Is society made of NPCs?

Taleisin

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Literally yes, antipsychotics dramatically altered the course of my life and my becoming as a growing personality. I wouldn't say "ruined" because a lot of soul, insight, and poetic-consciousness still shone through the cracks in me, even while drugged through the entirety of my adolescence pretty much against my will, however I also understand that constantly going on and off different classes of heavy drugs at a period when my brain was still developing genuinely screwed with my acquisition of normal, developmental, psychosocial nuances, and probably changed my structural brain development in many ways, too. I ruminate about it, regret it, but I also know that I cannot change anything and must instead give justice to the me that never was by moving forward in the fullness of hope. Anyway.

All this is just an anticipated outcome of a psychiatry in its own "adolescence" it history, having progressed past the psychopharmacological revolution and subsequently forgetting / revising everything that was understood in the past. Psychiatry is an incredibly young science, but also a novel power structure within medicine. It is scary how much of a dearth there is about everyday prescribing tactics that millions of people are subjected to. The FDA Labels give basically no long term information and even with the extreme bias toward the drug institutions and corps. are still extremely instructive in what they reveal. It is nothing less than a massive society-wide experiment. Polypharmacy, drugs given to infants, children, and teens, people kept on tranquilizers for decades until their brain literally atrophies and rots, combinations, variables, drugs plus electroshock, people getting hundreds and hundreds of electroshock sessions in a lifetime, cumulative exposure to different drugs... a true poverty of knowledge and an erasure of consequences. All while choice, autonomy, and consent, mean literally nothing.

This is true, and I've long thought the same thing. A lot of people who full-on endorse the NPC theory report the same kinds of interactions, and I can't help but think that a lot of them just genuinely are not using the proper interpersonal skills or social contexts to weave into this kind of conversation. Then they are reporting their lack of success in having meaningful talks with someone they may not even know well as evidence of their lack of humanness. That itself is worrying, and irritatingly ironic.

In general, I see the NPC theory (which, let's be honest, is not a "theory" but a memeified version of classic philosophic epistemology thought experiments) as half wrong and half true. It hails from solipsism (itself probably born out by the Cartesian "revolution"), the Philosophical Zombie thought experiment, Chinese Typist problem, AI discourse, bits of neo-Platonic thought like aspects of Gnosticism or hermetics, et c. So these each are all going to be more coherent and grounded didactic means of exploring the problem as an intellectual problem instead of a 4chan ideologue trap.

I can definitely see and feel why the NPC meme is seductive to certain people. It is attractive as an explanation for absurdities of (esp. modern) human behavior while also stripping vast swaths of people of their status as human, which reinforces the ego of the one who endorses it. But it also intuitively feels tempting to believe, which is where the half-truth is, and what I'll get to. It is a plain fact I'll brush out of the way right now that the average human is fucking retarded. And, yes, before you bring up IQ, I almost certainly am learned in psychometric more than you, and I understand how the bell curve and Sigma / standard deviations work, and everything else. But it is true. 100 IQ is retard-tier. Any casual assay of everyday human behavior will affirm this -- which is a big part of why NPC meme seems so attractive. The problem with the memeified theory -- which, by the way, to bring it back to my first response on meds and psychiatry, this is also the biggest issue with psych diagnoses as concepts -- is that while it may apply to large groups and subsets of populations, it fails and breaks down when one attempts to extrapolate the label to an individual. Anyone who has ever been in a new and unfamiliar social milieu and then poised themselves as receptive and earnest as possible to listen to the stories of many different people and tried to understand them compassionately will know this. Really, what I mean is, anyone who has pushed beyond the sphere of normal interactions to listen to and affirm the humanity of unfamiliar people with untold tales. You should be able to know this.

So, "NPC's" may work when describing groups and populations, but there is no such thing as "Am I an NPC?" or sorting and classing "This person is an NPC!" or otherwise. It's also a bit like "normie" or being normal in that way. Everyone agrees in everyday conversations that there is such a thing as "normal people" when talking about them, yet we also know that it would be a fool's errand to searh out for a picturesque "normal person" or decide whether some persons fit to "normal" or not. These work and derive their effect as concepts, constructs, abstract and movable.
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Finally, the very important thing to mention though, is Polish psychiatrist (Catholic, tortured by Nazis) Kazimierz Dąbrowski (alias, DA BROoooo-SKI!!1!1!) who developed a theory of mental development that runs totally counter to the mainstream psychiatric beliefs today. The idea of "positive disintegration" also happens to explain the NPC idea very well. I highly recommend everyone here to read his seminal book, Positive Disintegration, as it is very short, simple to digest, and truly revolutionary as a way to think about mental health, to heal oneself, and to view character and its development. Basically, his idea was that the large majority of society is made up of people at a personality state of "primary integration", sometimes a level taking on the color of a psychopath, but more often, just meaning: people who experience little internal conflict (as opposed to external), whose values and motives are not questioned, and are completely handed down from and in accord with the values / motives that are either biologically imperative or socially prescribed.View attachment 27514

The other conjecture of his thesis is that: the minority of people (often people marked by a distinct "over-excitability" as children or people prone to nervousness and melancholy) who do break out of this primary integration experience a disintegration process of neurosis, 'psychoneurosis', and/or psychosis, which is almost always misunderstood as illness / disorder, but which can be called 'positive' because the state of disintegration is absolutely needed for the disarticulation, transformation, and building-up of the true potential of human personality -- secondary integration -- a state which is responsible for all great genius and nudges forward. The idea is that mainstream psychiatry completely misinterprets the disintegration process as illness, because it is painful and often ugly. They often completely ignore developmental context and shut down the question of "Where could this process be going?" Yet, Dabrowski argues that by considering the temporal direction, by taking into account that the uninterrupted, eventual outcome is a return to integration yet with the wisdom of true personhood, a state which claims the greatest movements of the human race, one will understand how crucial the process and levels of "disintegration are.

