FWIW, the "NPC" trend is another example of 4chan memes cropping up in popular culture, somehow. Perhaps even more perplexing is that Wojak ('the' NPC) was originally used to demean users of social media like TikTok and Twitter. I'd be really interested to see how the etymology of the phrase evolved online!
4chan memes being bastardized by mainstream social media happens so often now, I barely even notice it anymore.
The most egregious recent example is probably the "virgin vs chad" meme. Within mere days of it being created, I was already seeing edits of it on various websites (mostly reddit) that completely missed the point of the joke and treated it as yet another "thing I do good, thing you do bad" image macro.
The best part about the virgin vs chad meme is the evolution of the Nordic Aryan chad side profile image of it. A literal racist shitpost (against Mediterraneans) just casually makes its way into the mainstream without the vast majority of its users not realizing what it originated from.
Adapting and evolving formats isn't "missing the point". They are two distinct audiences with two distinct cultures. Of course they aren't going to make the same memes.
Definitely nothing new, but still really interesting to watch. I really don't understand how people could appropriate an image like Wojak unless they didn't know what it was.
I think there's a bit of a timeless, easy-to-convey meaning behind the image, which is what makes them memes.
People like to treat 4chan like it's this obscure, underground, edgy hacker place. but it's really just a website like any other filled with people who have too much time on their hands. It has the same amount of gore, porn, and bullshit that goes on in Reddit, (less, if you account for the fact that posts get deleted eventually and there's a limitation on how many threads are open, unlike reddit).
Your neighbours kids probably goes on 4chan, I know neighbour's does. And I'm a lot less worried about "avid 4chan users" than "avid reddit users"
For the specific term “NPC” maybe, but the idea of “There is a main character and every one else is a machine” goes back much further - Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions (1973) tackles the idea in a particularly humorous way. (Not too much of a spoiler I hope, in classic Vonnegut fashion the bottom line is delivered up front and the rest book is about getting there)
Note: don’t be tempted by the audiobook! The real deal features illustrations by the author
For that matter, although 4chan co-opted "NPC" for the NPC meme/NPC Womack, the joke of calling actual people "NPCs" goes back way before that in nerd/geek circles.
The NPC meme resonates because it's true that a lot of people respond to keywords with the same phrases. And they update The Current Thing in unison. Once you see that, you can't unsee it.
>The NPC meme resonates because it's true that a lot of people respond to keywords with the same phrases.
A popular example of the last six months being "Slava Ukraine".
Repeating the phrase like a 2022 rosary prayer isn't going to do a single thing toward causing Ukraine to defeat Russia, any more than adding a Ukrainian flag to one's social media profiles will.
>And they update The Current Thing in unison.
I saw a good description (on /r/4chan, no less) of this: People who constantly check in on each other to see what the latest things are to embrace/avoid. What a miserable way to live.
> Repeating the phrase like a 2022 rosary prayer isn't going to do a single thing toward causing Ukraine to defeat Russia, any more than adding a Ukrainian flag to one's social media profiles will.
Well I think this misses the point of the phrase entirely. It's not to help Ukraine defeat Russia, it is to advertise adherence to an ideology. It functions the same way as any other overt religious symbolism and sloganism.
One example I can think of is the use of the phrase "current thing" to pejoratively describe when a certain political issue that no two reasonable people could disagree about, such as a dictatorship waging a brutal war of imperial conquest on a burgeoning democracy, develops high salience.
The intellectual geopolitical reasons for supporting Ukraine are one thing and
the apparent emotional reactions are another. Questioning the latter doesn't necessarily mean attacking the former.
When people say "current thing", I doubt that they are scoffing at the realpolitik calculations of the US and NATO that now is the time to make a stand or criticizing the arms shipments. Maybe they are, but there is definitely something about the situation that has nothing to do with public policy.
I thought about how to quantify the peculiarity without making vague statements about what I feel.
1. "Everybody is a Ukrainian" but not a Syrian, Chechen, Armenian, as evidenced by flags in real life in my area and on social media. Also comments by acquaintances that they know someone from Ukraine, as if it's supposed to be shocking, you know, this is real, this is serious. There are Armenians in this town! I have a cousin who lives in Boston, and most likely he knows some Chechens...
2. Some people spoke out and said "what about the Palestinians and the Israelis?" Including people I'm acquainted with offline/real life. I don't think you have to be particularly pro-Palestinian or agree that the Israeli actions are the moral equivalent of Russia's to observe an unexplained lack of public emotion in favor of Palestinians compared to Ukrainians. Empathy isn't something that hinges on complicated technical considerations. This is only one possible example of its absence, but more than one person called it out, and it's hard to call them apologists for Russia.
3. Online comments that presume that this conflict is/has been the only, or the only significant, brutal conflict involving the Russian Federation. That seems like weak evidence that the general atmosphere and media coverage is extracting Ukraine from all context. Grozny!
Of course, you can find coverage of anything, so what I'm saying is not that the media "ignores" anything, which is often accused but never true, but that if enough people are misinformed in a particular way then it suggests some sort of pattern in the media (or social media) climate.
