By David Futrelle
Over the weekend, I put up a brief post about the sudden proliferation of “NPC” accounts on Twitter — noting the small irony that right-wing trolls were using a veritable army of sockpuppet accounts all spouting identical rhetoric and posting identical memes in order to prove that liberals and leftist are soulless, robotic “Non-Player Characters.”
Naturally, my mentions on Twitter were quickly overrun by, well, a veritable army of sockpuppet accounts all spouting identical rhetoric and posting identical memes in order to prove that I’m a soulless, robotic “Non-Player Character.”. After my post was retweeted by Paul Joseph Watson, the Boy Wonder of Infowars, the NPC meme sockpuppets were joined by an assortment of other far-right trolls.
Their message? Aside from a few who insisted I had failed to properly appreciate the glorious humor of their “parady “accounts, most responded with variations of the classic argument beloved by five-year-olds: No, u! By noticing their meme campaign, they declared in unison, I had proven that I was the real NPC.
Some had slightly more sophisticated arguments than “no, u.” Some of them insisted that the fact that I was just so darn mad about the NPC memes proved that I was a soulless NPC.
Yes, they are seriously claiming that the fact that I have emotions means that I’m a robot, because of course robots are so well-known for *looks at notes again* having strong feelings about things.
That said, my post about the NPC meme army wasn’t an angry one; I was, rather, a bit bemused that so many trolls were throwing themselves so enthusiastically into a meme campaign that was such an obvious self-own, revealing them, not the SJWs they were trying so ineptly to “parady,” to be the most prone to robotically repeating the same jokes, the same memes, the same accusations, over and over and over again, many of them using sockpuppet accounts created just for that purpose.
The one aspect of the NPC meme that does make me a bit angry, and more than a bit sad, is its dehumanizing nature. As I noted in my first post on the subject, the person who got the meme going in the first place was a 4chan anon who argued, in all seriousness, that those he disagrees with have no souls. As I pointed out in a tweet, this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric has historically been used to justify violence — up to an including literal genocide — towards those deemed less than human.
Naturally, the NPC memers have a response to this, which is that anyone who points out that their dehumanizing meme is dehumanizing is, you guessed it, less than fully human. I’ve already pointed out the strangeness of this logic on Twitter:
trolls: *create NPC meme that literally denies the humanity of people who disagree with them by saying they're preprogrammed automatons*
people who disagree with them: huh, this meme that literally dehumanizes me is kinda dehumanizing
trolls: this somehow proves you're an NPC! https://t.co/p4tOTSy7YN
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) October 15, 2018
Here’s that meme in full:
And here’s a similar one that’s been tweeted at me so many times I’ve lost count: 
Needless to say, the independent-minded thinkers who mock so-called SJWs for taking offense at their dehumanizing meme get quite offended if you suggest that they might be acting a bit robotically.
Indeed, many of them seem to be nursing deep grudges at all those who may have accused them of being Russian bots — or who have simply noted that many of their favorite meme campaigns have gotten the support of actual, honest-to-goodness Russian bots.
There are so many of these guys that when I tried to fit a bunch of them in a single screenshot I ended up with this blurry, glitchy mess.
The reddest and maddest of the Russian-bot-complainers was probably this guy.
Do they have a little bit of a point here? Is being called a Russian bot equivalent to being called an NPC?
Nope.
Here’s the thing. NPCs don’t exist, at least not outside of tabletop and video games. The meme — which, as I said, was invented by someone who literally thinks his opponents don;t have souls — is intended to suggest that actual human beings are somehow less than humans.
Russian bots, on the other hand, are very much real and used to create all sorts of shenanigans on the internet, often with the help of paid Russian trolls, who are also a real thing. Numerous detailed studies have shown that Russian bots (and Russian trolls connected to an entity called the Internet Research Agency) have been involved in all sorts of social media campaigns in an attempt to influence political discussions and sow discord generally. Russian bots may have been responsible for the disastrous victories of Trump and Brexit. They’ve pushed anti-vaccine propaganda on Twitter, exploited the death of college student Mollie Tibbits to divert attention from the legal woes of former Trump pals Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, and helped to sharpen political divisions generally.
These Russian bots and trolls have something of a symbiotic relation with right-wingers and channer shitposters generally — amplifying the complaints of both groups and having their own disinformation campaigns assisted by both groups in return.
It’s true that some liberals area bit too quick to cry “bot” when faced with right-wing Twitter trolls who are more likely assholes of the human variety.
But when people call right-wing trolls “bots” they aren’t saying that the people who disagree with them are less than human, They’re suggesting that certain twitter accounts are so predictable and unimaginative and repetitive that they might just be Russian bots. Given that thousands of accounts like these have in the past been unmasked as actual Russian bots, it’s really not an unjustified accusation at all.
But I’m not going to accuse any of those who descended upon my post of being literal bots, though for all I know some of them might be. I’m going to pay them the great compliment of treating them as human beings — albeit some of the shittiest and most pathetic human beings on planet earth, the sort of people who make me sometimes wonder if maybe the inevitable robot takeover of planet earth might turn out to be, well, something of an upgrade.