A person may be stuck on unilevel disintegration, and wallow in anguish and descent. Or, they might move through a hierarchical scrutiny and arrangement of values in "spontaneous" multilevel disintegration, where they are most characterized by self-doubt, strong waves of shame and guilt, anxiety, and discontent. Yet this confusion directs a purpose, as yet unseen. This moves backward or forward on to organized multilevel disintegration, where superimposed values / motives are still held in tension, but are chosen in a conscious, concerted effort -- the ideal is decided on, elected, made and built, for and by oneself. The attainment of this is a circle back to the beginning, a stable structure, a wholeness of secondary integration, the truest and fated birthright of being human.
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What is crucial, though, and most relevant, is that only a minority of the population will ever even break out of "primitive / primary integration" in the first place. Those that are likely to are a small slice of the pie, those marked by the omen of "overexcitability" in the aesthetic, emotional, imaginative, sensory, creative, intellectual, or kinaesthetic domain. Dabrowski links this enhanced sensitivity in any domain in childhood / adolescence to the development of what he calls the "third factor" as a kind of drive or pulsing force that triggers the breakdown or disintegration out of the majority in the first place and directs and fuels its advancement and progress through trials on to the level of secondary integration (where only, say, 1% of humans actually attain to, often those the majority exiles at first). He calls it the "third factor" because in a schema of "nature versus culture / nurture", he says, it would be "the third" beyond the overdetermined and inherited domains of biology or societal training. So, it is the domain beyond that, what the soul is undeniably called to, what she becomes, and what it decides for oneself.

Anyway, if you read all the way down to here, fucking thanks, and hope you got something relevant out of it at least. Sorry.
Great explanation! Thank you for taking the time to write this out, I wouldn't have been motivated to do similarly haha. If you'd like some material that discusses this from some novel perspectives I can find some for you.
 
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"Have you ever looked at someone and thought what is going on inside their head?"

Have you ever asked something deep and meaningful to someone you thought you knew and all they give you back is that blank stare like they dont know how to compute what you just said, or just spit society's answer back to you?

:WojakNPC:Yeah Im talking about those NPCs. :WojakNPC:

I dont mean those who just repeat the same old politic view of "Muh aBOrtin RIgTs" or the "eVIL deMOCrats WAnt tO sTEal mA jOb". Im talking about the desensitization of society to a dangerous degree. Someone could just be screaming at a grocery store on how the weather is purple and no one would find it odd and just ignore it.

Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but has anyone of you experienced anything like this? Is society dead and composed of NPCs?

:delet32:
Saw these on Twitter today all linking to some Indian guy podcast coming up in a few days
Either dead internet or people actually are NPCs
 

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Taleisin

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Saw these on Twitter today all linking to some Indian guy podcast coming up in a few days
Either dead internet or people actually are NPCs
bots?
 
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FallingLeaves

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Saw these on Twitter today all linking to some Indian guy podcast coming up in a few days
Either dead internet or people actually are NPCs
I used the Twitter search feature on a few of these. I found many identical tweets.
They must be bot accounts that copy real tweets and append that link.
 

Max Chill

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Intel suggests that you're probably just in need of scrubbing out the "protagonist.exe" from your systems and you're good to go, Lt.

tom cruise 2.jpg
 
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<SIXX>

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Man, I'm in high school, and everyone seems to have reduced their personality to a piece of dog shit that stuck to the pavement and created a dry crust on top due to the hot sun just waiting for someone with a new shoe to step on it.
it gets worse as you get older
 
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InsufferableCynic

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My standard for who is an NPC comes from whether or not they can justify their positions. Having stupid opinions is okay - everyone does. We all accept ideas and opinions without question sometimes, without even realizing. But someone who is mentally stable should realize when they don't have a valid position anymore and abandon it (usually when the position is criticised and they cannot defend it), while at the same time not just blindly accepting their opponents opinion as the truth either. NPCs instead turn to insults, blocking, or calling others evil/stupid for their positions. Even I struggle with this, which I guess makes me a "self aware NPC" sometimes. I think everyone does this to a degree.

Almost all discussions about NPCs I see online are by NPCs who think they aren't NPCs because they don't repeat talkingpoint.exe and instead prefer to repeat talkingpoint_alternate.exe. I usually see the NPC meme mentioned by conservatives, and a lot of them tend to be "muh bad government" types, equally as NPC as their opponents.

The real issue right now is that everyone seems to think that their opponents are just too stupid to have any valid points, and only believe things because they are stupid brainwashed idiots. Conservatives think liberals are obviously only the way they are because they have been brainwashed by Karl Marx at their university. Liberals think conservatives are only the way they are because of Russian disinformation and societally-ingrained racism. Nobody ever actually seems to think that maybe their opponents have an equally valid position, or, even if their opponents are wrong, they can still be sincere in their beliefs and they can come from strong moral principles, or have a genuine reason to believe something. It's always part of some insane conspiracy theory or disinformation campaign.

