Do you think it is possible that some people are really NPCs?

[Silver7]

In my life time I've come across some people that don't seem to have an internal monologue and they don't seem to have the ability to go into deep thought about anything. It's like nothing really goes on in their head, all they do is stay absent minded throughout their working hours, eat, sleep and then repeat. They never do anything outside the box like a real person would.

Even when trying to have a conversation with them, it's like their responses show that they can't go into critical thinking. No wonder so many of us have trouble finding people that get and understand us. it's like some people are real and some people are not

What are your thoughts?

Edit: You all don't fully understand me, it's not that I want to believe that someone can be a NPC but I have come across some strange things that make me wonder about it. If some people in life truly were NPCs that to me would be sad and totally bizarre. I just wanted to see if anyone else have had any experiences that causes them to wonder if some people are NPCs. Anyways you would have to have had the same experiences I've been through to understand why I would even start to wonder if some people are NPCs

[Legendofgenii]

It’s not really possible to know what’s truly going on in someone else’s head, and to label someone an npc because you don’t quite understand them is a little strange in my opinion.

[Stargazer31]

The whole "NPC" thing just sounds unbelievably self centred to me, no offence

[Kuma]

I think whoever decides arbitrarily that somebody else is "lesser" than them in the grand scheme of things that is life, then usually is a matter of arrogance or self importance.

Of course there aren't NPC, everyone is important and everyone deserves to be treated with the modicum of respect needed to avoid even considering they are basically incapable of doing pre-scripted actions.

[RedLenai]

Don't want to be rude or anything but you sounded just like the typical "morra castrosa" in highschool, a person that is not necessarily popular but has no filters nor boundaries, that would out of the blue go towards the quiet kid of the classroom and shout

"HEY BESTIE! WHY SO LONELY? DO YOU DISLIKE ME? OMG WHY ARE YOU SO QUIET? ARE YOU AN ALIEN BY ANY CHANCE?"

Basically, being so self-centered to understand that some people like to keep boundaries, don't feel like sharing stuff to you nor care about giving a whole explanation to justify their routine, working habits or why they are "absent minded".
Sounds like you are a bit too desperate to make bonds with people at the point you cause the opposite effect besides you already do your part with the whole prejudgement and belitting.

[darthmongoose]

I've been alive close to four decades and have never met a person like this.

I've met selfish people, I've met people with very basic, mainstream interests, I've met people who don't like to share much in conversation, I've met people who like to live with a routine... But I've never met a person I couldn't believe didn't have a life outside of what brief interaction I had with them.

Example: My dad. If you meet my dad, he is a quiet man, he's polite, but he doesn't talk about himself much in conversations, and he doesn't insert his own hobbies or interests into one. He likes to go to bed at exactly 10pm every night. Before he was retired, he was a maths and computing lecturer. He was almost never ill, and he wasn't especially passionate about his job or close friends with his colleagues, but he always turned up on time, tried his best and then went home on time.
Wow, what a boring man, just an NPC! ...You might think that if you just interacted with him briefly, or if he was one of your teachers.
But that's not the case at all. My dad is BFFs with one of the greatest rock climbers of all time, and he's now president of one of the world's oldest climbing clubs having done first assent on more rock climbing routes in the Lake District than he could count and editing a ton of guidebooks on the subject. He can sail small boats and plays the piano beautifully, and he's also a qualified yoga instructor who does yoga every morning and sometimes leads local classes. Throughout his time working at the college, he was the Union representative, where his quiet, level-headed personality made him a great mediator. He has three kids and a grandchild. He is actually an extremely interesting man.

I think a lot of the people you think have no lives outside of you are actually very interesting, with rich inner lives. Not everyone likes to dump their whole backstory on you in a casual conversation, and if you're at work or school with them and they don't open up about themselves, they might think you seem like a self-absorbed or judgemental person they wouldn't feel comfortable telling personal details, or even about their less mainstream interests.

[thepenmonster]

What are your thoughts?

You should go outside and talk to more people.

[HGohwell]

don't seem to have an internal monologue

Firstly, not everyone has one. It's a fact. Some people have a constant running monologue, some don't, that has nothing to do with anything else.

Secondly, I would never judge someone to not have anything going on inside their head. You're not inside their head. Unless you're with them twenty-four/seven you can't judge how much the do or don't eat, sleep, repeat. Being comfortable with a routine and content with that doesn't make someone not a real person and how do you even know if you're not with them all the time. And perhaps they just don't want to have a conversation with you, because they don't want to or aren't interested, not because there's nothing going on in their heads. I certainly default to one word plain answers when I don't want to talk but someone keeps talking to me, that doesn't mean there's nothing in my head or that I have no ability to think critically. In fact it usually means you're talking over what I'm trying to think about. Just because you don't see these things, doesn't mean they don't exist, nor does that make them any less real as a person even if it doesn't, and that's not even going into how some of these things can be related to mental health. And, quite frankly, why would you want to share any details of your life or interests with someone who writes people off as not real people because they're not doing so?

[NickRowler]

NPC isn't a real thing unless if you are talking solely about video games.

The whole meme started because a bunch of people could not understand why people who have different thoughts or feelings then them. Yes, there are people who can be caught up is cults and extreme ideology but at the end of the day, they are still people. And for those to escape these situations, having others who saw them as individuals with thoughts and feelings helped with that.

People who believe the whole NPC narrative tend to be people who lack empathy for others. There is a saying in japan called chuunibyou, which describes a type of teenager who acts like they are the main character of an anime. I feel once someone realizes the world doesn't revolve around them, they might become more aware that the whole NPC thing is BS.

