There’s a looming force in society which threatens us all.
It deprives us of our agency, robs us of our intellectual freedom, and commits the gravest human sin – being annoying.
That force is the NPC – a gaming acronym for “Non-Playable Character” – someone who wanders around the game, typically in a set pattern, repeating the same lines and in some cases, acting as a challenge to your completion of the game.
It’s a background person.
At best, they’re neutral.
At worst, they’re an obstacle.
Take a racing game for example – your objective is to get from one part of the course to the other. An NPC is a guy pushing a fruit cart outside the crosswalk, a pedestrian standing in the middle of the road, or a vehicle moving way too damn slow in the fast lane.
Real-life NPCs are people who bleat the same opinions and talking points, not exhibiting higher-level thinking or even curiosity – one of them crucial things that separates us from all other species.
This is a problem.
When people start to speak without thinking, it gives others the right to act without thinking.
After all, who’s going to stop resellers in Lexuses (Lexii? no, that’s probably some OnlyFans star) from clearing out the shelves of the local CVS?
Some fat fuck manager in a mask trembling with a walkie talkie?
Customer service, and the evils it perpetuates, is the most successful manifestation of NPC thought.
You’re literally told to read from a script and not deviate.
The intent is to provide equal service to every person, but as we’ve seen from all attempts to establish equality between humans, the “service” part gets lost in a race to the bottom to provide the most minimal service possible.
Ask anyone who’s had to wait on hold with two hours with an airline that left the gate early *cough* Allegiant *cough* – the “service” part of customer service is over.
The current excuse is “due to [insert stupid health scare here]” we can’t “[do jack shit for you]” so go online and “[read a useless help article]”.
NPCs thrive in customer service.
It’s genderless, lifeless, requires little work, and you get to dismiss the entire spectrum of human thought and emotion as some sort of overreaction to real grievances.
Funnily enough, common “NPC thought” is to excuse the bad behavior of entire groups, ethnic / gender / otherwise, based upon historical grievance.
“Of course they had to rob the CVS”, the NPC argues, “look at historical injustices”.
No Civil Rights icon would agree with this statement.
The CVS corporation has not committed historical injustices, nor has the greeter there unless they’re Argentine with a German accent.
But the NPC mentality marches on, ironically infantilizing members of these large groups and removing their agency of free thought.
It’s why during the “Summer of Love” in 2020 you heard very little from the actual looters and rioters themselves – you can’t let the narrative slip that someone really just wanted a Gucci bag and had no idea what people were even rioting about.
This same thinking translates to customer service.
Automatically, it’s assumed by the majority of customer service agents and scripts that the customer is no longer right, but actually wrong, and needs to be educated and informed.
For someone who grew up going to department stores where kindly attendants wore gloves and used “sir” and “ma’am”, this must be infuriating, and is an extraordinary and historic fall in quality of life over the brief course of a lifetime.
Never mind that you, the customer, have likely already paid hard-earned and inflated money for a good or service, or that your payment history is stellar.
You are wrong for acting the way you did, and you will be quietly punished by the organization you’re purchasing from for your transgression.
Major corporations, multi-state landlords, utilities, and services have come to resemble the IRS.
The wealthy are probably breathing a sigh of relief here – after all, they have *money* to throw at the problem, so they should be receiving excellent service everywhere.
That’s also no longer the case. You’ll get the same service at Kohl’s as you get at Bergdorf’s, now move it along because there are other people in line.
Marketing demands that we are individuals, that no two people are alike, that corporations allow you to express yourself fully.
Self-expression is now limited to a couple of paint colors in stock.
There is no authentic self-expression. Everything you purchase is tracked and watched, and items are chosen *for* you, including your one of 57 genders nowadays.
Self-esteem marketing coincided with the decline of the individual. Everyone needs self-care all of a sudden, don’t worry about that two hours you just spent on the phone talking to a wall, have a glass of wine, sit in a bubble bath, it’s all okay!
Meanwhile, your actual quality of life declines, and the drumbeat of the NPC grows louder and louder, inescapable, professing The Correct Opinions and Just The Right Amount of Acceptable Outrage that you’re supposed to express about events outside your control.
“Customer-service Americans” are the greatest threat to liberty since a leaked Supreme Court decision preventing a woman from aborting a toddler.
The more we debunk this anti-human thought and rhetoric, the better.
It’s very easy to do.
NPCs / background people have a very limited skill set of expression.
They can give you a couple standard answers.
Ask them creative questions.
Pin them down.
Be vocal about where something simply doesn’t make sense.
They’ll likely respond with “it’s just my job” – push back on that too.
We’ve got plenty of jobs out there without people to fill them after all.
You’re not going to change their mind or undo years of corporate and institutional programming, but you can effectively plant some seeds that will allow this person to question if they’re actually *being* a person or pretending to be.
Always ask yourself – am I talking to a real person right now?
Or is this just a recording?
