In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Immanuel Can: Hey, Tom, what’s all this I’m suddenly hearing about “NPC”?
Tom: Oh my, you sure know how to pick ’em. As you have surely noticed,
there’s a big media brouhaha around that term, and Twitter has banned it
outright as “hateful”. I’ll let writer Brandon Morse explain it:
“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.”
When you call someone an “NPC”, what you are saying is that they are programmed with preset behavioral patterns
decided for them by somebody else, be they professors, activist groups or the
media. You are telling them they are unable to think for themselves.