[morganicfoods]

Just because you can't understand how someone works, doesn't mean they aren't a real person. If you met me IRL, you might think I was one of these "NPCs." My conversational skills can sometimes collapse into looking like what you were describing.
It seems to me that you cannot look beyond someone's surface level and instead assume something ridiculous to make up for it.

[Mallory]

Main character syndrome is 100% real and 100% obnoxious to deal with. And probably also 100% connected to the belief that other people are NPCs.

So uh yeah if you feel that way, maybe examine your own thoughts and actions a lil’ and see where in your life you’re imposing yourself on others… because you probably are, and it will eventually cost you your friends, when they get fed up with you.

[Lensing]

Some people think that I´m a npc, some people think that you are a npc, it always
depends on in which situation you meet them. I don´t see anyone as a npc, everybody
is a human who crys sometimes

[harlan]

I think NPC is an unfortunate word to characterize this issue, suggesting they are not real people. It is unnecessarily demeaning. You can see it's sidetracked the entire discussion.

That said, an expert on the issue (Russell Hurlburt) has estimated that between 50-70% of people do not have an inner monologue, and that is very difficult for people who do to comprehend. An inner monologue seems to be correlated more to personality than intelligence, but it is broadly associated with higher analytical ability.

Ability to analyze, itself, is widely variant among humans and is a significant measure of intelligence, and is what IQ testing measures. Some people can't analyze beyond a very basic level.

[GumshoeComix]

No the whole, "some people are NPCs" thing is unbelievably rude to me
my Fiance has aphantasia - no internal monologue- 50% of the population has it and that's a lot of people
Usually, when you talk to people you can empathize with them and the whole NPC crowd seems to have trouble empathizing with other people that think differently than them.
it feels almost conspiracy theorist or like a cope to deal with the fact that there are 8 billion people
like I'm not trying to get on your case, everyone has that moment where they look on at a huge crowd and think "Wow those are all living-thinking people like me" and I imagine a lot of people just haven't had that moment yet

[Nugtown]

There are two things about people... Take a compound eye versus a human eye, which are built different but both achieve the end goal of seeing. There are people with different means to understand the world they are living in, despite being given different tools they can achieve the same goal. It's like those who have aphantasia versus hyperphantasia. Just because someone can't literally imagine an apple doesn't mean they can't, their brains are just processing information in a different way.
That being said, not all eyes are created equal. Some eyes can only detect light and dark, and that's perfect for some creatures who don't need anything more to get by in life. If I said everyone is like me underneath, they all have incredible depth and richness and I just don't know it, it would be a close minded bias blind to unique world of human beings.

There are some people who get by fine living only in light and dark and they don't want a single other thing.

[powerplantanimations]

A little unrelated, but I remember laughing at a joke where someone said "people who don't have inner monologues aren't even sentient" on a podcast. He delivered it as an insult (although he was sarcastic).

Really wish I came up with that one.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I'm going to play devil's advocate a little and say...I get what the OP is talking about. ^^; It IS worded in a very uncharitable way, particularly this line

it's like some people are real and some people are not

...I'm not surprised that most of the replies were very disapproving, and in fact I'm glad that the response is mostly negative. Like, if you step back and think about it for 5 seconds, you should realize that's legitimately a terrible thing to say; Jesus H. Christ...

HOWEVER: I can't say I don't understand. Especially when you have to live with people like this...the word you're searching for is 'boring', by the way. NPCs are a fictional construct and literally cannot exist; if someone seems dull and uninteresting to you it's because you (subjectively) find them dull and uninteresting. Nothing more.

Anyway, yeah, it can be frustrating, and it's actually the main reason why I've been trying to move out for the past year. There's nothing inherently wrong with being a person who just doesn't do much, but as someone who's extremely ambitious and wants to do everything, I can't live with people like that. We just end up resenting each other, and it's really tiring to have to constantly defend your personal time and space from people who do 1 task a day and whose only concept of 'forming priorities' is 'avoiding punishment'...

But y'know, realistically, 'NPC behavior' isn't the right way to think about it. If you know someone well enough to justifiably say they have "no life", 99 times out of 100 it's just a mental health issue. Maybe they scroll TikTok for hours on end because they're literally addicted. Maybe they stay in bed all day because they're struggling with executive dysfunction. Maybe they don't really have any interests beyond looking up random YouTube videos because they're severely depressed.

Like, when someone casually admits that they "spend each day just trying to waste time until the sun goes down" (true story), you could just stand back and be judgmental about how pathetic that is and how empty this person's life must be...but whether you like that person or truly feel bad for them or not, you have to admit that that's not an 'NPC'-- that's someone with a problem who needs help. =/

[Silver7]

I don't want to believe that some people are NPCs but there are some things that I've witnessed that makes me wonder if some people are NPCs

I agree that everyone should have importance, I believe that is how the world should be

[GodbreakerComic]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[BoomerZ]

Be very careful with the "inner monologue" thing. First there is no way to know someone has one or doesn't. There is no fact about that. We seriously don't know how the brain works for stuff like that. Second, this really seems like a "fact" that is tailor made to make people feel smart. No one thinks they are dumb. If you ask the average person how smart they are, they will say above average. This is just like everyone thinks they are an above average driver or above average in looks. The dumb people don't know they are dumb. And nothing is more dangerous than a person that is slightly above average intelligence, as they think they are geniuses. This fact just makes people think they are not one of the idiots of the world. They are special. Not just one of the mindless worker bees of society. But most, if not all of us, are average intelligence. There is a reason it's called an average.