Non-player character (NPC)

NPC or “non-player character” is a meme that represents people (usually political liberals) that cannot think for themselves. Non-player character is a term that refers to computer-controlled stock characters that interact with the player of the game using a few scripted lines and simple actions. When the NPC meme first appeared on 4chan in 2016, it was accompanied by the following description: “If you get in a discussion with them it's always the same buzzwords and hackneyed arguments. They're the kind of people who make a show of discomfort when you break the status quo like by breaking the normie barrier to invoke a real discussion. It's like in a [video game] when you accidentally talk to somebody twice and they give you the exact lines word for word once more.”  ¹

The NPC meme features a crudely drawn bald man who is colored gray, and is a version of the Wojack meme which is popular on 4chan. The NPC meme rose to prominence in 2018 during the midterm elections, when a group of users from r/the_donald, Reddit’s largest pro-Trump forum, organized a trolling campaign on Twitter, using NPCs as avatars for their fake Twitter accounts. These accounts tweeted parodies of liberal anti-Trump rhetoric (e.g., “orange man bad”) ² at each other and at liberals. What started as a joke became a campaign of disinformation, as some accounts began encouraging liberals to vote on November 7th (Election Day is on November 6th). This resulted in Twitter banning 1,500 accounts linked to NPCs. ³

The New York Times published a story covering this event and the once niche meme went viral, experiencing an uptick in Google searches, media coverage, and a proliferation of NPC content. “Suddenly, a meme that had been hyper-localized to one fetid corner of the internet has been telegraphed to a massive audience in a jarringly forced display of virality that highlights just how quickly an inside joke from an insular community can spread with the oxygen of press coverage.” ⁴

The NPC meme is just one example of the way niche alt-right memes can be exploited as tools to orchestrate online trolling and spread alt-right political messaging. When these memes find their way to mainstream news outlets trying to provide coverage and information about these memes for their audience, they can have the adverse effect of amplifying the alt-right message.