alt Hacker NewsI wanna live an NPC life
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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 constant nervous system stimulator that has prevented you from truly relaxing into a state of repair. Then introduce responsibilities into your life, start small. We are wired to be needed, wanted, useful, accountable, social. You're just stressed out.
To make the most facile counterpoint - the reason the Skyrim blacksmith doesn't care if the main character slays dragons is because they weren't programmed to. There aren't consequences either way.
To the extent that this post is meant to be inspiring, it only works if you're an NPC in a static world that has no real consequences - where you actually can live your life in a static loop because nothing will change.
When the metaphorical dragon comes to burn down your village, are you going to shrug and go back to looping your hammer_nail_03 animation?
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 anything it's arrogance to assume you can, or even should - that your specific brand of saving anything is even correct.
If you look at most people that do well for themselves and have good lives, they live narrow focused lives in domains they care about. They're very much the main characters of their own lives, but also recognize there are other characters running around doing their own things as well.
I think using the term NPC would be more apt if you're referring to someone that's purely on autopilot and not making any effort to ensure that they're leading a life that is meaningful to them.
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, you’re just another rando tourist npc. It’s great
Unambitious Loser With Happy, Fulfilling Life Still Lives In Hometown - The Onion
https://theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfilling...
In The Republic, Plato tells a story of a man who briefly died, visited the afterlife, and came back to life. According to the man, people would be reborn after dying, but they got to choose what they would be reincarnated as. Some people chose to be rich kings, some chose to be fierce animals. Odysseus, a legendary king known for his wisdom, chose to be reborn as an ordinary man.
In Lathe of Heaven by Le Guin, the main character George is famously frustrating because he doesn't do much. Bad things happen to him and he basically just lets them. He thinks his psychiatrist is totally evil yet keeps going back. He has a pitiful lack of control over his life. He doesn't seem to want control, which is the worst part. He isn't super happy, and you could take that as the main point, but I don't.
even George, perhaps the most boring and least reactive person you've ever read about or met, would just laugh at the goal of being "entirely unfazed by everything happening around you." Even he falls in love, experiences great joy and brutal heartbreak, finds his own small ways of making an impact, makes peace with difficult things. For a character who supposedly does nothing important, he does a hell of a lot.
Good luck, I guess!
> drive a boring car... have a boring job. do nothing after work...
This just sounds like mental exhaustion as mentioned. The internet exposes us to thousands of opinions on how to live, so those terminally online get information overload and analysis paralysis. I don't think the answer is to give up trying or just settle into a boring life. Then people write these snarky blogs as a coping mechanism. Personally, I think navel gazing and these shocking, screw-the-world articles are just ways to live comfortably inside your head. It's addictive to write shocking, against-the-current stuff and get reactions, and it feels like you are affecting your life. But most of the time I think it's performing for yourself.
Adding the 1001th random opinion and being a hypocrite: go offline more, interact with real people and you'll realize life is actually fine and enjoyable. Natural dopamine and serotonin. It's easy to fall into anhedonia or apathy as a safety response to information overload. Having a boring, soul-crushing job on purpose is not good advice, nobody should intentionally spend huge parts of their years on Earth like that. Making your life enjoyable through effort in the real world is not a bad thing.
This post got the definition of NPC entirely backwards. NPC = follows the rules exactly like they’re programmed to. That means not thinking outside the box, ignoring gut feelings, adhering to a routine, consumerism and generally politically unimaginative.
The blacksmith from Skyrim is a great example because along comes a player, puts a bucket on your head and steals all your stuff without any complaints.
i think have a bit of an understanding of where OP is coming from. lately, the grind doesn't stop, and the quality and cost of life are inverting at an alarming pace. and all this time we're being told being the main character means having billions of dollars, be looksmaxxed, have a million friends, and anything less means you're poor and worthless.
this is an incredibly stressful time to be alive. i think i'm moderately ambitious and so i grind at my early stage startup and enjoy the work most days. but sometimes i also think it'd be nice to just have a bakery in a middle-sized town somewhere without thinking too much about politics. and just living my life with its ups and downs, but without the daily / hourly emergencies that come with being on the internet nowadays.