We Hunted the Mammoth, which is not written by robots, relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
“PHD in writing philosophy and psychology”? Do they mean a PhD in the philosophy and psychology of literature, or a PhD in writing philosophy as opposed to singing philosophy or sculpting philosophy? I mean, I don’t think any of the above are actually doctoral fields, strictly speaking, but I’m curious what was going through their heads when they committed that mess to screen.
For a long time I was skeptical of the notion that dehumanization is necessary in order for someone to hate the other, or to commit violence against people. But, watching this “NPC” garbage take hold, and looking at the other Trumpers, I can’t argue with it anymore. They really do need it. They really are doing it. They’re just itching to commit atrocities, but they’re so craven that they can’t look a person in eyes when they kill them. No, they have to make the other into unpeople first.
It’s a nauseating spectacle, and pathetic besides.
Every single one of these NPC-meme-sadsacks is already represented herein, and has been for quite some years now:
Sucks to be them, eh?
So my cat just deleted my entire post on this matter. Thanks, Misty. You are a terrible cat.
My point was, look at the Simpsons meme again. Note how everyone who isn’t Bart in that picture is vapid, easily amused, with no depth nor interest in learning more? How that’s how the episode goes?
And those are the people the meme-poster associates with.
It’s like the “drink your tears” things with Eric Cartman. “Of all the characters in all the fiction of all the world, I want to be… Eric Cartman. His petty patheticness and inability to rise above his many problems, all of which are self-inflicted, suit me perfectly. That is me. That guy is me.”
It’s weird! Frankly it bothers me much more than the NPC meme, which slightly annoys me. If you’re the PC, 4chan trolls, why aren’t you levelling up even once?
Anyway, if you don’t listen to the NPCs you don’t have any idea what’s going on and you’ll probably miss 75% of how to play the game, so, you know, good luck with that, jerkhorses.
@Vucodlak
I’m going to go with the more forgiving of two assumptions and assume you’ve been living under a rock. The right LOVES throwing around the “paedophile” accusation at anyone outside the white cishet male sphere, which they back up with their immense social power, resulting in people being harassed, assaulted and/or murdered for committing the crime of existing. It’s been going on for literally hundreds of years and has never stopped.
Not to say that paedophiles don’t exist, but the paedophile attack and all it’s dogwhistles are supremely easy-to-swallow these-people-are-subhuman pills to the unquestioning conservative and “centrist” masses (and sadly even some leftists), and that’s why it’s still around. Why change if it still works.
I mean, probably the most obvious refutation of this idea that “the left” is chock-full of NPCs is just to actually look at all the interminable disagreements and fights over various aspects of leftist politics. But that would require these people going out of their echo chambers, so it’s unlikely to ever happen.
The lack of cognitive dissonance in some of these posts is amazing, like, they recognize how dehumanizing the meme is, but instead of seeing that as a reflection of what not to be, they take a reasonable response as proof of the meme, rather than additional feedback of how fucked up it is.
Which is sadly ironic because to call meme/joke/idea/ect. dehumanizing you have to have enough empathy to recognize that it removes humanity from someone first, which is a critical part of, ya know, being human.
Also, the irony of people who call factual info that contradicts their assumptions/narratives/fantasies “Fake News” even in the face of super-abundant proof is darkly hilarious.
I’m not seeing how “slight annoyance”= “outrage” to these guys, nor can I understand how even the slightest emotional response means one is a robot.
Then again, if I should respond to them, that’d be playing defense, and thereby giving them access to my followers. Hmm, a puzzlement… oh, what to do?
@ Jane Done
I never doubted that they do this. I said I doubted it was necessary to dehumanize one’s enemies in order to hate them and hurt them.
I guess what I’m really saying is that I am disappointed in my species, yet again. If you’re going to knowingly do evil, you should be able to face it, and not hide behind pitiful justifications like “they’re just NPC’s, not people like me!” Yes, caitiff, they’re people just like you. If you’re going to do them wickedness, then you should at least have the guts to do with your eyes open.
Yah, David, they showed you! It really hurts realizing you’re an NPC but not a Chad Russian Bot, doesn’t it? So there! Nyah!
Are these guys for real?
I just can’t even.
So, you feel you’re a NPC. How does that make you feel ?
Even the first meme shown contains a self – own. How can a social media bot (a computer program) also be Chad, a Stacy – attracting real life stud ?
Kevin – Stacey’s been put on a strict limit recently. The alphas have boiled down to either a Russian computer program or a literal Nazi, according to the idiots. I’d choose the bot too.
Been getting a few of these on my TL from a new follower (probably from the link I use here) – I do find them rather amusing.
Is this how someone who lacks a theory of mind acts? I find their behavior pretty illuminating.
I feel like I’m watching someone use a stranger’s arm to punch their own forehead while chanting “Why are you hitting myself? Why are you hitting myself?”
This meme SEEMS stupid. So does blood libel. These kinds of campaigns are less about convincing a ton of people who aren’t already hateful and more about convincing themselves that it’s okay to destroy the people they hate because, after all, what do you do with a monster (blood libel) or a hostile bunch of pixels and code (NPC meme)? You kill it.
