The NPCs among us

A few days ago, this appeared in my Twitter timeline. To say that it bothered me like it bothered the author of the retweet would be putting it mildly. The possibility that there are people who lack internal monologue and the ability to think in hypotheticals was outright scary.

It had to be an exaggeration, right? Everyone has internal monologue. Everyone can entertain hypothetical situations in their mind. Right? Yet after I googled what NPC means (non-playing character for the non-gamers like me) I wondered. I wondered long and hard, to come to the conclusion that it’s quite likely that was not right. It was wrong.

As I said, I’m not a gamer. The only videogame I’ve ever played for any length of time is Age of Empires. It’s full of NPCs though it’s not the kind of game the author of that tweet above meant. And so is the world we live in.

In AoE, you tell everyone on the screen what to do. You tell your villagers “Chop wood” and that’s what they’ll do until they run out of wood. You tell your soldiers “Attack the enemy’s barracks” and that’s what they’ll do until they destroy the target or get destroyed by the enemy’s soldiers.

Nobody questions your orders. Nobody disputes them. Every character complies. Simple. Elegant. Efficient. Headache-free.

In real life, the past three years have proven that a lot of us are disappointingly similar to these characters. We get told “No need to wear masks” and we don’t. We get told “Wear masks everywhere” and we do it. No questioning. No doubt. No wondering about the 180-degree turn beyond “They didn’t know well at first. Now they know better. Science evolves.”

Interestingly, the science does not seem to be evolving when it comes to climate change. On climate change, the science is settled. There is scientific consensus. Scientists agree. And those who disagree are not real scientists because the science is settled, there’s scientific consensus and scientists agree there is a climate emergency.

During the pandemic, dissenting voices were being silenced on the grounds that they spread disinformation and misinformation, and that’s dangerous. It’s a valid argument in an emergency situation. Kinda. That argument justified a lot of censorship. Now, the same is happening on a greater scale with the climate narrative. And the censorship push is even harder.

The UN’s secretary-general Antonio Guterres earlier this week posted a tweet presenting a proposal for a Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms. He warned, rather blandly, to be honest, compared to the hellfire he’s been gushing so far, that “digital platforms are being used to subvert science and spread disinformation and hate to billions of people.”

The policy brief on the proposal contains some cute charts and some even cuter statements, such as this one: “mis- and disinformation about the climate emergency are delaying urgently needed action to ensure a liveable future for the planet.”

Or how about this one: “A small but vocal minority of climate science denialists continue to reject the consensus position and command an outsized presence on some digital platforms.”

It goes on to present the horrific evidence that “For example, in 2022, random simulations by civil society organizations revealed that Facebook’s algorithm was recommending climate denialist content at the expense of climate science.” Oh, the things one can do with language…

Also, “On Twitter, uses of the hashtag #climatescam shot up from fewer than 2,700 a month in the first half of 2022 to 80,000 in July and 199,000 in January 2023. The phrase was also featured by the platform among the top results in the search for “climate”.” The horror.

Clearly, this state of affairs is, if you pardon the non-pun, unsustainable. Something must be done. And that something, of course, is censorship. The EU’s already laid the groundwork with its Digital Services Act and related documentation. The rest of the UN, according to Guterres, should do the same, as quickly as possible because we’re in a disinformation emergency, apparently (my words, not his, gods forbid).

You know, I try to be completely honest in all my writings and I don’t mind saying that the above prompted some quite energetic internal monologue. How long, I wondered, until “climate denialism” becomes illegal?

How long, I continued because I like to depress myself when there’s not enough depressing stuff around me, until I have to stop writing because my writings will make me a criminal? And I will stop writing, believe me, because I can’t afford to be a criminal, plain and simple. I am most definitely not a hero.

How long, I stepped it up, until scientists who dare question “the consensus” lose their funding and possibly their jobs? How long until the regulators start banning books? And then people?

Just a year ago, the idea of anything like this happening would not have crossed my mind. Now, I see climate censorship as almost a certainty. The only hypotheticals relate to the degree and scope of that censorship. In other words, just how desperate are the transition agenda pushers? Alas, they seem pretty desperate to me.

We may well be about to see just how many NPCs are there among us. With censorship in place, we’ll find out how many of us really have what that Twitter user called a lack of internal monologue and inability to think in hypotheticals.

We’ll find out how many of us will continue taking their daily dose of climate alarmism without so much of a hint of doubt and then go on to have panic attacks when they get their monthly electricity bill.

Because there is precedent and the results are not particularly encouraging. You probably know that publishers now employ sensitivity readers — essentially censors — whose job is to make sure the books that those publishers accept for publication fit in with diversity, equity, and inclusion rules or principles or whatever they’re called.

Publishers are also censoring the classics because of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Authors themselves pull their books from publication following angry attacks on social media and accusations of not being DEI enough. It would have sounded surreal just a few years ago. Now, it’s reality.

Once we reach the stage of self-censorship, we’re done for. It’s the death of free speech. Once we reach the stage of self-censorship, we turn into NPCs as well — perhaps with some residual internal monologue but with a neutered capability of considering hypotheticals such as “What would have happened if I hadn’t pulled out my book because someone on Twitter accused me of cultural appropriation?*”

For now, there is still more than one answer to this question that’s valid for other similar questions such as, pertinent to me, “What is the worst that can happen if I wrote 1,500 words about the utter hype garbage that is “green” hydrogen?”

While one of the possible answers remains “Some basic hate on Twitter or a “Duck you” in an email**”, there is hope.

*A true and extremely ugly story from a couple of years ago.

** Also true and hilarious story.