You know how in unison a huge chunk of people on social update their profile pics to "cause of the day" images and profile pics? And then move on to the next thing and repeat, And then again..
Excuse me, are you disparaging The Current Thing? Clearly, you have deep-seated issues or traumas that have ruined your moral compass. The Current Thing is so plainly and obviously virtuous, and people who do not support The Current Thing need to be fired from their jobs, lose their homes, lose their social standing, and become permanently unemployable.
If Politician gets elected, then he will finally throw all those who don't support The Current Thing into jail, where they belong.
Support The Current Thing. It's the right thing to do.
No, the TikTok trend, if you read the article, is about treating strangers as if they are NPCs, not being one yourself. It's still only tangentially inspired by the 4chan meme and not directly appropriated.
Yes and this started because there was a study that said some people can't hear themselves think (the internal voice when you think or read text). 4chan thought this meant that they literally just _act_, without thoughts. NPCs
Yes, or in a computer RPG controlled by a pre-programmed "AI" (pre-determined scripted actions / dialogue). This is the one I suspect the meme is more likely built upon.
Is this a new trend or just a new way of describing something that has always existed?
I remember when I was a teen we used to do stuff like this. When with friends we'd often do weird things in public just to see how people would react.
Also when I was in school there was a TV show here in the UK called Balls of Steel which did the similar things to "NPCs" that these kids are doing today on TikTok, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A_X1gwnR7k
It’s definitely not new. When I was a kid it was Trigger Happy TV, Jackass or CKY. How you could write a panicky article like this with a straight face I don’t know.
Think a big difference with those is you had a handful across the country. The odds of being caught up in it were basically nil.
Tiktok douchebaggery trends significantly increase the odds of random innocents being caught in this garbage, see the top comment who apparently got hit twice.
And then there’s the shit that’s actively dangerous to third parties. Like pretty much any involving cars.
I agree, and I'd add that there's also a big difference in the level of talent on display. Trigger Happy TV didn't often go out of their way to make people feel uncomfortable as much as to make them genuinely confused about what they were seeing (though there were some unfunny counterexamples, like their "yelling on a giant cellphone" bit).
In the examples here, the victims know exactly what they're seeing, which is yet another imitator who thinks being exceptionally rude is the same thing as being funny.
Although it can be an issue because of mass data collection and analysis, I think it’s a less direct problem: those who follow popular tiktok trends, especially the dumbest and most harmful ones, tend to have pretty limited following and thus reach.
And the danger with today’s marijuana is that it’s 100x stronger than what we smoked in the sixties. Online porn will corrupt todays youth because it’s more ubiquitous and immersive than nudie mags of yesterday.
Am I the only one who thinks that calling other people NPCs is basically the same thing as saying that they are not human? That they aren't really alive/conscious. I find that concept utterly offensive.
Although maybe I'm being a bit too literal about it.
I think calling people NPCs started because there are a lot of people working in dead end jobs that gave up their dreams a long time ago and aren't really thinking about how to really live they're just trying to get by day to day.
I think it's better to raise awareness of people who are NPCs than to try to ignore it and pretend everyone in America's living the great life.
The NPC-meme is fun and more accurate than you might think it is. I've always found a correlation between being mean to NPCs and being mean to other people. (irregardless of their real-life NPC status) Being mean is a bit cringe if you ask me.
After seeing examples in the article I think you (or likely the author) are confused. The examples they showed are people acting like jackasses in public trying to elicit and reaction (one example was someone screaming at an art museum then reciting some weird monologue in a posh accent).
I don’t know what npc has to do with this. I guess I’m getting old.
It's the current thing. The tide pod challenge and the light yourself on fire challenge spread via YouTube and Facebook iirc. In 5 or 10 years we'll probably be complaining about a new social media service
Not saying the behavior is right, but a lot of the anecdotal stories in this thread just sound like teenage behavior, albeit recorded on ubiquitous cameras or by the teenagers themselves.
Again, I don't condone this type of behavior, just saying it seems normal for each generation relative to how my friends and I acted as pre-teens/teens and we are all just growing older/more aware of it.
I'm so glad that this shit is illegal where I live :) Here, one can sue the TikTok douchebag for infringing on personality rights if he records others without their permission.
Maybe this is a bit different, but there is a trend of being a douchebag to others only to record reaction, because "hey I'm just making a tiktok video man".
It caught me by surprise when a 20 year old struck a conversation with me at a self check out at a store.
"Would you buy this for my girlfriend" and he showed me some flowers he had picked up.
"Sure, they're nice flowers".
Then he started scanning them into my cart. Then scanning all the other stuff he had in his basket. I tried to be nice and told him to go to the next checkout stand with his stuff.
"But you said you would buy it"
He kept making noise and being extra dramatic. I got really pissed and pushed him away. He came back telling the clerks that I was to pay for it. I was boiling red until i saw another kid capturing the whole thing and laughing...
Something similar happened a month ago. This time I was taking the elevator with my son and we saw tree kids in torn clothes.
