By David Futrelle
As I noted the other day, the big thing among right-wing shitposters at the moment is the “NPC” meme — an attempt to insult and dehumanize so-called Social Justice Warriors by declaring them to be, in effect, a bunch of “Non-Player Characters” who respond to everything right-wingers say with a few meaningless catchphrases, much like NPCs in video games.
So, yes, the trolls are trying to convince the world (and, I suppose, themselves) that their opponents are basically repetitive robots by … all using the same insult against them at once. The NPC meme is even more of a self-own than the “cuck” and “soyboy” memes that preceded it.
Now they’ve upped their game — I guess you could call it that? — by creating dozens if not hundreds of obviously fake NPC Twitter accounts to prove that … well, I don’t know what they’re trying to prove, honestly.
I discovered this phenomenon earlier today when a couple of these fake NPC accounts — complete with grey-faced NPC avatars — responded to my original article on the NPC nonsense. Here are their Twitter profiles.
As you can see, they’re not exactly trying to hide the fact that they’re trolls. (I don’t think even these idiots are idiotic enough to think this half-assed trollery is convincing.)
Here are some of Mr. Orange Man’s recent tweets. You might notice a couple of obvious patterns here. Along with the repetitiveness of the posts, most of them are replies to other fake NPC accounts.
I took a quick look at Mr. Orange Man Bad’s profile and saw that he had 70 followers, which is a lot more than one might expect from a throwaway troll account.
So who exactly would follow a completely worthless troll sockpuppet account like this?
Other completely worthless troll sockpuppet accounts. Page after page of them.
What are you even doing, guys? Why go to all this trouble to push a meme that everyone outside of shitposterland sees, at best, as a massive self-own or, at worst, a creepy way to dehumanize your enemies that makes you look a bit less than fully human yourselves? What on earth is the point?
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So wait….they’re trying to prove we’re all fake… by making fake accounts and marking them all with the very same obvious avatar that stands out like a thumb you slammed in a car door?
I tilt my head as much as I want for this one and I think my neck is going to snap in half.
Good golly, the self-owns never stop! The heck are they tring to accomplish here? I’d give a crisp internet dollar for any kind of clue.
Wow, this is legitimately one of the saddest and most pathetic things I’ve ever seen! So much time and effort dedicated to spite, it’s like these guys have no personality or identity outside being contrary to liberals. If the left disappeared tomorrow, these guys would just dissipate into dust like Thanos snapped his fingers. They wouldn’t have a reason to exist anymore, because hating the left is their entire existence, without us they are nothing. They should really be thanking us for giving them the only purpose their miserable lives will ever experience.
What a weird inability to satirize their opponents. I mean, “orange man bad” is a good start, but then to follow it up with “TV wouldn’t lie”? It’s like straw-manning, only they seem to be genuinely incapable of perceiving people outside of their own group.
What a bewildering amount of time and effort to put into…whatever this is. It’s dedication worthy of a far better cause.
Don’t they realise that anyone could do the same to them, and that it actually applies to them a lot more?
I mean they:
* Believed that a non-existent review for a free game about Depression would lead to the downfall of videogaming, and began an obsessive hate campaign.
* Think that ‘politics’ (Therefore bad!) is anything involving a non straight white male protagonist, like Ellie in the Last Of Us Part 2 being in a gay relationship with another woman. (Which was already a known factor about her, but SHOCK!)
* Think Jack Thompson (One of the original moral crusaders against video games) was a good guy simply because he protested the ESS JAY DUBYAS
* Use all the same damn bizzarre terminology without thinking about why, see: Cuck, SJW, Globalist, Soyboy. (Of course, there’s plenty who know what the phrases mean and why it benefits their cause)
On a related note, I found a really interesting article (that praises We Hunted the Mammoth!), about red pillers co-opting classic literature to bolster their own misogyny and white supremacy. Thought it might interest people here.
@Errapel
Makes a change from them (ineptly) co-opting science, I guess. Or horribly misreading Fight Club.
Do you have a link?
Honestly, the NPC meme isn’t 100% wrong, at least when it comes to political views. Most (white) people who consider themselves “left-leaning” have just allowed themselves to be absorbed into the mainstream, post-MLK zeitgeist that (at least overtly) rejects race-based discrimination in favor of an oversimplified assimilationism and haven’t devoted any cognitive energy to really analyzing things like inequality or race and/or class-consciousness because it’s never been necessary for them to survive.