This results in people losing genuine arguments in the sea of NPC opinions. If all you have heard is bad arguments for some position, because you have only heard NPC opinions on it, you will miss the few times someone with a functioning brain explains it clearly and concisely, if you assume that everyone holding that position is stupid. Most people can barely define liberalism and conservatism, let alone explain what their positions are. But there are a few who can explain their position concisely. Treasure them and listen to them. Ignore the rest.

Outside of politics, I think there's still a way to tell if someone processes information and can build on it, or if they just collect facts like pokemon and don't think for themselves or make their own decisions. Usually you can ask someone why they believe something, and will either get a satisfactory answer or not. This is obviously subjective and I wouldn't be comfortable pointing to anyone specific in my life and saying "they're an NPC". That said, there are probably exceptionally rare cases where it's blatantly obvious that someone is just plain stupid, but that's likely a different issue entirely.

I have noticed that the main ways people consider others "smart" or "stupid" is based on certain shorthands, which I guess are similar to stereotypes, which I guess are right at least some of the time. For example, I know people who look down on others who like fashion or pop music, with the idea that "they don't like to actually think about things, they just go with trends". While there certainly ARE people who simply go with trends, which IMO is definitely signs of NPC behaviour, simply making these sorts of assumptions rather than asking for someone's reasoning is also NPC behaviour.

Sorry, this is an unstructured rant. I really need to learn how to write.
 
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CahCaw

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"Have you ever looked at someone and thought what is going on inside their head?"

Have you ever asked something deep and meaningful to someone you thought you knew and all they give you back is that blank stare like they dont know how to compute what you just said, or just spit society's answer back to you?

:WojakNPC:Yeah Im talking about those NPCs. :WojakNPC:

I dont mean those who just repeat the same old politic view of "Muh aBOrtin RIgTs" or the "eVIL deMOCrats WAnt tO sTEal mA jOb". Im talking about the desensitization of society to a dangerous degree. Someone could just be screaming at a grocery store on how the weather is purple and no one would find it odd and just ignore it.

Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but has anyone of you experienced anything like this? Is society dead and composed of NPCs?

:delet32:
I wonder OP, what is it that is going on in your head that you don't think is going on in someone else's head. I'm the type to be in my head too a lot, and I agree for most there isn't a lot going on. But, the reality is that that which is going on in my head isn't all glamorous, it is merely different. So tell me with honesty OP, what is it with your head?
 
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InsufferableCynic

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I wonder OP, what is it that is going on in your head that you don't think is going on in someone else's head. I'm the type to be in my head too a lot, and I agree for most there isn't a lot going on. But, the reality is that that which is going on in my head isn't all glamorous, it is merely different. So tell me with honesty OP, what is it with your head?

I'm not the OP, but in my opinion, the difference is that NPCs do not have the natural, innate desire to reason, which admittedly sounds quite pretentious. Almost everyone is capable of thinking, obviously. When you ask people to solve a complex puzzle, almost everyone will be able to do it, but the default state for most people seems to be to effectively "go with the flow" and not analyze or question the information they are given if required, and even to fight that analysis if it's thrust on them (like from an overly political family member). It's almost like how I feel when I wake up - everything is basically a fog and I don't want to deal with any problems until my brain activates properly for the day.

I guess being an NPC isn't stupidity in the traditional sense. These people are perfectly capable of making rational decisions or solving complex problems when required. They just avoid it when they can and it's not their default state. Maybe it's mental laziness, or maybe it's just a difficult task for them and the strain makes it more of a specialised way of thinking, or maybe it's something else entirely, I don't know.
 

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I like this topic. I'm actually writing a little on this. I haven't put anything out yet but I will be in the next couple months. I'll share a little of what I have written so far.

I think people exhibit NPC like behavior when they use social media in a certain way. I call people NPCs that just post their lives online and engage in frivolous arguments. The type of content they create and the energy they expend is just fuel for the algorithms and independent agents who have shed their NPC suits. When the NPCs like each other's content it is just them swapping minor hits of dopamine. They are mindless bots conditioned by social media to continuously share new personal content with one another and by extension the platforms and algorithms they employ. Without realizing it they are stuck in a self feeding loop swapping exchanges of dopamine through likes. All the while the algorithm processes their data producing just enough new content to keep the cycle going.
 

CahCaw

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I'm not the OP, but in my opinion, the difference is that NPCs do not have the natural, innate desire to reason, which admittedly sounds quite pretentious. Almost everyone is capable of thinking, obviously. When you ask people to solve a complex puzzle, almost everyone will be able to do it, but the default state for most people seems to be to effectively "go with the flow" and not analyze or question the information they are given if required, and even to fight that analysis if it's thrust on them (like from an overly political family member). It's almost like how I feel when I wake up - everything is basically a fog and I don't want to deal with any problems until my brain activates properly for the day.

I guess being an NPC isn't stupidity in the traditional sense. These people are perfectly capable of making rational decisions or solving complex problems when required. They just avoid it when they can and it's not their default state. Maybe it's mental laziness, or maybe it's just a difficult task for them and the strain makes it more of a specialised way of thinking, or maybe it's something else entirely, I don't know.
The desire to think vs the desire to not think, no?
 
