From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. A few years back, the online right became enamored of a new epithet for liberals.

NPC, short for non-player character.

The term is lifted from video games, where an NPC refers to the computer-controlled characters

that populate the game, while you, the live player, you make the actual decisions.

NPCs don't have minds of their own. They don't have agency.

They're automatons. They do, as they're told. NBC quickly became a favor dismissal for all those

liberals with their BLM and Me Too hashtags, their Ukrainian flag icons, their they-them pronouns,

and anti-racism reading groups.

Liberals in this story, they thought what they were allowed to think. They said what they were

allowed to say. You might have seen these memes, if for your sins you're sufficiently online,

featureless gray faces, sometimes surrounded by liberal icons. Elon Musk loved posting them. Like any good insult,

the NPC meme served a dual purpose. It contains a kernel of truth about its target. We liberals can be

conformist. We can be too afraid to offend. We can be overly deferential to institutions. We can be

cowed by the in-group policing that we inflict on ourselves,

and a little quick to take up whatever the cause of the moment is.

But the real purpose of the MPC insult was self-congratulation.

The right was full of live players.

You could see it in their willingness to offend,

their mistrust of institutions, their eagerness to debate what

liberals would not even say out loud. This became part of the Trumpist rights self-definition.

They were the nonconformists, the coalition that wasn't made of automaton's. And that's what

American needed. Live players. And here we are in 2025. And at this point, I'm willing to concede at least

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