NPC
Etymology
Short for "non-player character," a term from tabletop role-playing games and video games for figures controlled by the system rather than a human, often looping through canned lines. Around 2018 the "NPC meme" repurposed it to cast conformist people as background characters with no inner life. The metaphor borrows a game mechanic to make a claim about consciousness and originality.
noun · /en-pee-SEE/
A metaphor for a person seen as thinking and speaking on autopilot, mechanically repeating stock opinions rather than reasoning for themselves.
What it names
It captures a genuine unease about scripted, herd-like thinking — though it is worth noticing that the label is usually applied to others and almost never to oneself, which is part of what makes it revealing.
Example
Every reply just parroted the same slogan — it felt like arguing with a wall of NPCs.
Related idea
Groupthink describes how a group suppresses dissent from the inside; the NPC label is an outsider’s verdict that others were never really thinking at all.