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Sinthôme

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Great explanation! Thank you for taking the time to write this out, I wouldn't have been motivated to do similarly haha. If you'd like some material that discusses this from some novel perspectives I can find some for you.
Thank you; if you have anything to recommend I'd be glad to go read it / check it out.
My standard for who is an NPC comes from whether or not they can justify their positions. . . NPCs instead turn to insults, blocking, or calling others evil/stupid for their positions. Even I struggle with this, which I guess makes me a "self aware NPC" sometimes. I think everyone does this to a degree.
Definitely. Even though we're talking about something considerably broader than American politics with its implications (P-zombies, consciousness, actor/observer, Descartes' split subject), it's for sure applicable here like you pointed out. American politics has of course escalated to such an extreme extent that like you've described, people truly do not understand anymore that you can argue with someone without being angry at them, that you can disagree with someone on something without disagreeing with them as a person or rejecting them for it, that you can debate in earnest and willingness, that we all need to be ready to adjust to novel information when presented to us, or that we don't have to sell our neighbors down the river in any sense of that idiom. All of this was formerly accepted as granted and true as unquestionable core principles of everyday American society and milieu. So there's that, which undoubtedly is a variable in the NPC meme like I think you'd agree. But In some sense, this is just the way humans always are and always have been on a population level.

There will generally be an elect ruling elite, a hoard of stupefied and illiterate masses that make up the overwhelming majority, and a third group. These people and how much social acumen they can martial is always variable. The third group in earlier acts in this human story has mainly made up the "priest caste", or even a medicine-man-shaman-prophet depending on the habitus and progress of the society in question. Their social standing--spelled out by the social context--moves between the cracks in the caste like running water. In the right place and time, their communications not only take on the shape of any cranny of society's levels, but the influence of their message will flow so long as there is anywhere else to reach, turning up silt, cleansing, and eroding, as it goes down the holy mountain. Again, what role they play and their moral coloring has been entirely contingent on place and time. They could 1) move similarly as between the common men, 2) as the intelligencers of the ruling class (elect priest-advisers seen in classical theocracies), or even as 3) those cast at exile by force or choice even amidst the common men. Sometimes these sparse groups of scattered individuals or cells of hermits, move the world in something like a stroke of fate or providence. This is mainly when they act for real human good. The effect of their choices is incalculable and inexplicable. Naturally, when the state apparatus co-opts and organizes this function of oracular intercession between mankind and the garbled Godhead, and of mankind with itself.

Of course, this general formula is so, because very few are meant to smithy in their own soul the substrate for what will be passed down as the word of God or The word for Truth, not just in every religion, but in any ideology, dogma, sect of philosophy, or value system, and so the rest must all take cue and play by lead. These masses do this for an innate human need for efficiency in cognitive processing / a "low Need-for-Cognition". Look this term up because it's what you describe. This is a state where we're all incentivized biologically to shut up and not ask questions unless we've learned that in this environment it is absolutely necessary for our survival and adaption to do so. Thinking literally is too hard, too much work, and our techno-society's constant haggle offering the satiation of every dreamt-of appetite means that like Lotus-eaters, we go the path of least resistance to bite the next dangled fruit, knowing deep down, in something like the murkiness of trying to remember you're dreaming or the paralysis of learned helplessness, that little in this avenue of pleasure must involve a real threat to our survival. We know that we have no stakes in the game. No real, evolutionary stakes. This refers back to what you mention in later comments, about whether a person can give a reasoning to evince their need to effectively evaluate and make room to work in novel information.

So even though that's the deliberate condition the amassed cattle are kept in, there are always results of this "3rd group or principle" I keep mentioning that slips through the cracks, like water or light would. Where even the state or elite do not systematically operationalize this principle that sets everything in motion and reties the fate of man, there will be either grassroots organization in disparate cells of revolutionaries of some kind; or there will be the solitary cropping up (a handful in different places and times) of genuine visionaries that one way or another, beginning with a free and unpredicted choice, will set off a chain of events that could radically transform or topple the society they isolated from. They are the rogue, indeterminate element of chance necessarily operating within any organized, determined system that allows for structural motion, but also, could threaten to break down the established order: to topple and rebuild the whole thing through articulation, disarticulation, and chance.

But what does it look like when the nation-state or ruling elite do freely employ the service of this malleable human temper into an organized order toward their end? For example, in the priest classes of medieval Catholicism or the Egyptian initiates ministering to the Pharaoh. Even the byzantium of modern day clandestine human intelligence agencies to nation-states can be tucked into this para-religious whisperer in the ears of power. They are the fortune-tellers, wise men, spies to the king, Magi-Ycos, solemn advisers. . . intelligence officers, a truly ancient office! When this same triangulating prism face of human kinship en masse under agrarianism--that which sifts out the bipolarity between the masses of cattle across from the ruling elect--becomes formulated and institutionalized by the nation-state, it is almost unrecognizable, against the hermit wandering in the desert. He redeems humanity as one voice calling out in the wilderness to offer a love-gift, unasked for, unwanted, to a humanity that will only be able to understand it in lifetimes to come, if ever. A swivel of history's endless self-same spiral. But it really is the same triangulating role, where beyond the stupefied masses (NPC's) and the opulent elite, are this third principle, to be found at any level in the hierarchies, networks, and populations of any civilization, the group of people, who, toward one end or another, send the whole damn thing in motion.
And these third-group people, are a kind of those beyond both the NPC's the ones that do the opposite like you mention next, and beyond their deliberate programmers.
The origin point is these intercessors--not between the elites and masses--but between man and his Godhead at the time, namely, whatever his society literally or figuratively exalts. This is to be interpreted in the broadest and most abstract way possible, because they are simply the ones who acts as elements of radical, transformative change -- born out by a visage burning to be seen by the masses -- the change toward whatever end, from whatever cause, in its wake, will delight in the opiate of this fire.
Almost all discussions about NPCs I see online are by NPCs who think they aren't NPCs because they don't repeat talkingpoint.exe and instead prefer to repeat talkingpoint_alternate.exe. I usually see the NPC meme mentioned by conservatives, and a lot of them tend to be "muh bad government" types, equally as NPC as their opponents.
Yeah, this is another issue. It's actually something that has been recognized in a quote from some Soviet intellectual figure on propaganda. Few truly resist the hypnotism.

