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Political internet meme

The NPC

NPC (; each letter separately), derived from Non-Player Character in video games and from role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, is an Internet meme that represents people who do not think for themselves or do not make their own decisions; it is also known as NPC Wojak.[2][3][1][4][5]The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the imageboard 4chan, where the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced.[6]

The NPC meme has gained widespread attention and been featured in numerous news outlets, including The New York Times,[4] The Verge,[1] BBC,[7] and Breitbart.

The concept of the NPC first appeared on 4chan on July 7, 2016.[6] The post by an anonymous user who initiated the NPC meme, titled "Are you an NPC?", detailed the behavior of individuals acting similarly to non-player characters in video games by repeatedly using phrases such as "JUST BE YOURSELF",[8] and ended the post with the following description of people the NPC meme intends to depict.[6]

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 when you accidentally talk to somebody twice and they give you the exact lines word for word once more.

The design of the NPC meme character is based on Wojak (Polish: Wojak, lit.'warrior, soldier', [vjak]),[6] a meme created in Microsoft Paint in 2010.[9] Unlike the NPC meme, the Wojak meme (also known as Feels Guy[7]) appeared first on the image hosting website vichan and has mainly been used for expression of feelings, most often melancholy or regret.[9]

During the weeks leading up to the 2018 midterm elections in the United States, the NPC meme gained remarkable attention, with relatively high media coverage, publication of new NPC memes online, and several noticeable events. A large number of animated videos based on the NPC meme were uploaded to YouTube in the second half of October 2018,[10] and Google searches for the term "NPC Wojak" peaked around the same time.[6] In October 2018, a large number of Twitter accounts were created which presented themselves as NPCs, and more than 1,500 such accounts were subsequently banned by Twitter.[7] Also during the same month, InfoWars held a competition promoting creation of NPC memes (according to an InfoWars article titled "Meme War 3.0: Infowars Launches $10K NPC Meme Contest"), which resulted in hundreds of NPC memes submitted (according to an InfoWars article titled "Check Out The NPC Meme Finalists - Winner TBA").

The number of searches for the search term "NPC Wojak" remained relatively constant during 2019, though at a level significantly lower than its peak from early October through mid November 2018.[6]

Although the NPC meme was created 6 years after the Wojak meme, the NPC meme rapidly gained attention in comparison with the Wojak meme. On the website of the meme community Know Your Meme, the NPC meme has 858,000 page views, 33 videos, 597 images and 749 comments as of December 31, 2019.[6] This can be compared to the Wojak meme on which NPC is based, which has 787,000 page views, 6 videos, 332 images and 47 comments as of December 31, 2019.[9] A Reddit forum or subreddit exclusively for "right wing, political" NPC memes without "extremist content" called r/NPCMemes was created on October 10, 2018.[11]

In appearance, the NPC character is gray in color[13] and simple in its design,[5] with an expressionless face[2] with a triangular nose[4] and a blank stare.[6] The shape of the NPC face resembles that of Wojak, and is drawn crudely.[4]

The initialism NPC refers to non-player character, a term used in video-games for characters the player cannot control.[14] As such, a non-player character in a game is controlled by the computer, and typically interacts with the player through simple and repetitive actions, such as communicating the same sentence each time the player approaches the NPC. As such, NPCs have "no internality, agency, or capacity for critical thought",[8] they rely on scripted lines[4][15] and do not think by themselves.[2] Following the analogy of non-player characters, the NPC meme is used to mock individuals the maker perceives as lacking those attributes, generally political opponents. The NPC responds using simple dialogue resembling video game NPCs, with no capability for discussion.[6] Due to NPC memes' greater popularity among the political right, the NPC is generally portrayed as parroting left-wing positions.[8] Despite being co-opted by right-wing movements to "mock leftists," both left- and right-wing NPC variants exist.[5][1]

is a kaomoji version of the NPC meme.[citation needed]

The NPC meme has been featured in major and minor news outlets alike, with frequent coverage during the peak of the NPCs popularity in fall 2018. According to The Verge, a few articles (including one by The New York Times published on October 16, 2018) sparked a "domino effect" and led to increased spread of the meme on Twitter, YouTube and through articles.[1] The NPC meme has been covered by news agencies of varying political stances, including Kotaku[8] (a video games news agency claimed to be "far-left" by for example Media Research Center[16]) and Breitbart News Network (a news agency claimed to be "far-right" by for example The Week[5]).