They do have a point regarding the use of the term “bot”, though. Yeah, we’re sorry about that terminological faux pas there, Sparky. Clearly, it was offensive to your intellect and human dignity to suggest your online contributions are indistinguishable from those generated by a piece of code ground out by a bored Russian hacker. You are instead a Russian sockpuppet. Better now?
@David Futrelle
What you just said with your article is exactly what a nazi russian bot would say, how dehumanizing from a russian bot like you are!!
If nothing else i kinda like the NPC meme for the simple reason that it exposes social media as the democrat pr arm they are, to the point they have to make up “dehumanizing behavior” for a week old meme… after 2 years of calling everyone supporting trump a Russian bot lol
The efficiency with which it strips leftists of their own perceived strength, randomly calling the opposition bot, a superficial diversity, and replaces it with their true face, a required uniformity of thought is kinda amazing.
Irony level: 9000
Talking to igno-right people is hopeless.
It’s like trying to reason with a five-year-old…
@Jane Done
How does this square with the common media portrayal of a pedophile as a skinny middle-aged White man, with a thin mustache and a comb-over, who is obsessed with little girls? That’s White, cishet and male as fuuuck.
The irony of the accusation is striking, not only because those describing their political opponents as NPC’s are so absorbed into a kind of groupthink, but also because the left is not known for it’s unity. You would be hard-pressed to find two feminists who agree on every issue or apply their feminism in exactly the same ways. The diversity of ideas on the left is actually beautiful and inspiring, but it also manifests as infighting and makes it harder for us to compete politically against a more easily unified right that, at least in the US, also has built in structural advantages.
@Cindy: My teenage daughter struggles with theory of mind as part of how her autism manifests and this is not at all what it looks like. She has plenty of empathy, but has to think out the ways that other people might perceive things differently. She does not dehumanize others. She just tends to project her own emotional state (and opinions) on to them and has to intellectually work through the ways other people might feel differently than her.
Struggling with theory of mind is associated with autism, although not everyone with autism struggles with it. It has nothing to do with reduced empathy and the confusion between theory of mind and empathy has fed into the stigma against autism.
You know, one of the nice things about watching those old episodes of Square One Television is getting a kick out of the humorous parodies that the writers employed to relate key mathematical concepts. You can tell that the whole cast and crew were having a ball writing the scripts, getting in costume and playing gags on Dragnet or Pee-Wee’s Playhouse or even Rear Window. It takes creativity to do this not only in a manner that is amusing, but in a way that’s “kid-friendly.” As I watch them on YouTube and see a whole bunch of commenters saying how much they adored the show, I’m sure that the writers and performers can look back on their work with pride that they endeared themselves to people in a positive way. Seriously, I that show all but taught me the Fibonacci sequence.
We have a finite number of days on this earth and I’ve always done my best to do at least an hour of creative work every day, whether it’s writing or working on my artwork. Because it’s important to me. Time and experience has certainly tempered my expectation of internet criticism, but I remain my harshest critic. Still, if anybody wants to hit me at my most vulnerable, my drawings of naked animal people I’m sure are easy targets.
One thing I’ve observed, and I may be wrong on this, but I suspect that a part of this is a matter of projection. Outside of the handful of e-celebs that have taken their anti-SJW trolling into meatspace and quickly burned out (Milo, Jordan Peterson) or stalled out (Carl Benjamin, Candice Owens), the vast majority of the little Pepes out there adhere to a very Tyler Durdenesque existence as the “all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world,” doomed to remain anonymous shit disturbers that nobody will know or care about. Their anger at the “snowflakes” seems to be very much a symptom of those that refuse to conform to the nihilism that they’ve given themselves over to. A kind of “What, you think you’re too good for this little consumerist hellscape of ours? We’ll show you!” Hence, the NPC meme: stripping people of the very individuality that they claim to cherish but actually loathe in those other than themselves.
Because the people that stand up and say “Yeah, we’re not going to just give ourselves over to the nihilism that you all have,” they’re the ones that care about things enough to be vulnerable. And the last thing any of these little Pepes want to do is betray any vulnerability. It’s easy to remain impervious on the internet when you betray no principles or care and everything around you is just one big video game. Your motives remain mysterious. Which might work for you if your ambitions are so pathetically narrow that hurting people on the internet is all you have. The rest of us, the “SJWs” as we’re derisively called, we’re up front with who we are and why we’re here. And that, it seems to me, is our greatest sin in their eyes. We’re willing to be vulnerable. To show weakness. To fail. And even worse, to sometimes succeed.
Thus Spake ZaraDavid:
In the last few years I’ve come to realize a total lack of self-awareness is critical to the alt-right. These are the folks who throw around “CUCK!” like it’s a devastating insult rather than an awkward glimpse at their own sexual insecurities, or chant “ALL lives matter!” in defense of summary executions by law enforcement, or whine about “identity politics” while embracing racism and nationalism. You simply can’t do that without cultivating a deliberate and studied ignorance of yourself, your world, and how they connect.