If you’ve ever picked up a video game that features other characters that are controlled by the computer, then you’ve run into non-player characters or NPC’s.

NPC’s serve a host of different functions depending on what the program you’re playing with needs them for. They’re the villagers in Skyrim, Toad from Super Mario Brothers, and the ghosts in Pac-Man. NPC’s may have dialogue, patterns, and personality, but at the end of the day, they’re just a program with pre-set behavioral patterns decided for them by a developer.

Now let’s pretend we’re taking this article from the top…

If you’ve ever stepped onto a college campus or a protest demonstration that features people with neon colored hair screaming at the top of their lungs about identity politics or a social concern then you’ve run into a social justice warrior or SJW.

SJWs serve a host of different functions depending on what activists, politicians and the media need them for. They’re the crazed people trying to beat down the Supreme Court door, the Antifa members threatening motorists, or the male-feminist roundhousing a woman for expressing pro-life views. SJW’s may have dialogue, patterns, and personality, but at the end of the day, they’re just a program with pre-set behavioral patterns decided for them by professors, activist groups, or the media.

The comparison between NPC’s and SJW’s is pretty striking and simultaneously hilarious.

SJW’s aren’t known for their individualism. All of their beliefs seem to be uniform no matter which college or protest you go to. Even if you bring the facts that debunk their beliefs, they can’t or won’t deviate from “their truth.” They think what they’re told with seemingly no capacity for critical analysis, and once their dialogue tree runs out on a certain subject they either clam up or being shouting a phrase over and over again like “BLACK LIVES MATTER,” “HEY HEY HO HO (insert thing) HAS GOT TO GO,” or “NO JUSTICE NO PEACE!”

You get the idea.

This is awfully reminiscent of the way NPC’s interact with gamers in the virtual world. Outside the bounds of what the programmers gave them, the NPC’s aren’t capable of doing much else. Talk to one enough and eventually, they’ll run out of things to say, and begin repeating the same phrase over and over again. They even made a joke about it in the Jumanji sequel.

Since the gaming community is no stranger to the behavior of SJW’s thanks to the GamerGate movement, it was probably only a matter of time before someone made the connection between the behaviors of the preprogrammed NPC’s and the indoctrinated SJWs.

Thus the NPC meme was born, and gamers have been referring to SJWs as NPCs with hilarious effect.

Interestingly, the same SJW’s that weren’t long ago calling gamers “sock puppets” in order to dehumanize and devalue them for speaking out against identity politics in gaming are now offended that gamers are using the NPC term to insult them.

Kotaku, one of the most social justice laden news outlets in the gaming industry actually had the lack of self-awareness to release an article titled “How The ‘NPC’ Meme Tries To Dehumanize ‘SJWs'” wherein the author assumedly didn’t stop after writing the following paragraph and after a moment’s self-reflection asked “…are we the baddies?”

It’s one thing to claim that a person’s strongly-held views are informed by nothing at all, but entirely another to imply that they’re completely on auto-pilot. That is dehumanization, a way of reconceiving your enemies as objects, pawns, strawmen, tools. At best, dismissing large swaths of people you disagree with this way betrays a lack of empathy for people whose experiences differ from yours, and an unwillingness to consider that if a vast number of people happen to agree over something, it may be good to examine why; at best, it is a great utility for spreading bogus conspiracy theories.

While I’m in full belief that even SJWs have the capacity for rational and critical thought, the fact that they choose not to employ it, even in the face of brutal facts, earns them the label of NPC. If your entire identity revolves around the superficial, and your entire belief system revolves around instructions from someone else, then you’re about as good as a computer program. If you won’t engage in civil debate, and instead scream tired phrases at people when you run out of things to say, then there’s no person there, just a shell that somebody else is speaking through.

NPC.