NPC's have no agency. They're lines in the main character's story and otherwise forgotten.
There is a negative karma to putting this kind of nihilistic message out into the world. Obviously everyone should shoot for the stars, not the dirt. The goal is to give one's life meaning and purpose. If the job is a snooze, adjust your aim. Treasure your family and start your own if you are able. Life will be infinitely more interesting and meaningful when you take on that special burden.
If this viewpoint resonates with you, I highly recommend the Japanese film Perfect Days.
It is about a man living a very simple life as a public cleaner in Tokyo, and after watching it (it’s been three times now) I have the desire to throw away 99% of my unnecessary possessions and go work a simple job as a barista or gardener.
Heh, I just shared this elsewhere but kinda relevant here too: https://jonnegroni.com/2015/04/15/the-humans-of-wall-e-were-...
Dated someone who said this early on, talking about how they wanted to be kept like a housecat and grow plants. I don't like saying things gave me "the ick" but... wow.
As the type of person with a more "life is like playing pokemon, if you make an effort to talk to everyone, you'll have more fun and they'll help in unexpected ways" vibe, I just don't get it.
That's not a life lived, I'd sooner log out.
In my twenties, I had decided that I didn’t want to have side projects or a job that followed me home. I wanted to just go to work, come home and be.
Shortly after I made that commitment, there was a notice published that I was starting a typography magazine.
I had talked publicly about doing this, but it was something that I had planned on doing with my then-girlfriend who subsequently broke up with me and I decided that I would shelve it. But thanks to that notice, I started getting inquiries and I ended up doing the typography magazine anyway. I’m glad for the experience of having done it, less so for the negative impact it had on my finances for the next decade.
The Bhagavad Gita 18.47: "It is better to do one’s own dharma, even though imperfectly, than to do another’s dharma, even though perfectly."
There is a certain attraction to the idea of being an NPC, or taking the blue pill offered by Morpheus as it were. Ignorance is bliss after all.
Judging by the comments here, this post is a hell of a Rorschach test.
Funnily I find the OP's thoughts to very much define what a main character is.
An NPC is given a role and identify and they are bound by it forever.
The main character chooses what they want. Whatever that is. But they exercise agency and their own will to choose their reality and what they wish to do and not do. What they wish to care and not care about.
The OP is not an NPC. I believe the OP wants to live a less stressful life. The OP is pulled towards a simple life that does not involve flashy things or high status (this is my interpretation).
Which in today's status signal fueled world may feel like being an NPC. But in my opinion, it is the exact opposite.
My daughter plays games like crazy. She plays a lot of them, started with MineCraft when she was young. I think they are all fantasy games.
She has defined a life she wants to live and is scarily detailed. It is sort of an NPC lifestyle. I believe she is inspired by the games she play.
She might change but for now she seems have a clean outline of how things will be, work, home, and everything else like a very finite number of friends, the things to own, no brand logos (or should be really muted/subtle), etc.
I kind of think the author is attempting to say - don't live your life governed by a script/external expectations.
that said, it is ok to drive a non-boring car, or be dovahakiin.
This is viable option if you are generally okay with the way the world around you works - if you live in a safe place with a good economy and a fair, well-functioning government. Unfortunately this is not the situation for a lot of people.
But then you could be like Greg the Garlic Farmer who had his wife patched out and no one but him remembers her.
This was always my biggest nightmare: to become an NPC. I always feel like I am capable of more than what I am currently doing, and I am trying to do more. Life is short. I want to die knowing I had a great impact on the world and I did what I could, not as an NPC.
You can write a good story about anything. Slice of life stories are great. A peaceful zen character can be a main character. A hard working craftman could be a main character. A man or woman taking care of their sick partner or child and barely having time for anything else is a main character. The whole trend of using the term NPC is a very egotistical framing in the first place, but if you care you can be living any type of lifestyle and be a main character. Culture is very relative, people think they're the main character because they act like a dip shit on a live stream and people watch them. In a lot of cultures people like that would not be seen as enviable at all. Its all pretty arbitrary.
"I do what is mine to do; the rest doesn't disturb me."
"No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good."
"It is not the [hu]man who has too little, but the [hu]man who craves more, that is poor."
