I saw two people with NPC tshirts today (Chinese tech scene). This resontaes quite well with the notion of tangping or laying flat: https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007589
Why try hard when you can just skate by?”
I wanna live an NPC life
111–120 of 272 posts
Re: I wanna live an NPC life
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion), they are looking at it from the point of view of a player, someone outside the game who understands that the NPC is scripted (this is a silly and egotistical way of looking at the world). This post is looking from it from the point of view of the NPC instead, as if that was a living entity one could be.
"I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion)" It's a great insult, because it is usually used to describe someone whose viewpoint is basically a brainwashed and braindead pre-programmed one (either through upbringing or other things) and clearly demonstrating a lack of self-conscious critical thought.
Yet the NPC is the one who gives the player work. And meaning, in terms of the played character.
Re: I wanna live an NPC life
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
i am not sure why people are interpreting so extremely. the gist of the post is " do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to. " and " the goal is to just do your own thing. ". it is not "never let anything affect you ever, then die".
> the gist of the post is "do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to." and "the goal is to just do your own thing.". So basically, a main character life, the life of a player. A player can even choose not to play the game, and it isn't their whole world. The reason this post is incendiary is due to their overwrought metaphor which ultimately works quite poorly, if at all. Plus…
while it's not how i would have written it, i am struggling to understand many of the interpretations being posted in the comments. it's like people skipped over all the lines that say (or imply) "just do your own thing", and got immediately hung up by the use of "npc".
>Plus, it reads like a 15 year old's diary entry.
okay?
Re: I wanna live an NPC life
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretending that you don't have a part to play in the fate of society is escapism at best, and learned helplessness at worst. Democracy is explicitly a system that functions off of the sum of individual participation, and if the quality of that participation is poor it will produce bad outcomes even barring subversion by other powers. Pessimism like yours cedes control entirely to those who would take it through undem…
You don’t have a part to play of any value to anyone outside of your direct orbit. Nothing you can do will impact history. You will be forgotten shortly after your death. There is no afterlife, you’re nothing more special than a bug other than being complex enough to think that you are. Just live your life however you want, you only get one, and it’ll be brief.
How do you square this opinion with the fact that people actually do get voted into office and enact policies with grand repercussions on history and society?
Re: I wanna live an NPC life
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to. Escapism. You SHOULD feel like you have to do some stuff. Our bodies are always aiming to relax, because conserving calories is an extremely effective survival method. We are hardwired to do nothing, in order to escape the burden of instead doing something.
> Escapism. You SHOULD feel like you have to do some stuff. This word keeps coming up, coupled with things unrelated. The OP isn't saying "do nothing". He's saying "do what you want to do". If he wants to study mathematics, that's neither escapism nor "doing nothing".
The extreme majority of people don’t have some secret massive project they want to do and are weirdly choosing not to. There’s only one way to interpret this.
Re: I wanna live an NPC life
#116[dead]
Re: I wanna live an NPC life
#117This is pure escapism. Numbing yourself to the burden of being. Likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis. The truth is that after the brief initial relief of excusing yourself from being anything at all, you'll end up in a deep depression. It's a naive and immature fantasy. Remove all electronics from your life, they are a consta…
Feels more like they're discovering Taoism to me
Re: I wanna live an NPC life
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretending that you don't have a part to play in the fate of society is escapism at best, and learned helplessness at worst. Democracy is explicitly a system that functions off of the sum of individual participation, and if the quality of that participation is poor it will produce bad outcomes even barring subversion by other powers. Pessimism like yours cedes control entirely to those who would take it through undem…
You don’t have a part to play of any value to anyone outside of your direct orbit. Nothing you can do will impact history. You will be forgotten shortly after your death. There is no afterlife, you’re nothing more special than a bug other than being complex enough to think that you are. Just live your life however you want, you only get one, and it’ll be brief.
The people reading this thread are not in your orbit. Yet you seem invested in convincing them of something.
To care about the world and the people in it is human. To numb yourself to that is self-deception, and to advocate for that is harmful.
Re: I wanna live an NPC life
#119Agreed. Life as NPC is great.
Re: I wanna live an NPC life
#120In Lathe of Heaven by Le Guin, the main character George is famously frustrating because he doesn't do much. Bad things happen to him and he basically just lets them. He thinks his psychiatrist is totally evil yet keeps going back. He has a pitiful lack of control over his life. He doesn't seem to want control, which is the worst part. He isn't super happy, and you could take that as the main point, but I don't. even…
i am not sure why people are interpreting so extremely. the gist of the post is " do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to. " and " the goal is to just do your own thing. ". it is not "never let anything affect you ever, then die".
I mean, the example they give is pickpocketing the blacksmith and the blacksmith just doesn’t care. So, never let anything affect you is kind of exactly what the author is proposing.
They try to reign it back in at the end with “goal is to do your own thing” but the examples given, and really NPCs in general, are the antithesis to that.
Ironically, the NPCs are designed to do exactly what they are supposed to with no free will at all. I have programmed you to do this, and thus you shall.
I think the author lost the plot.