Thread by @eugyppius1

The NPC: A Phenomenology
Have spent some time interacting with grey dot-eyed race, & it has been oddly profitable, because I realise there are things to say about NPC: wat NPC mean, wat NPC for, hao NPC work, that I only now realise.
This will likely be chaotic disorganise thred

First, to delimit phenomenon: what NPC is not.
NPC is not a leftist as normally understood.
NPC is not a political activist at all.
Nor is NPC a politically disengaged hobbyist such as obsessive entomologist stamp collector.

Nor is NPC among the leftoid janissaries or political clients, he is not a nonbinary gender expressionist, or on dole.
No, NPC is midlevel salaried employee, with hopes of promotion. NPC has car, has flat, NPC has hopes of promotion, goes on holiday to bland unimaginative places.

The foremost feature – so obtrusive we must conclude it is the very role of NPC – is his blandness. Hard commitment to anything is disqualifying, even hard commitment to leftist principles is not wished for this particular political role.

We ask why regime creates and cultivates these empty automota, what role they serve, and the answer must be, its deep and abiding fear of 'populism,' especially populist movements and reactions against elite programme.

I know stock of populism very low these days, nobody believe populism is autonomous political force. That may be right, but you have to think of populist energy as fuel. The regime deeply fears overmuch populist fuel accumulating among the rabble. Somebody might set it alight.

NPC is a great dampener, like water, to forestall the thing catching light, to deplete any potential energy in system. This explains the great allergy NPC has to extreme emotions, which he invariably pathologises. You express passion about anything, you're a weird oddball bro.

Touch grass bro, have a normal one bro, chill bro, people don't care about this weird stuff you're tweeting bro, relax bro. This is the first line of defence when NPC challenged, an enormous display of indifference. I don't care, you shouldn't care, nobody should care.

This accomplished by putting people in narrow corporate aquaria, where the only conceivable goals are achieving incremental promotions and raises, networking correctly. This why NPC are always salaried midlevel corporatoids, in this environment they are manufactured.

I think regime has experimented with various means of pacification over last decade or two. Unbridled consumerism has proven unreliable, you risk breeding obsessive fan communities who will go to the wall over a fucking comic book character. Cf. gamer gate.

So NPC actively reacts against passion about or commitment to anything at all, because passion or commitment regardless of object is in itself dangerous. The moment NPC hears you're working hard at something, that you're serious about something, NPC is uncomfortable.

NPC has learned a series of ca. 8 political arguments he can deploy against attacks from the right. He just cycles through them & when he's at the end he goes back to the beginning. There is an irony & insincerity in his tone, he is at some level aware of absurdity.

The only hints of real humanity, of real commitment, are to his own material comfort and the advantages he personally derives from his present position. When backed into a corner he'll repeat that everything's great though, he's sad you're not doing as well as he is.

I think it's interesting that my anti-lockdown poasting won me the odd NPC follower, and this really suggests what a hamfisted failure Covid policies were. NPCs want things to be normal, not extreme, they want routine, the same every day, neither progress nor regression.

Covid was a crazy era where insane shrieking masked harpies ran around sticking needles in everything that moved. This is very not-NPC, it has all the traits an NPC has been programmed to abhor: Commitment, even self-sacrifice, radicalism towards clear goals.

Any society and culture must be full of normies, it must be well over 90% normie, I think we all understand this. The NPC experiment is an effort to put normies in a coma and do a lot of stuff behind the scenes that actually normies would not, could not ever, be fine with.

It is a brittle system, dependent on the continuous supply of cultural and social narcotics to millions of midlevel unreflective people. As long as that's not interrupted or disturbed, it works well enough. These narcotics are however expensive, and their supply a complex matter.

Finally, I think recognising NPC type is important, for recognising who is *not* NPC. Specific cultural obsessions – while they maybe be consumerist, shallow, dumb – are ultimately the indulgences of normies who aren't in coma, & who are likely immune to this art of manipulation

Doesn't mean they're our guys, but it does mean they're not fulfilling this particular political role, that they're just normie-ing, and that's actually fine. We'll give them a better way to normie when the day comes. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…