This article is from WeChat official account:Game Research Club (ID: yysaag), author: Emunah, title figure from: NY Post
Many people may have seen the emoji below, or even used it.
In the picture, two bald guys with clumsy brushes hug each other, and the one whose face can be seen shows a solemn or numb look. With the phrase “I KNOW THAT FEEL BRO(I know how you feel, big brother)” on the top of the head, it can really show that modern people interact with each other after the vicissitudes of life. The state of empathy.
No matter what the occasion, it is really suitable to use such an expression to express resonance. Because of this, it was once widely used in my online social circles.
For example: when your friend’s mom forces him to wear long pants, you can use this emoji to express comfort
Have seen or used “I KNOW THAT FEEL BRO”I’m an emoticon, but I don’t have to see the following stalk with only different copywriting. It mentions the game concept that NPC is familiar to players, but it has nothing to do with the game. In fact, in the United States, the term NPC has long been used by Trump supporters into an exclusive mockery.
“Come on, my fellow NPC…tell me where the vicious Trump touched you.”
At present, the anti-racism movement #BlackLivesMatter is still hot in the United States, and the epidemic is getting worse. Just a few days ago, news broke that Trump and his wife had been diagnosed with infection. In this case, if you look at various keyboard debates among netizens on Twitter, the word NPC is not low in all kinds of presidential arguments.
So, here comes the question-how did the concept of NPC in the game become a mockery for Trump fans?
The history of NPC concept development starting from board games
To understand how Trump fans use the concept of NPC, we must first clarify the concept of NPC itself.
NPC, the full English name is Non-Player Character, literally translated as non-player character. In the game, it is the virtual characters who are responsible for interacting with the player. The origin of the concept of NPC can be traced back to the era of the board game Dungeons and Dragons: in order to tell a good plot story, the host needs to create interesting non-player characters, that is, NPCs.
The 1979 version of “Dungeon and Dragon” rule book
Whether it is “Dungeon and Dungeons” or “Call of Cthulhu”, in the actual playing process, the NPC is actually held by the host.
Although to this day, in the design of NPC, video games have developed many new ideas: in addition to moving character plots, dynamic captures of vivid performances and AI that allows NPCs to truly participate in the gameplay, these All make the NPCs more lifelike and closer to the identity of the player’s companion.
From “ICO” toFrom “The Colossus of Wanda” to “The Last Guardian”, the relationship between NPCs and players is constantly deepening
However, keywords such as “modeling of behavior”, “not knowing how to adapt” and “silly” have become stubborn impressions that follow the concept of NPC.
And now, many years after the concept of the NPC game was born, Trump supporters have taken advantage of this impression of NPC and turned it into their own special mocking language in keyboard politics.
“Follow the trend and shout freedom and equality, I think you are an NPC”
In July 2016, someone posted such a post in the video game section of 4chan:
In this post, anonymous users divided the people in the world into real people and NPCs. As for the main basis for dividing camps, the original text used the metaphysical expression “soul(soul)“, but it is actually explained in vernacular. Just to see if you can follow the trend. In other words, people who think independently are real people, and those who follow the trend are NPCs.
This seems to make sense, but if you think about it carefully, it doesn’t seem to be the case. Whether it’s offline chat or keyboard politics, it’s quite common to repeat and emphasize one’s point of view on the topic of discussion. Although it seems stupid to say the same thing all the time, who knows whether the speaker is following the trend or thinking about it?
But these are actually not important to Internet users who support Trump. The important thing is that after the game concept of NPC is interpreted in this way, it can be used as a stalk to mock those who are anti-Trump, “just look at the mainstream media and follow the trend.”
At that time, the U.S. election was in full swing. This post did notDid not arouse a particularly big splash.
In September 2018, only two months before the U.S. midterm elections, this midterm election is known as a weather vane for the 2020 U.S. election. During this period, another 4chan user posted about NPC. This time, “soul(soul)” changed to “inner voice(Inner voice)“, actually translated into the vernacular, it means that the mainstream does not think independently.
However, unlike the original post, this post is equipped with a picture:
The gray, dull face on the right is the image of an NPC
NPC’s popularity: to work or to work
Compared with text, what is better about pictures? The good thing is that it’s intuitive, and if you translate it, it’s easy to make emoji material and easy to clean. Trump fans who had the picture immediately started the whole operation.
Someone made a comparison and appraisal guide for PC and NPC, and listed the differences between the two:
Someone created “The Birth of an NPC: The Equality Nightmare”, which emphasized the mainstream public opinion in American society against Trump, forcing people to shout equality and be willing to be NPC together.
“The Birth of an NPC: Equality Nightmare”
Some people pulled the NPC and the other Trump royalist special stalk Orange Man Bad(Orange man is a bad person) together and proceeded Dream linkage.
“Orange Man Bad: Just say that an orange man is a bad guy, you can get unlimited likes”
“Those who believe in Orange Man Bad are actually NPCs who follow the trend blindly”
“Especially the CNN, there is no NPC in the entire media”
“On those TVs, NPC talks every day”
More people have played NPC_Bot’s reverse role-playing on Twitter, and started the Internet collective performance art.
Except for putting NPC in the name, these bots all use the gray NPC image from 4chan as their avatar without exception. In their profiles and tweets, keywords such as “gender equality”, “homosexuality”, “transgender”, “anti-Trump”, “socialists”, “orange men are bad guys,” and other key words were repeated, and they strived to be “enough NPC”.
In October 2018, during the active period of Trump fans, someone could not help but write a crawler script to count how many such bots there are on Twitter. Statistics show that there were at least 54 anti-serial accounts under the name of NPC in operation on Twitter at that time. This result made the statisticians couldn’t help but tweeted: “Wow, these netizens are really serious about engaging in NPC to support Trump.”
There are 54 of them just cut out
It can only be said that mocking by labeling and anti-stringing is also a traditional Internet art. Even this NPC reorganization incident reached a climax in such a traditional art: the NPC craze created by Trump fans was finally noticed by InfoWars, a US ultra-conservative media that also supports the Trump faction. .
InfoWars is also a very good website, mainly for being particularly fond of conspiracy theories. Before NPC became a hot dog, InfoWars published many theories. For example, adding fluoride to drinking water by the government is an eugenic method to promote population optimization.
In order to encourage Trump fans to work harder, InfoWars, which is about to come, announced that it would hold a competition: a reward of 10,000 US dollars to find the best NPC stalk creator on the entire network.
The final winner was the following figure producer who expressed support for Trump’s firm stand in his Twitter profile.
Interestingly, after InfoWars announced the winner. Trump himself also tried to forward the creation of this NPC stalk worth 10,000 dollars-the reason why he said it was an attempt because he failed to succeed.
Due to being sued by the band REM, which belongs to the background music “Everybody Hurts(Everybody will get hurt), the creation of this video form Blocked due to copyright infringement. Originally, “Everybody Hurts” was a charity song written to oppose youth bullying.
“This media has been disabled due to a report by the copyright owner”
However, Trump did not give up either. After a day, he turned a second time. This time, the background music in the video has been changed to “Proud to Be an American(I am an American and I am proud)“.
As for the results, while writing this article, I went to take another look…
It seems that “Proud to Be an American” is not proud of being able to participate in the Internet bond politics of American netizens. Compared to the gray villains in Trump’s fan creations, I think the NPC who plays with them in the game is even cuter.
After all, when NPC stalks have turned into a trend, it is difficult to judge whether people who follow the trend and use stalks to ridicule and ridicule are the same. one thing.
This article is from WeChat official account:Game Research Club (ID: yysaag) , Author: Emunah