Most comply with the homeland programming and the remainder assent to the trance by shouting whatever is the polar opposite. It's predictable: and this was all taken into account by the Soviet Union propagandists.
Consider also the unthinkable breadth of subtle force the Eastern bloc, too, in Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall, that the "para-military" operational powers had. The secret police always waiting. The capacity and budget even then with the rudimentary tech in the 1960's and 70's, to play the nuanced, strategic, flawlessly undetectable mindgames, social infiltration, and torture-by-fate that they utilized systematically at nation scale, not just on confirmed targets but mere potential dissidents. Think about the apex of the Stasi power, the Ersatzung techniques, and what that implied. Also consider that "para-military" is itself only euphemistic doublespeak that only bespeaks where it is lying about; a non-word that we find just as prominent today from the mouths of presidents. . . It becomes unfathomably terrifying to consider the chances of something like the American Stasi today, knowing what a security state could do then, and seeing the blatant opportunity to any attempt to replicate it now, with the global homogenization, data capital, and information warfare of the Internet age.
The point is, these techniques of influence and polity through hypnosis, beliefs, experiments with the social strata, memetic values and weaponized information, have already been long documented and refined. Like you've intimated at, it is perhaps only true in this age, that the "NPC" or what it philosophically stands in for, is more made and sculpted by the omniscient and omnipresent state bodies than it is a question of souls and accidents of human fate.

Anyway, regarding this same observation, I've been thinking about writing up something which I'm thinking will be best to post here, about how 4chan or imageboard culture in general (rather than a particular board) is seriously an ideological trap, an intellectual backdoor or bypass,
that tends leads a lot of people -- mostly young men -- either into strange, childish, or degenerate obsessions (I use this word instead of "interests" for reason), time-traps of the website itself, related locales, or the media the anons shill you, unhealthy relations to sex and pornography, potentially even transgenderism or literal, clinical perversions, but also, truly misguided philosophical, literary, or spiritual ideals and aspirations as a result of every board circling in a feedback loop around their each obscurantist meme of the month, a politics rooted in schematized, 'fatalized', doom rather than a basic trust in working through and from one's own community. Also an oddball weirdo to incel NEET pipeline, lol, although that has other real-time social correlates, like everything else I mentioned. My point though, is not about any one of these concerns I listed here. So don't come screeching at me like I've insulted you because that's not my intent. These are just examples to give of common outcomes.

But the real problem, what really makes it an ideological trapdoor, is about proportions. It's about how much of that directly writes over in the course of a young man's IRL development: what he will talk about, say, do, when he feels he's not being watched closely; what he'll laugh about or bond over with his friends, and what mediates that, if anything. This is something I've personally noticed in actually several of the people I would hang around in my friend group in or after high school. A lot of people really do become walking, talking Anons if the conditions are right. I mean a good 75% of the boards literally recycle the same 20 threads for years. It's plagued by bots or actual retards, because of its nature and adulteration from bots & others, it incentivizes inflammatory, low-"Need-for-Cognition" content as much as possible, finding a gem means finding something you actually believe two humans typed, and most of the recs and advice and shit is a fucking half-aware joke that people then base parts of their actual life off of. . . fuck it's a runaway shit factory on a feedback loop down the Sysiphean hill back to Kék-Kellikek froggy hell.

