Originally published at: "They’re such NPCs" — Why Elon Musk thinks you're not real - Boing Boing
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I almost miss the days when people of incredible privilege thought of their lessers as “animals.” At least animals have some legal rights.
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You’re not utterly incorrect – but NPC has a specific meaning among neo-Nazis.
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“NPC” is a lot easier to spell than untermenschen.
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Fascist edgelords ruin everything, including fun RPG design concepts. Tabletop gamers treated NPCs as vital parts of the narrative in a way Musk is incapable of doing.
The employees of his various enterprises should be under no illusion that he views them in the same way: mere props in his heroic saga.
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All these oligarchs’ beliefs are only ever what happens to justify their sociopathy. They are apparently incapable of taking any real interest in anything else besides their hoard, in a way that isn’t even true for typical hoarders. I’m not going to say they’re not real people, but something a person is supposed to have inside has been hollowed out.
Of course, in a video game the NPCs are often the ones with actual developed characters and backstories. In many games they also don’t take damage…but might still be able to dish it out, if for instance a player steals from or attacks them. So maybe this creepy thief should watch his back.
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Oligarchs spend a lot of money to make sure they never meet real people.
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We should stop giving him any quests.
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Obligatory a/f:
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Everything is self-imposed. At this point the only quest he has been given is to shut the fuck up, and he keeps himself in a fail state on that one for some reason.
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So, not NPCs, but more like dragons
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Oh, they’ll find a way. I once knew a neonazi (not by choice) who misunderstood what “Blut und Boden” meant so he had “Bread and Blood” tattooed on his neck. Spelling an acronym correctly is going to strain their intelligence.
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well…
Musk has gleaned life lessons from the game, which he called “Polytopia Life Lessons.” Among them: “do not fear losing”…
“You will lose,” Musk said. “It will hurt the first fifty times. When you get used to losing, you will play each game with less emotion.”
Another one of Musk’s Polytopia Life Lessons is to “play life like a game.” In that case, Musk is the main character and the rest of us are just NPCs
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Smaug had a genuine curiosity about riddles that I’m not sure that Musk does in anything, but then I guess he also wasn’t hoarding anywhere near as much.
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I was going to go with “dragons have more intriguing personalities but oligarchs have, most likely, less appalling breath”. But yes, intellectual curiosity and less greed are probably better.
Also they usually stole the wealth all themselves rather than having armies of flunkiest delegated to the task so honest hard work is another point of difference. That hoard of gold didn’t just get bigger of its own accord.
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Reminds me of how a bunch of tech and finance people who really, really should have known better took Sam Bankman-Fried’s predilection for playing video games during important meetings and interviews as an expression of his unfathomable genius instead of a serious warning sign. (Apparently he wasn’t even especially good at gaming, either.)
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I don’t give a happy fuck what Musk thinks; life is NOT a fucking game, even if he’s “playing” on the ‘easiest setting.’
Megalomaniacs do not get to define my reality.
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BBEG is an NPC too. He should reflect on that.
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This is very much about computer RPGs - there’s the human player (main) character, and the NPCs who aren’t real, are devoid of thought and feeling, etc. and exist only as devices to amuse or challenge (i.e. ultimately to fulfill the fantasies of) the player. There’s no living thing behind them, in any way. At best it’s incredibly solipsistic, and when Nazis start using it, they’re also meaning that anyone so labeled isn’t just subhuman, but not even worthy of the consideration you’d give a (non-human) animal.
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