist Ezra Klein for The New York Times, I had to stop and look up information about the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) that inhabit the world of video games. And the more I read about NPCs, about meme culture related to NPCs, and about their role in politics and social media, the more I realized how outdated one can be without even realizing it.
In video games, there are characters who aren’t operated by any player, who simply inhabit the spaces where the game is played and act in an automatic, scripted way—those are the NPCs. From what I understand, a few years ago, NPC memes became popular as a metaphor-insult for those people who repeat the slogans of progressive thought, as if they were programmed to do so and really had no personality or independent thought. And it’s precisely the followers of Trumpist ideology who have popularized their use.
My ignorance about NPCs led me to question my own perspective, because, despite doing my best to stay informed and connected, I know that my reality is a privileged one. Am I also the person who repeats the slogans I identify with without questioning them? I don’t know. What I do know is that independent thought, the kind that comes from the time one takes to learn, think, and reflect, is increasingly scarce, and today, it’s more necessary and harder than ever to have an unbiased opinion about everything that’s happening around the world.