This influence can be so because of the range and scope of the power of imageboards as a kind of meme factory for the rest of the centralized Internet that has been afforded after the cultural explosion of the 2016 elections. So, like it or not, it does affect the real world and the people in it. I have known people who just kind of morph into Walking Anons, as I said. And it is sad and disconcerting most of the time to see, because you have people who would otherwise have gone against the grain of their peers and by sheer need would have had to figure out a way to organize and express their deviant thinking, and then would have had to go through the brick & mortar, trial & error social process of seeking out others who might see things similarly and presenting your ideas in an acceptable way to see if you guys would mesh and buddy up.
Then there's a community, a huddle of friends, and not one that's been stained by the virus of the runaway feedback loop of imageboard meme-thought, something that, by the way, through the de facto Anonymity of the site, almost guarantees easy control and weaponization by. . . any acting agent that fucking wants to, really. And the result is: the anti-NPC, who is still not a Player Character. He's programmed to do the opposite.
I have noticed that the main ways people consider others "smart" or "stupid" is based on certain shorthands, which I guess are similar to stereotypes, which I guess are right at least some of the time. . . simply making these sorts of assumptions rather than asking for someone's reasoning is also NPC behaviour.
Yes, this is a big one to talk about to. It's exactly as you've said. People have these shorthands of associated behaviors and traits or stereotypes and compile from there when assessing in their intuitive (and socially programmed) perceptions of whether a person is "smart" or not. Often, cognitive skills are conflated and misunderstood.
This is understandable because it's not like everyone is educated in psychometrics, nor is everyone referring to psychometrics and statistics and IQ when they say "smart." I tend to acknowledge what the talk or common rule is, because sometimes, the wisdom of the people really does contain keys that empirical materialism will never be able to use. Yet when people say "smart" or cognate words, they are almost all alluding to different aspects or traits or perceptions of the person-as-object, some more rooted in measurable reality than others, and very few times does what they are talking about actually correspond linearly to some objective metric of indices of intelligence testing or discrete cognitive skills. And anyway, even in IQ, the factor g itself really only 'exists' as a reified composite of the most statistically weighty wheat out of the chaff of many different independent indices (sometimes broken down into Cg or crystallized intellect and Fg or dynamic/fluid intellect) of a given test. Most of the time people say "smart" to refer to something far less quantifiable, something hard to pin down, and sometimes, something much more impactful.

Assuming they aren't conflating stereotypes and schematic links, they are mixing up speed with velocity:
they see intelligence as basically processing speed, because that is most flashy or impressive to them, not considering that abstract problem-solving and perceptual manipulation of ideas and concepts in a creative and effective way is far more of a signal. If they're not talking about that, they are working a good guess based on a gut hunch. They can pick it up in certain cadences of a person's voice, the way they use the fund of vocabulary at their disposal, or make use of the resources at hand. They're noticing something about the person's behavior that we're all through evolution primed to pick up (and sort of keep on the back burner), that gives them a gut feeling to work off of. People are usually right with that. If it is not that they are noticing or meaning when they say "smart" or synonyms, it is lastly, that they're signaling something far more nebulous to signify and count, something murky, eccentric, and altogether singular to the individual's unique way of being-in-the-world at the time and place of the speaking person's contact. What is picked up on here is probably the finest and lightest sense of this, but somehow, the most durable.
Sorry, this is an unstructured rant. I really need to learn how to write.
Yeah, so do I. Except I'm "supposed" to already have the know-how and yet really need to shut the fuck up. The problem is--for me--that I need to make a solemn vow for my own actual safety never to come across a keyboard to start writing something while sleep deprived and inching on manic, ever, ever, again. Thankfully the spoilers spared some people. Seriously.
 

InsufferableCynic

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Thank you; if you have anything to recommend I'd be glad to go read it / check it out.

Definitely. Even though we're talking about something considerably broader than American politics with its implications (P-zombies, consciousness, actor/observer, Descartes' split subject), it's for sure applicable here like you pointed out. American politics has of course escalated to such an extreme extent that like you've described, people truly do not understand anymore that you can argue with someone without being angry at them, that you can disagree with someone on something without disagreeing with them as a person or rejecting them for it, that you can debate in earnest and willingness, that we all need to be ready to adjust to novel information when presented to us, or that we don't have to sell our neighbors down the river in any sense of that idiom. All of this was formerly accepted as granted and true as unquestionable core principles of everyday American society and milieu. So there's that, which undoubtedly is a variable in the NPC meme like I think you'd agree. But In some sense, this is just the way humans always are and always have been on a population level.

There will generally be an elect ruling elite, a hoard of stupefied and illiterate masses that make up the overwhelming majority, and a third group. These people and how much social acumen they can martial is always variable. The third group in earlier acts in this human story has mainly made up the "priest caste", or even a medicine-man-shaman-prophet depending on the habitus and progress of the society in question. Their social standing--spelled out by the social context--moves between the cracks in the caste like running water. In the right place and time, their communications not only take on the shape of any cranny of society's levels, but the influence of their message will flow so long as there is anywhere else to reach, turning up silt, cleansing, and eroding, as it goes down the holy mountain. Again, what role they play and their moral coloring has been entirely contingent on place and time. They could 1) move similarly as between the common men, 2) as the intelligencers of the ruling class (elect priest-advisers seen in classical theocracies), or even as 3) those cast at exile by force or choice even amidst the common men. Sometimes these sparse groups of scattered individuals or cells of hermits, move the world in something like a stroke of fate or providence. This is mainly when they act for real human good. The effect of their choices is incalculable and inexplicable. Naturally, when the state apparatus co-opts and organizes this function of oracular intercession between mankind and the garbled Godhead, and of mankind with itself.

Of course, this general formula is so, because very few are meant to smithy in their own soul the substrate for what will be passed down as the word of God or The word for Truth, not just in every religion, but in any ideology, dogma, sect of philosophy, or value system, and so the rest must all take cue and play by lead. These masses do this for an innate human need for efficiency in cognitive processing / a "low Need-for-Cognition". Look this term up because it's what you describe. This is a state where we're all incentivized biologically to shut up and not ask questions unless we've learned that in this environment it is absolutely necessary for our survival and adaption to do so. Thinking literally is too hard, too much work, and our techno-society's constant haggle offering the satiation of every dreamt-of appetite means that like Lotus-eaters, we go the path of least resistance to bite the next dangled fruit, knowing deep down, in something like the murkiness of trying to remember you're dreaming or the paralysis of learned helplessness, that little in this avenue of pleasure must involve a real threat to our survival. We know that we have no stakes in the game. No real, evolutionary stakes. This refers back to what you mention in later comments, about whether a person can give a reasoning to evince their need to effectively evaluate and make room to work in novel information.

