Non-player characters (NPC)

I came across this meme a short while ago and had to do the research to understand the implied analogy. The meme is referring to Social Justice Warriors as NPCs (from the gaming community and Non-Player Character. Its all explained better than I could in The Meme The Gaming Community Created To Label SJW’s Is Pretty Brilliant by Brandon Morse.

If you’ve ever picked up a video game that features other characters that are controlled by the computer, then you’ve run into non-player characters or NPC’s.

NPC’s serve a host of different functions depending on what the program you’re playing with needs them for. They’re the villagers in Skyrim, Toad from Super Mario Brothers, and the ghosts in Pac-Man. NPC’s may have dialogue, patterns, and personality, but at the end of the day, they’re just a program with pre-set behavioral patterns decided for them by a developer.

Now let’s pretend we’re taking this article from the top…

If you’ve ever stepped onto a college campus or a protest demonstration that features people with neon colored hair screaming at the top of their lungs about identity politics or a social concern then you’ve run into a social justice warrior or SJW.

SJWs serve a host of different functions depending on what activists, politicians and the media need them for. They’re the crazed people trying to beat down the Supreme Court door, the Antifa members threatening motorists, or the male-feminist roundhousing a woman for expressing pro-life views. SJW’s may have dialogue, patterns, and personality, but at the end of the day, they’re just a program with pre-set behavioral patterns decided for them by professors, activist groups, or the media.

The comparison between NPC’s and SJW’s is pretty striking and simultaneously hilarious.

SJW’s aren’t known for their individualism. All of their beliefs seem to be uniform no matter which college or protest you go to. Even if you bring the facts that debunk their beliefs, they can’t or won’t deviate from “their truth.” They think what they’re told with seemingly no capacity for critical analysis, and once their dialogue tree runs out on a certain subject they either clam up or being shouting a phrase over and over again like “BLACK LIVES MATTER,” “HEY HEY HO HO (insert thing) HAS GOT TO GO,” or “NO JUSTICE NO PEACE!”

You get the idea.

This is awfully reminiscent of the way NPC’s interact with gamers in the virtual world. Outside the bounds of what the programmers gave them, the NPC’s aren’t capable of doing much else. Talk to one enough and eventually, they’ll run out of things to say, and begin repeating the same phrase over and over again. They even made a joke about it in the Jumanji sequel.

Read the whole thing, especially for the video clip from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.