"If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write."
"The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it."
I feel like this take is for a more passive form of stoicism. No you don't have to care about what is going on around you, but you do need to somewhat engage with your life to solve problems, pay bills and take care of loved ones.
Confusing perspective and doesn’t achieve what I think they were trying to say.
I get from this “you cannot have expectations of me, because I’m an NPC, so stop the judgement because I cannot change what I am. It’s in my programming.”
Like, not really anything else. I cannot handle failing to meet expectations (regardless of where they come from, who is seemingly imposing them, or really anything related to expectations at all) so I just absolve myself from having any.
Living is not the same thing as filling an empty space in a game. An NPC is just that - add some extra background staff so that a city feels live-like. You are alive. Go live.
NPCs immitate life, but very pourly. Do not take them as an inspiration.
Don't try to ignore the world around you as it is the direct opposite of a game world which is static.
Real life is dynamic, changing and if you behave as an NPC for a long time, you are going to have a bad time eventually
Agency is a reason for me to arise each day and work at my goals. Without goals, or agency, I may head for depression (been there, done that).
If I do not see progress being made, I know that if I do not change what I am doing (or measure in smaller increments) again, I may head for depression.
Even crappy odds are an acceptable challenge, when I compare to what I imagine is an NPC/don't give a hoot outlook.
Aren't we all just NPCS in each other's lives? Accepting that you're an NPC is just stating the obvious. Idk about y'all but I'm tryna get to at least side character status lol.
There's a guy that does this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrRZwypfH6A
OP should read Bhagavad Gita. The ancient Indian have talked about this for a very long time. Ashtavakra Gita have also talked about realizing that oneself is pure observer. It is a deep, deep book. You either get it or don't, unfortunately.
I saw two people with NPC tshirts today (Chinese tech scene). This resontaes quite well with the notion of tangping or laying flat: https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007589
Why try hard when you can just skate by?”
I do agree with this attitude, but the epithet of "being an NPC" is about having someone else--the media, your tribe, your church--governing your behavior without you thinking about it.
It's not about being a main character in the world--it's about being a main character in your own life.
"Let us cultivate our own garden." - Candide
The key is consciously making that choice. What people don't want is to be forced into a way of living by others. People can accept what they have a hand in discovering and choosing.
>when you stop caring about being the main character, you finally get to just live your life. I am not sure there is a standard definition of "main character." In literature, at least, there are countless main characters who lead very introspective lives.
"Life doesn't have to be something that just happens to us."
— Guy
Its pretty common in Japanese and Chinese culture to want to live an NPC life -- characterized mainly by being completely ordinary and living a relatively simple life without much excitement, and finding joy in small pleasures.
I think the fact that this post is marked as #long is the most salient detail in the entire thing.
Doing the things you care about instead of the things you are induced to care about, that is something I agree with. However, what is there to live for, if I am strictly unaffected by the world around me?
I thought hearing about The Cave on repeat for 30+ years was nauseating until video game metaphor took over for all of philosophy in common media.
you don't know what you got (til it's gone)
The irony is the life of your average NOC is on the verge of becoming a lot more “intelligent”.
> I want to live in a skyrim house
I have ADHD. Every once in a while I surface and realize I have been living on autopilot and we're now 7 months further.
JFC, some of ya’ll should take this advice. The article is basically saying focus on your own life, don’t worry so much about what other people are doing and enjoy the mundanity of life. People are acting like he’s telling you to just sit and stare at the ceiling.
Zhuangzi was fishing in the Pu River when the King of Chu sent two high officials to him. They said, “The king wishes to entrust you with the affairs of his realm.”
Zhuangzi kept hold of his fishing rod and did not turn around. He said, “I have heard that in Chu there is a sacred turtle that has been dead for three thousand years. The king keeps it wrapped in cloth, enclosed in a box, and stored in the ancestral temple.
“Now, would this turtle rather have died and left its bones behind to be honored, or would it rather be alive, dragging its tail through the mud?”
The two officials replied, “It would rather be alive, dragging its tail through the mud.”
Zhuangzi said, “Then go away. I too will drag my tail through the mud.”