In October 2018, users of r/The_Donald, a large subreddit that supported United States President Donald Trump,[17] coordinated in creating accounts presented as NPCs on the American microblogging and social networking service Twitter.[7] According to The Week, the accounts spread "bland, politically correct messages intended to mimic and provoke liberal pronouncements".[5] Following the mass creation of NPC Twitter accounts, the term "NPC" was used over 30,000 times on Twitter in a time span of 24 hours.[7] Twitter responded to the event by banning more than 1,500 of its users presenting themselves as NPCs.[5] The created accounts typically used profile pictures of NPC with slight modifications, such as colorful hair or partially covering masks.[4] According to one or more anonymous sources quoted by The Week and The New York Times, the users were banned for violating a term of use by Twitter against "intentionally misleading election-related content", ahead of the United States 2018 midterm election.[4][5] The claim that NPC memes were used to spread misinformation about the 2018 United States midterm election is also reported by other news agencies, including The Verge,[1] BBC[7] and The Independent,[2] although no examples are presented. The decision by Twitter to remove NPC accounts has upset many conservatives according to BBC,[7] and following a review of Twitter's banning of accounts, the conservative nonprofit media watchdog Media Research Center raised the concern that Twitter was upholding a double standard favoring the political left.[16]

On October 17, 2018, InfoWars announced a competition in which participants were given a chance to win $10,000 for submitting the "best Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson or other Infowars-themed" NPC meme (according to an InfoWars article titled "Meme War 3.0: Infowars Launches $10K NPC Meme Contest"). The competition ended on October 22, 2018 (according to an InfoWars article titled "Meme War 3.0: Infowars Launches $10K NPC Meme Contest"), and hundreds of submissions were reportedly received (according to an InfoWars article titled "Check Out The NPC Meme Finalists - Winner TBA"). Information about the competition was also announced on the subreddit r/The_Donald, and on the 4chan forum /pol/, where over 300 replies to the announcement were posted within the first 24 hours following.[6] The winning submission in the competition, which was reported by Alex Jones on the InfoWars broadcast on November 28, 2018, was a video featuring Antifa, CNN, and the Democratic Party of the United States (according to an InfoWars article titled "NPC Meme Contest Winner Announced!"). The winning video, which is 2 minutes and 20 seconds long, is a They Live parody, featuring a man who while walking in a city, sees things around him differently when he is using sunglasses (with the InfoWars logotype on) compared to when the glasses are not used.[18] The video was published on YouTube with the title "Another NPC in the Wall" on October 21, 2018, and has been viewed more than 74,000 times.[18]

In 2019, the NPC meme was used in the modification of two existing billboards in the United States.[10]

On January 13, 2019, the conservative street artist group The Faction modified a billboard featuring American comedian Bill Maher in West Hollywood using the NPC meme.[15]

On February 19, 2019, a similar modification was performed on a billboard featuring English comedian John Oliver in Los Angeles, in which the face of Oliver was replaced by that of an NPC, and text "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" was replaced by "The Orange Man Bad Show with John Oliver".[19] The modified billboard also included the text "*MATRIX APPROVED NPC PROGRAMMING" and a speech balloon from the NPC containing words such as "CHEETOH" [sic] and "DRUMPH" with random symbols in green text, resembling the text shown in The Matrix. According to The Daily Dot, the modification of the billboard featuring Oliver, also credited to The Faction, was an attempt to counteract the media's supposed "Trump derangement syndrome".[10]

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NPC (meme) - Wikipedia

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The testimony given by Capitol police officers at this week's House select committee hearings on the January 6 riot laid out in visceral detail how the chaos was instigated by a mob of mostly white men in a frenzy of rage.

Believing Trump's lies about election fraud, the rioters created a belief that they were victims of a politically correct elite that condescended to them and held them down. So they lashed out, broke stuff, and hurt people caught up in a mania that when all was said and done accomplished absolutely nothing.

The officers recounted some of the unspeakably vile things said right to their faces by members of the attempted MAGA insurrection, and body cam footage showed from a human perspective the level of sadistic violence perpetrated by the mob.

While Congress is trying to investigate the madness of that day, historians will be tracing the "roots" of the Trump-incited riot for years to come. There were many disparate factors that led to the violence, but undoubtedly, one of those factors was the widespread "own the libs" resentment against "politically correct" culture.

HBO's new documentary, "Woodstock '99: Peace, Love, and Rage," happened to be released this week as well.

After watching it, and then revisiting footage of the Capitol attack, I found it striking that the rioters seemed like grown up versions of the young men responsible for so much violence and destruction at the Woodstock '99 music festival 22 years ago.

I was in college when Woodstock '99 took place, right in the target audience. This was my generation. Culturally and politically if not necessarily literally the men in their 20s breaking stuff at Woodstock '99 grew into the men in their 40s that stormed the Capitol on January 6th.

Director Garret Price said his film "Woodstock '99" could have been framed as a comedy. And indeed, the festival's cluelessly tone-deaf Boomer organizers came off as unintentionally comical both during the festival and in interviews recounting the event two decades later.

