The strongest reason calling people NPCs is harmful is that it completely removes any obligation to listen. When you label someone a non-player character, you're telling yourself they don't have real thoughts or feelings, so their arguments aren't worth engaging with. That mindset makes actual discourse impossible. Sure, it's often meant as a joke, but jokes shape how we treat people. Once you've convinced yourself someone is just background code—not a thinking human with their own lived experience—you stop seeing them as someone who might be right. The humor isn't worth that cost.

The core harm is that NPC flips a switch in your head that says this person isn't worth trying to understand. Yes, sometimes it's just poking fun at herd mentality, and that can be genuinely funny. But the joke only lands by denying someone has an inner life, and once you've done that, you're not going to change your mind no matter what they say. We can criticize conformism without pretending the people doing it aren't real. That's the line worth drawing.

Picture this: you're in a group chat, someone shares a take you find ridiculous. You type "NPC" and hit send. Feels good, right? But you've just told yourself their thoughts aren't real—so why would you ever listen? That's the harm. Even if it's mostly a joke, the joke trains you to skip the harder step of asking why they think that. We can absolutely make fun of groupthink without pretending people are hollow. The bright side is, we don't have to choose between humor and humanity. We can have both.

The most practical consequence is simple: the more we call people NPCs, the less we actually listen to them. Even if you intend it as a joke, that label becomes an excuse to dismiss a real person's reasoning without engaging it. And here's the thing—once you're in that habit, it bleeds into how you talk to friends, coworkers, and even strangers. Nate, you're right that it's often harmless fun, and yes, some people are genuinely just repeating party lines. But we can call out groupthink without pretending someone is hollow inside. That's the whole opportunity here: keep the humor, drop the dehumanizing shortcut, and actually have conversations worth having.