That said, the far-right isn’t much better. Their entire political philosophy is nothing but post-hoc justifications for oxytocin-based, instinctual ingroup/outgroup reactions or else naked sociopathy and sadism.
Tl;dr, the mainstream left really are robots but the right are nothing more than wild animals.
Trying to be funny?
Of course, they’re failing.
Guys, allow me to explain something. You see, you lack any knowledge of anything outside your own head. This means you don’t understand human beings. A comedian makes people laugh by illuminating the human condition. Therefore you can’t make us laugh.
Get outside. Talk to strangers. Read a few novels. You’ll start to learn about the rest of the world.
Hope that helps.
@rainwoman0451
The right are not wild animals.
This planet needs wild animals.
Right wingers? We’d all be a lot better off without them.
Wow, that didn’t take long. I went to Twitter and looked at the replies to a comment about 45 paying for crowds at his rallies and these NPC accounts were all over it. Some accounts tried to present a more legitimate cover by saying NPC stood for National Progressive Coalition, but the website is as fake as the gray avatars.
nationalprogressivecoalition(dot)org
I’ve also found a “Nicholas Preston Cummings PhD”. His avatar is an actual face, but still gray.
(at)NangRichard
@rainwoman0451
What do you mean by “the mainstream left”? Democrats and people who vote Democrat?
@Kat
I don’t think you’re completely right. They certainly make me laugh, though not for the reasons they intend. 😛
Typical alt-right behavior: leveraging memes and irony to self-brainwash themselves, then indulging in orgies of self-congratulation.
This is not the kind of behavior that facilitates the free exchange of ideas. In some ways it’s worse than North Korea and China because at least in those cases it’s forcibly imposed by the government. These people are voluntarily doing to themselves.
They’ve ceded language, truth, science, and critical thought to the left, which has made the right incapable of engaging in meaningful debate or supporting human progress. All they have left are crude tricks to try to discredit their opponents.
I predict that by 2030 the alt-right will have completely lost the ability to read and write, and will only be able to communicate via Pepe memes.
Nice to see Twitter has mechanisms in place to prevent this sort of thing, oh wait ?
Man these people are pathetic. Having to go to all this trouble just to lie, in order to make it appear that you are correct, really should make them question their beliefs. Than again, these are not reasonable people at all.
Someone needs to pull these guys aside and tell them that’s not how “be the change you want to see in the world” works.
I mean, kudos to those hypothetical ‘someones’, because it would be like shouting at a wall that is also made of high-level nuclear waste.
Those gray faces are super creepy looking. Are we sure it’s really trolls behind these accounts and not some sort of army of restless spirits trying to take over our reality via the internet. Like in Kairo (aka Pulse)?
Happy Halloween!
So, why are there two different comments by two different people in two recent threads calling liberals just as bad as Nazis. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence that this is occuring at the same time the right wing talking point is that liberals are a violent mob. Sounds to me like gotcha trolling meant to manipulate us into violent rhetoric.
WWTH – and they always think they’re being so clever about it, too.
@wwth
If you’re talking about rainwoman0451, I’d like to point out that, in another thread several days ago, they’ve already advocated mass killings, torture and slavery being applied to the far-right. So they’ve actually stepped back the violent rhetoric, if you can believe that.
@Ariblester
Makes me question rainwomans motives for posting here . might be a “hello fellow kids” situation .
@ Dr. Thang
They HAVE NO identity. Before the Orange Slush, they sat at their computers and complained… since Cheeto Benito’s appointment, they sit at their computers and crow. If by some miracle Mango Mussolini were to disappear, they would again sit and gripe.
It’s so ironic that they consider people who are actively fighting for justice to be “non-players..” It’s like they don’t realize that THIS game isn’t being played on their computers… it’s being played in the streets.
@the people trying to engage with rainwoman0451,
They haven’t posted much here in the past (under this nym, at least) but it has always been deserving of a good side-eye, at the very least. Divisive and inflammatory stuff.
One thing they’ve never done is answered any questions or responded to criticism. I strongly doubt they’re here in good faith.