So even though that's the deliberate condition the amassed cattle are kept in, there are always results of this "3rd group or principle" I keep mentioning that slips through the cracks, like water or light would. Where even the state or elite do not systematically operationalize this principle that sets everything in motion and reties the fate of man, there will be either grassroots organization in disparate cells of revolutionaries of some kind; or there will be the solitary cropping up (a handful in different places and times) of genuine visionaries that one way or another, beginning with a free and unpredicted choice, will set off a chain of events that could radically transform or topple the society they isolated from. They are the rogue, indeterminate element of chance necessarily operating within any organized, determined system that allows for structural motion, but also, could threaten to break down the established order: to topple and rebuild the whole thing through articulation, disarticulation, and chance.

But what does it look like when the nation-state or ruling elite do freely employ the service of this malleable human temper into an organized order toward their end? For example, in the priest classes of medieval Catholicism or the Egyptian initiates ministering to the Pharaoh. Even the byzantium of modern day clandestine human intelligence agencies to nation-states can be tucked into this para-religious whisperer in the ears of power. They are the fortune-tellers, wise men, spies to the king, Magi-Ycos, solemn advisers. . . intelligence officers, a truly ancient office! When this same triangulating prism face of human kinship en masse under agrarianism--that which sifts out the bipolarity between the masses of cattle across from the ruling elect--becomes formulated and institutionalized by the nation-state, it is almost unrecognizable, against the hermit wandering in the desert. He redeems humanity as one voice calling out in the wilderness to offer a love-gift, unasked for, unwanted, to a humanity that will only be able to understand it in lifetimes to come, if ever. A swivel of history's endless self-same spiral. But it really is the same triangulating role, where beyond the stupefied masses (NPC's) and the opulent elite, are this third principle, to be found at any level in the hierarchies, networks, and populations of any civilization, the group of people, who, toward one end or another, send the whole damn thing in motion.
And these third-group people, are a kind of those beyond both the NPC's the ones that do the opposite like you mention next, and beyond their deliberate programmers.
The origin point is these intercessors--not between the elites and masses--but between man and his Godhead at the time, namely, whatever his society literally or figuratively exalts. This is to be interpreted in the broadest and most abstract way possible, because they are simply the ones who acts as elements of radical, transformative change -- born out by a visage burning to be seen by the masses -- the change toward whatever end, from whatever cause, in its wake, will delight in the opiate of this fire.

Yeah, this is another issue. It's actually something that has been recognized in a quote from some Soviet intellectual figure on propaganda. Few truly resist the hypnotism.

Most comply with the homeland programming and the remainder assent to the trance by shouting whatever is the polar opposite. It's predictable: and this was all taken into account by the Soviet Union propagandists.
Consider also the unthinkable breadth of subtle force the Eastern bloc, too, in Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall, that the "para-military" operational powers had. The secret police always waiting. The capacity and budget even then with the rudimentary tech in the 1960's and 70's, to play the nuanced, strategic, flawlessly undetectable mindgames, social infiltration, and torture-by-fate that they utilized systematically at nation scale, not just on confirmed targets but mere potential dissidents. Think about the apex of the Stasi power, the Ersatzung techniques, and what that implied. Also consider that "para-military" is itself only euphemistic doublespeak that only bespeaks where it is lying about; a non-word that we find just as prominent today from the mouths of presidents. . . It becomes unfathomably terrifying to consider the chances of something like the American Stasi today, knowing what a security state could do then, and seeing the blatant opportunity to any attempt to replicate it now, with the global homogenization, data capital, and information warfare of the Internet age.
The point is, these techniques of influence and polity through hypnosis, beliefs, experiments with the social strata, memetic values and weaponized information, have already been long documented and refined. Like you've intimated at, it is perhaps only true in this age, that the "NPC" or what it philosophically stands in for, is more made and sculpted by the omniscient and omnipresent state bodies than it is a question of souls and accidents of human fate.

Anyway, regarding this same observation, I've been thinking about writing up something which I'm thinking will be best to post here, about how 4chan or imageboard culture in general (rather than a particular board) is seriously an ideological trap, an intellectual backdoor or bypass,
that tends leads a lot of people -- mostly young men -- either into strange, childish, or degenerate obsessions (I use this word instead of "interests" for reason), time-traps of the website itself, related locales, or the media the anons shill you, unhealthy relations to sex and pornography, potentially even transgenderism or literal, clinical perversions, but also, truly misguided philosophical, literary, or spiritual ideals and aspirations as a result of every board circling in a feedback loop around their each obscurantist meme of the month, a politics rooted in schematized, 'fatalized', doom rather than a basic trust in working through and from one's own community. Also an oddball weirdo to incel NEET pipeline, lol, although that has other real-time social correlates, like everything else I mentioned. My point though, is not about any one of these concerns I listed here. So don't come screeching at me like I've insulted you because that's not my intent. These are just examples to give of common outcomes.