The elevator was packed. They kept pressing the top floor, forcing everyone to go back up before they get a chance to exit. one was begging for money, while the other was yelling and making it very uncomfortable.
My 3 year old son, a big fan of paw patrol, decided to join in the fun. He pressed the alarm, press the emergency button and started yelling "help! Rescue team, fire fighter, help!" The operator answered immediately, that he is sending help.
The kids freaked out. One of them climbed the elevator to remove a hidden GoPro that was recording the whole thing. They apologized and said it was just for tiktok, before they ran out.
Maybe it is just me, but I'm laying a beating on anyone who engaged in direct harassment like that. The potential civil and criminal penalties would be a price worth paying (especially here in New York where people are not arrested or jailed for assault).
> there is a trend of being a douchebag to others only to record reaction
It is not a trend. It has been happening all along. It is just more noticeable now anyone with a phone can participate. Before your tiktok reactions, I recall decades of 'funniest home video' and prank shows. Before that prank calls on radio. Before that trolls in newspapers. April Fool's Day. Most practical jokes seem to lack respect and empathy. It is still funny to many onlookers. To others it is akin to bullying.
> One of them climbed the elevator to remove a hidden GoPro that was recording the whole thing.
Someone should have stopped the kid from taking the GoPro - it's like stealing since no one knows whose GoPro is it. That may have taught them a little lesson..
YouTube automatically demonetizes videos with certain phrases, TikTok probably does something similar. So continuously shouting “COVID vaccines don’t work” to the camera until they stop recording could be an option. If they get pissed, tell them that you are just doing a TikTok.
Better yet, start playing copyrighted music so that YouTube will automatically remove the video. (Cops are known to do this to prevent videos of them from being spread online.)
There's only one problem: You have to pick the right song that will actually get the video taken down by YouTube rather than just get the ad revenue sent to the copyright holder. YouTube is filled with videos of cops failing to pick the right song to stop a recording.
Hahaha, what a dystopian reality! Related to NPCs, this is like having a sonic weapon in a video game, but its behavior is flaky; you have to load it with the correct bullet.
I haven't tried this idea, yet, however: it should be possible to use mixdown -> stem AI/ML models to completely remove the "recognizable" part of the song to an algorithm, leaving only the "vocals" portion.
I know experimentally youtube nearly immediately deletes/unlists a few artists' songs, which i suppose one could use to test the theory.
Yes, this (spleeter) is specifically what i was thinking of. I have to try it again, the version i have is a couple years old and there is a lot of artifacting. I also happen to have a fairly large library of stems, which i could probably use to train the model some more.
What is with the TikTok panic posts? I don’t like that a Chinese social media app has so much influence in the West either, but articles like this are getting downright silly.
The NPC in real life videos are mostly play acted people doing NPC stuff like awkwardly running in place while colliding with an obstacle, or repeating gestures stiffly. Some of them are actually really well acted and look like Skyrim or something. The closest thing to what this article describes that I’ve seen usually appear to be a chance encounter with an irate “Karen” who is making incoherent arguments and threats that are reminiscent of the threats Grand Theft Auto NPCs make if you walk into them. It’s usually over something stupid like skateboarding in their neighborhood. Never seen one where they go out and do something mean to an old person and film it.
The trend she's complaining about (rightly, in my opinion) is people filming themselves trying to make other people uncomfortable, with the justification that other members of the public are only NPCs, not real people, and so there's no moral problem. She gives several examples (although she does also give one example of what you're talking about, which is someone acting like an NPC, which is fine, if unoriginal).
I've accidentally come across many examples of people harassing other people as a "prank", and my impression is that the harassers have been late or deficient in developing empathy.
I agree that the “prank” shit is obnoxious. Like videos of a guy cutting peoples’ headphone cords and then “lol it’s a prank bro here’s some free AirPod.”
Not to immediately downgrade this into conspiracies, but these types of articles do give off the impression of invested interests trying to fear monger.
If we wanted to inform people of the "danger" tiktok poses to our country it would involve giving power to the public to see that we have domestic actors that are _nearly_ as bad...
Maybe I'm just biased because I love the NPC in real life trend as well.
PSA it's not actually cool to seek out safety in numbers. If all of your opinions heavily factor in "what is it safe to think in public," then you are an NPC. You are less cool than people who aren't born to follow.
"I’ve been seeing these videos for at least a year, what I’d call the “NPC in real life” trend on TikTok, videos which involve harassing, embarrassing, or frightening people in public."
The author is explaining how some tiktok users are harassing people IRL either acting as an NPC or treating the mark as an NPC. Both are annoying and degrading experiences for the mark but justified by the tiktok user and their followers because lulz.
It used to be if you harassed a random person you risked being assaulted by them in self defense.
To extend your fourth wall proposition further, how do you (or anyone) know you're not an NPC? Are there hierarchies of NPCs, where you think you're the player character, but in fact there are always "Real" players above you and "NPC"s below?
Supposedly ground-zero: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1411339-npc-wojak