What’s In A Meme?

In prior generations these would just be called “Posters”. Now they are electronic and fly around the world in a day. I’ve already collected dozens that tickled my fancy just off of occasional visits to gab.

Gab.ai humor topic

Now I’d not realized that this was a thing:

NPC Non-Player Character

But it is. It is a reference to automated bot like characters in games that issue a limited number of scripted responses. Basically saying “dumb as a bot”.

So on Gab under “politics” there was this entry that used that image as the gravitar:

https://gab.ai/topic/523efc8b-3745-46cf-a6cc-869322271578

NPC Harvey Bugman 🐛 @SCALE
an hour ago · in News

Trump disgraces his office. He’s locking up children in cages, letting global warming go unchecked, bullying our allies, cozening up to Russia, demeaning women and fueling racism

I love you, Hillary Clinton. I can’t wait for you to put these entitled white males in their place when you become the next President!

#RESIST #BlueWaveComing #NPCTuesday

Clearly /sarc;ing it up with the clue being the NPC name & meme. Well, clear once you know what they are and that it exists ;-)

Luckily, Brietbart has provided a guide:

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/16/what-is-the-npc-meme-liberals-rage-at-cartoons-mocking-their-scripted-thoughts/

What Is the ‘NPC’ Meme? Liberals Rage at Cartoons Mocking Their Scripted Thoughts

The new “NPC” meme mocks leftists by depicting them as unthinking and reflexive automatons. The meme has upset the left so much that Twitter is now banning people posting it for “dehumanizing speech,” but its humble origins are the computer-controlled characters of limited intelligence found in most video games.

The popular NPC meme trend frames its targets as non-player characters (NPCs) who reflexively spout neo-Marxist axioms in response to real-world events. Actual NPCs are computer-controlled characters in video games with limited scripted responses given the parameters of the games in which they appear. For example, NPCs may assign quests to the player in games like Skyrim, or join the player as a companion in Fallout.

Built on the long-running Wojak meme, the NPC meme mocks leftists as expressionless in appearance and bot-like in behavior. The universal standard appearance illustrates the left’s political homogeneity.

So seeing as Twitter is banning it, I’m thinking this needs as wide a play as possible… I could see printing out thousands of them on sticker stock and just plastering them anywhere there’s graffiti on the walls… or Leftists hang out.. but I repeat myself ;-)

The article has lots of examples. Here’s a few of them:

There’s more in the article… which continues:

Left-wing gaming blog Kotaku addressed the aforementioned memes with an article entitled, “How The ‘NPC’ Meme Tries To Dehumanize ‘SJWs’.” It described the memes’ sentiment as “anti-progressive” and “dehumanizing” while heralding leftists as opponents of “racial injustice.”
Kotaku’s Cecilia D’Anastasio characterized the NPC memes’ spread as “a little scary”:

NPCs have no agency; NPCs don’t think for themselves; NPCs don’t perceive, process, or understand; NPCs arrive at the same worldview not because it’s authentic to their experiences, but automatically. As a descriptor, it suggests that those to whom it applies aren’t even human, but are rather, functionally, robots, or clusters of computer code. That this has resonated as widely as it has is funny, but also a little scary.

Twitter has banned dozens of users sharing and retweeting the NPC memes. One such banned user told Breitbart News: “I followed many NPC accounts (some followed me back). I retweeted some of them. I also answered someone’s (one of my followers) question about what the NPC meme is. Some people didn’t understand it right away. I can’t remember if I posted anything else that would be it. I’m pretty certain it was only because I followed and retweeted NPCs and probably ended up on a list or was mass reported by angry leftists who can’t handle what they see in the mirror.”

Despite the left’s insistence that the NPC meme is “dehumanizing,” there seems to be no similar outcry from the same people when conservatives on social media are dismissed as “Russian bots” by opponents.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.

OK, so that’s where it hurts? Nice to know… Sort of a fundamental “push here to see volcano” button ;-)

Interesting bit from down in the comments there:

Ris Toirtap Milo • 13 hours ago

The Left knows memes are effective (I think the Marines have a legit meme squad? Lol) and so they try to ban and censor them. Pics with text (memes) are now illegal in Germany. Seriously.

Really? Germany banning memes? Not sure how one would do that given so much legitimate imagery contains text (captcha anyone?)

Here’s a few other memes I picked up off of Gab:

Race, Sex, and White Men Meme

Socialist Economic Headache

How to end gender confusion

Election Reminder

Cry 2020 Hat

As you can see, it can be addictive these meme things…

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