But the real problem, what really makes it an ideological trapdoor, is about proportions. It's about how much of that directly writes over in the course of a young man's IRL development: what he will talk about, say, do, when he feels he's not being watched closely; what he'll laugh about or bond over with his friends, and what mediates that, if anything. This is something I've personally noticed in actually several of the people I would hang around in my friend group in or after high school. A lot of people really do become walking, talking Anons if the conditions are right. I mean a good 75% of the boards literally recycle the same 20 threads for years. It's plagued by bots or actual retards, because of its nature and adulteration from bots & others, it incentivizes inflammatory, low-"Need-for-Cognition" content as much as possible, finding a gem means finding something you actually believe two humans typed, and most of the recs and advice and shit is a fucking half-aware joke that people then base parts of their actual life off of. . . fuck it's a runaway shit factory on a feedback loop down the Sysiphean hill back to Kék-Kellikek froggy hell.

This influence can be so because of the range and scope of the power of imageboards as a kind of meme factory for the rest of the centralized Internet that has been afforded after the cultural explosion of the 2016 elections. So, like it or not, it does affect the real world and the people in it. I have known people who just kind of morph into Walking Anons, as I said. And it is sad and disconcerting most of the time to see, because you have people who would otherwise have gone against the grain of their peers and by sheer need would have had to figure out a way to organize and express their deviant thinking, and then would have had to go through the brick & mortar, trial & error social process of seeking out others who might see things similarly and presenting your ideas in an acceptable way to see if you guys would mesh and buddy up.
Then there's a community, a huddle of friends, and not one that's been stained by the virus of the runaway feedback loop of imageboard meme-thought, something that, by the way, through the de facto Anonymity of the site, almost guarantees easy control and weaponization by. . . any acting agent that fucking wants to, really. And the result is: the anti-NPC, who is still not a Player Character. He's programmed to do the opposite.

Yes, this is a big one to talk about to. It's exactly as you've said. People have these shorthands of associated behaviors and traits or stereotypes and compile from there when assessing in their intuitive (and socially programmed) perceptions of whether a person is "smart" or not. Often, cognitive skills are conflated and misunderstood.
This is understandable because it's not like everyone is educated in psychometrics, nor is everyone referring to psychometrics and statistics and IQ when they say "smart." I tend to acknowledge what the talk or common rule is, because sometimes, the wisdom of the people really does contain keys that empirical materialism will never be able to use. Yet when people say "smart" or cognate words, they are almost all alluding to different aspects or traits or perceptions of the person-as-object, some more rooted in measurable reality than others, and very few times does what they are talking about actually correspond linearly to some objective metric of indices of intelligence testing or discrete cognitive skills. And anyway, even in IQ, the factor g itself really only 'exists' as a reified composite of the most statistically weighty wheat out of the chaff of many different independent indices (sometimes broken down into Cg or crystallized intellect and Fg or dynamic/fluid intellect) of a given test. Most of the time people say "smart" to refer to something far less quantifiable, something hard to pin down, and sometimes, something much more impactful.

Assuming they aren't conflating stereotypes and schematic links, they are mixing up speed with velocity:
they see intelligence as basically processing speed, because that is most flashy or impressive to them, not considering that abstract problem-solving and perceptual manipulation of ideas and concepts in a creative and effective way is far more of a signal. If they're not talking about that, they are working a good guess based on a gut hunch. They can pick it up in certain cadences of a person's voice, the way they use the fund of vocabulary at their disposal, or make use of the resources at hand. They're noticing something about the person's behavior that we're all through evolution primed to pick up (and sort of keep on the back burner), that gives them a gut feeling to work off of. People are usually right with that. If it is not that they are noticing or meaning when they say "smart" or synonyms, it is lastly, that they're signaling something far more nebulous to signify and count, something murky, eccentric, and altogether singular to the individual's unique way of being-in-the-world at the time and place of the speaking person's contact. What is picked up on here is probably the finest and lightest sense of this, but somehow, the most durable.

Yeah, so do I. Except I'm "supposed" to already have the know-how and yet really need to shut the fuck up. The problem is--for me--that I need to make a solemn vow for my own actual safety never to come across a keyboard to start writing something while sleep deprived and inching on manic, ever, ever, again. Thankfully the spoilers spared some people. Seriously.

Damn, that's a lot of spoilers. Honestly I didn't read a lot of them, I sort of understood your points without needing to.

Thanks for the responses though. I guess "NPC-ism" is far more complicated and nuanced than most people think it is.
 

-SteampunkTraveler-

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"Have you ever looked at someone and thought what is going on inside their head?"

Have you ever asked something deep and meaningful to someone you thought you knew and all they give you back is that blank stare like they dont know how to compute what you just said, or just spit society's answer back to you?

:WojakNPC:Yeah Im talking about those NPCs. :WojakNPC:

Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but has anyone of you experienced anything like this? Is society dead and composed of NPCs?

:delet32:
yes actually, I remember asking my friend "(Name) What am I to you?"

He answered with them most generic things about me....The most stupid things that everybody knows. We have known each other for over a year.
 
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RisingThumb

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I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow to the knee.
 
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yes actually, I remember asking my friend "(Name) What am I to you?"

He answered with them most generic things about me....The most stupid things that everybody knows. We have known each other for over a year.
Just out of curiosity why did you ask that and what is the response you wanted?
 
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