The documentary he ended up making is actually more like a horror film, Price said.

Indeed, there are real-life horrors in the film that are difficult to watch.

The seemingly relentless shots of women being groped against their wills. People passed out from heat exhaustion because the event was held on an asphalt runway during 100-degree heat, with water bottles selling for $4 and few free hydration options available. And then there was the arson, looting, and mayhem that concluded the festival.

It's the voices of the young men in attendance, teeming with boiling fury despite being wealthy enough to buy a $180 ticket (about $294 in 2021 dollars), that proved this was a monster movie.

When the singer from punk rock group The Offspring came out on stage with a plastic baseball bat and knocked the heads off of four "Backstreet Boys" dummies, it seemed like he was just being goofy, having some fun. But it definitely captured the zeitgeist.

The angry young men in the Woodstock '99 crowd seethed at MTV (at the time a ubiquitous force in youth pop culture) for playing far fewer of the hard rock acts they identified with and much, much more teen pop directed at younger audiences. For much of the weekend, MTV personalities broadcasting live from the festival were relentlessly pelted with water bottles and garbage.

"They were mad at us for taking away their MTV and giving it to their little sister," former MTV VJ Dave Holmes said in the documentary. Holmes also recalled that at the end of the 90s, "there was this simmering anger and it manifested itself through sludge and angst."

This was an audience that embraced shock rap-metal acts and came of age bombarded by "Girls Gone Wild" ads on late night cable TV. They didn't care about peace, love, and social consciousness. They wanted someone to tell them it was their right to say "F*** you."

Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff" with its troglodyte refrain "Give me something to break!" came to represent the Woodstock '99 generation. And break stuff, the audience did.

They flipped and mindlessly banged on metal garbage cans, they set fires, broke into ATM machines, and even burned food.

There were many reports of sexual assault and three people died.

In a lot of ways, for a lot of people, Woodstock '99 was the pit of hell.

But the rage exhibited that weekend in upstate New York never really went away. Instead, it evolved.

One of the most popular and culturally relevant performers of the time, Kid Rock, is shown in the documentary peacocking onto the Woodstock '99 stage with his typical faux-pimp affectations.

At one point he addressed the audience: "You want me to get political? Well this is about as deep as Kid Rock thinks. Monica Lewinsky is a f------ ho and Bill Clinton is a goddamn pimp!"

The crowd roared in delight. It was just your typical Woodstock '99 cultural temperature check stupid and disgusting, but seemingly apolitical.

Twenty-two years later, Kid Rock is now an outspoken Republican activist who golfs with Donald Trump and recently tweeted a defense of his prodigious use of a homophobic epithet.

Much like Trump, Kid Rock has no guiding political principles, but he is deeply in touch with the "own the libs" mindset. And much like Kid Rock, the Woodstock '99 audience demographic would later evolve from apolitical to obsessively political, though the proto-MAGA mindset never changed.

A study out of the University of Chicago analyzed the demographics of 377 people arrested for storming the Capitol, and found that 67% were over the age of 35.

But the largest subset was age 35-44 that's the Woodstock '99 generation.

During the two decades between Woodstock '99 and the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the flame of "anti-PC" resentment manifested itself in the Men's Rights Activist (MRA) movement, the brazenly misogynistic attacks on female journalists in Gamergate, and the rise of the internet troll none bigger than Donald Trump.

These largely-online communities would also spawn the Birther movement that falsely claimed President Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya. And then came the openly racist Alt-Right, which later helped spawn the false Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories.

Trumpism, a politically incoherent philosophy guided by little more than resentment of the modern world, is the common thread among all these communities.

When Trump told the "Stop the Steal" crowd to march to the US Capitol on January 6, he could have easily been Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst singing "Break Stuff" at Woodstock '99. The fire was already burning, but it got a whole lot more fuel.

The hordes that tried to stop Congress from certifying Trump's electoral defeat dehumanized the Capitol Police, just as the bros at Woodstock '99 dehumanized countless women. The Capitol rioters claiming to be patriots also gratuitously broke stuff defacing statues, defecating, and stealing from congressional offices while falsely claiming to be the victims of a coup d'etat.

To be sure, the two events do not have a clean and simple cause and effect relationship to one another. But from Woodstock '99, through the rise of the many toxic internet cultures that converged into Trumpism, we can see the roots of the Capitol attack.

The seething misogynistic, anti-PC anger at Woodstock '99 evolved into an internet culture that undoubtedly helped Trump take the White House, and then facilitated the storming of the Capitol.

That's why the congressional hearings happening right now are crucial. We should more deeply probe where this political movement is today, and how much support it still has in the Republican Party.

