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I wanna live an NPC life

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Re: I wanna live an NPC life

#141

Post by Swizec »

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #128
Swizec wrote: post #19

That’s the best part! We’re all NPCs in other people’s stories _and_ the main character in ours. You can do and be absolutely anything or anyone you want. Just gotta bear the consequences and that’s it. Wanna live a homely life surrounded by loved ones? Go do it! Nobody is stopping you. Wanna galivant around the world having adventures with no roots? You can! And when you meet a local npc bartender on your adventures…

What a rosy view of life! There are no NPCs, everyone is a unique and wonderful snowflake!

Every snowflake is unique but snow is still just snow.

Life’s funny that way. You can’t predict what an individual will do and yet predicting what a crowd will do is so easy we have entire engineering and social disciplines based on manipulating crowd behavior.

Re: I wanna live an NPC life

#142

Post by john_strinlai »

snohobro wrote: post #120
john_strinlai wrote: post #92

Earlier 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".

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…

>I think the author lost the plot.

they stretched an imperfect metaphor. i think that's forgivable. the piece, as a whole, is (as they say) a retelling of stoicism.

Re: I wanna live an NPC life

#144

Post by chasd00 »

oilkillsbirds wrote: post #27

This 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…

Who is this “we” you speak of? I see this word thrown around a lot here. Never use “we” in a sentence unless you’re referring to another individual directly. It’s beyond arrogant to assume you have the authority to speak for all others.

Re: I wanna live an NPC life

#145

Post by Melatonic »

monknomo wrote: post #28
bee_rider wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

right, this comes close to rejecting the frame, which I think you could fairly do. viewing npc as a category of person is inherently an ego driven, narcissistic way of looking at things. It is a viewpoint that lacks a theory of mind. This essay implicitly supposes that the npc has a mind + motivations and that those motivations are more important to the npc than the player character. I'd extend it to say that if you…

Ironically the people who view others as NPC (and say so in a disparaging way) are likely more one dimensional themselves. I think you're spot on with the narcissism viewpoint.

Re: I wanna live an NPC life

#146

Post by brisket_bronson »

oilkillsbirds wrote: post #27

This 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…

> you'll end up in a deep depression

That’s a stretch and in realm of pure speculation.

A blacksmith is useful for society and for himself. It’s a profession and it’s not anything. OP’s point is that profession compared to chasing dragons. I’m tired of chasing dragons and very happy focusing on my own life.

Re: I wanna live an NPC life

#147

Post by john_strinlai »

kulahan wrote: post #115
BeetleB wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>There’s only one way to interpret this.

obviously not.

Re: I wanna live an NPC life

#148

Post by [deleted] »

john_strinlai wrote: post #113
argee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

[deleted]

Re: I wanna live an NPC life

#150

Post by chasd00 »

InexSquirrel wrote: post #38

I think NPC is the wrong terminology here - everyone should be the main character in their life - to have meaning and agency. But I think the problem arises in how 'main character' is defined and expressed - having the idea that you're supposed to 'do great things' and live this larger-than-life, life. You don't have to save all the rhinos, defeat every poverty, slay every social cause or overthrow every tyranny. If…

Maybe what they mean is an NPC in everyone else’s life. Like be an NPC to everyone else and be what you want to be for yourself.
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