Because I don't think it's done breaking stuff yet.

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Woodstock '99 Was a Prequel to the MAGA January 6 Capitol Insurrection - Business Insider

Jordan Barkin| Guest Column

There is buzz surrounding former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-WI. The venerable conservative columnistGeorge Will, in The Washington Poston June 9, lauded Ryan's "seriousness about policies for economic dynamism and a sustainable safety net of entitlements."

The month prior, on May 27,Ryan spokeat the Reagan Presidential Library's exclusiveTime for ChoosingSpeaker Series. At the outdoor event, the51-year-oldsaid: "I think of the federal debt, which hardly comes up anymore, even though the debt is now $28 trillion." Ryan also emphasized what he sees as conservative principles:limited government, spending discipline and economic opportunity.

The Republican former speaker touched not only on policies, but also on electoral politics.

Ryan said: "Even for our good showing in the House, 2020 left Republicans powerless in Washington. Even worse, it was horrifying to see (the Trump) presidency come to such a dishonorable and disgraceful end. So once again, we conservatives find ourselves at a crossroads, and heres the reality that we have to face. If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality or of second-rate imitations, then were not going anywhere. Voters looking for Republican leaders want to see independence in metal. They will not be impressed by the sight of yes-men and flatterers flocking to Mar-a-Lago."

It is easy to see why the stalwart Mitt Romney, R-UT,chose Ryanas his running mate in the presidential election of 2012. Even though the Republican ticket was beaten by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, party loyalists respected Ryan's managementand oratorical skills. After then-Congressman Ryanreturned to the House of Representatives in 2014, he became chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. In 2015, he was elected by his colleagues to be House speaker.

In 2016, Ryan gave only tepid-support to then-candidate Trump. When a sexual harassment scandal broke regarding Trump,Ryan stated:"I am sickened by what I heard today. Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified. I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.

Then-Speaker Ryan worked with Trump for a few months, keeping his reservations about the reality TV star mostly to himself. In April 2018, Ryan decided not to run for re-election, citing a desire to spend more time with his children.

Looking back, it seems prescient thatRyan left before he could become tainted by association with Trump-era scandals. OnJanuary 6, 2021, when extremists rioted at the Capitol, hurting Capitol Police officers and damaging property, Ryan had not been in an official position for a while. Once again, the Wisconsinitekept his hands clean and his name untarnished.

Ryan's absence from the daily fracas of the COVID era also enabled him to avoid the culture wars that both the left and right have engaged in. As a result, theeconomicsmajorseems above the fray, giving public policy lectures at venues includingthe University ofNotre Dame.

Meanwhile, Trump has indicated he may run again.NBC News reportedon June 1: "Trump returns to the electoral battlefield Saturday as the marquee speaker at the North Carolina Republican Party's state convention. He plans to follow up with several more rallies in June and July to keep his unique political base engaged in the 2022 midterms and give him the option of seeking the presidency again in 2024."

The article by Jonathan Allen continued, "Only one president, Grover Cleveland, has ever lost a re-election bid and come back to reclaim the White House. In modern times, one-term presidents have worried more about rehabilitating their legacies by taking on nonpartisan causes (...) than about trying to shape national elections. But Trump retains a hold on the Republican electorate that is hard to overstate, and he has no intention of relinquishing it."

Nominating Trump in 2024 would be a huge mistake for the Republican Party. As Willstated in an NPR "Morning Edition" interview on Feb.18:"Donald Trump has no deep roots in the Republican Party and in many ways repudiates much of the Republican position of traditional conservatism, of fiscal austerity, free trade, et cetera."

USA Today reported in June that"Donald Trump is ranked near the bottom of all USpresidents by a group of historians, getting the lowest grades for leadership of any commander in chief who has served in the White House in the past 150 years. The ratings of presidents on 10 leadership qualities, the fourth in a series conducted by C-SPAN, includes assessments by 142 historians and professional observers of the presidency."

Unlike Trump, Ryan has a keen understanding of constitutionality and the rules of Congress -assets for any president. Plus, he is free of the rot that the alt-right brought to the party in Trump's term.Ryan proclaimed, in his speech at the Reagan Library,"Today, too many people on the right are enamored with identity politics in ways that are antithetical to Reagan conservatism. The whole idea in this country is that every person has worth, and that our dignity, rights, and responsibilities, they all belong to us as individuals."

Ryan offers the challenge and tone that both Republicans and Democrats need to make the 2024 presidential election substantive and productive.

JordanBarkinis a Rock Hill-based columnist publishedbyUSA Today,Gannett and other media outlets. He is a former associate editor of Hearst Magazines.

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Opinion: Paul Ryan could restore sanity to the Republican Party - Greenville News