To make the most facile counterpoint - the reason the Skyrim blacksmith doesn't care if the main character slays dragons is because they weren't programmed to. There aren't consequences either way.
To the extent that this post is meant to be inspiring, it only works if you're an NPC in a static world that has no real consequences - where you actually can live your life in a static loop because nothing will change.
When the metaphorical dragon comes to burn down your village, are you going to shrug and go back to looping your hammer_nail_03 animation?
I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion), they are looking at it from the point of view of a player, someone outside the game who understands that the NPC is scripted (this is a silly and egotistical way of looking at the world). This post is looking from it from the point of view of the NPC instead, as if that was a living entity one could be.
right, this comes close to rejecting the frame, which I think you could fairly do.
viewing npc as a category of person is inherently an ego driven, narcissistic way of looking at things. It is a viewpoint that lacks a theory of mind.
This essay implicitly supposes that the npc has a mind + motivations and that those motivations are more important to the npc than the player character. I'd extend it to say that if you are an npc you are a player character; you're just in a different game. Village Blacksmith Simulator, where you make horshoes, fend off pickpockets and sometimes a hero's dragon fight flattens your shop and you start over.
The flaw is assuming the player character is always the same.
Ironically the people who view others as NPC (and say so in a disparaging way) are likely more one dimensional themselves. I think you're spot on with the narcissism viewpoint.
"I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion)"
It's a great insult, because it is usually used to describe someone whose viewpoint is basically a brainwashed and braindead pre-programmed one (either through upbringing or other things) and clearly demonstrating a lack of self-conscious critical thought.
It’s funny, because one might argue that a lack of awareness of, or empathy for the fact that other people also have thoughts and autonomy also demonstrates a lack of self-conscious critical thought.
Right, and there is very good reason you need to care about a lot of things. That Dragon will burn your village and kill you. You better be concerned about that - you will die.
Your life isn't scripted. If have the option to not ignore the dragon. You can work with your town to setup a watch and places to flee to when the dragon is coming (even if only 50% make it that is an improvement). You can as a town fund adventures to kill the dragon. You can move to a town where there are no dragons. There are probably other options that I haven't thought of.
You should not ignore politics. You need to understand the trade offs. You should plan for what is happening. Russia is at war with Ukraine - things like that can happen to you as well. You should understand enough to have an informed decision on how much to prepare... Maybe you need to build a bomb shelter, maybe not, but you should know in time to build one.
This sort of a anxious hyper-vigilance is exactly the sort of main character bs you should let go of though. Spend some time with your kids or whatever. You actually can't plan and prepare for a hypothetical war with russia.
If it's me against Russia, no, I can't plan and prepare. - ALONE. Ukraine spent several years after 2014 planning for another war with Russia and there had reasonable success despite being in a apparently much worse situation. Ukraine is a large enough collection of people that they could usefully plan and prepare.
Which is part of my point. Don't live alone. You live in a community of people. You need to engage with your community to prepare for that dragon.
That doesn't mean don't go play with your kids or whatever. Do that too. But also prepare for life in ways that you can prepare because you live with other people
For some people, the reality is that this has simply not been possible; and people have died and not been discovered for years precisely because of this[0]. The most extreme example was not being discovered for 42 years[1].
> You need to engage with your community to prepare for that dragon.
The delineating aspect of this is the "it takes a village" moniker. In Ireland, for example, someone can have lived in the same community for 10+ years and still be a blow-in[2]. The reality is: Sometimes, you cannot force the community to engage back with you.
IMO, people using NPC as an insult have it backwards. What they mean is that you receive tasks and ideas from them to carry out for cash. That's what players do.
The blacksmith tasks the protagonist to get a Dragon's Teeth or whatever and pay 100 Golds in return(never played TES, sorry if this isn't a good example). The player has no control over the blacksmith; the blacksmith is in full control of the situation. The blacksmith is an NPC. The protagonist is the player. But then some thinks the blacksmith must be the player, I suppose. The fact that this sometimes seem to happen almost puzzles me.
No what people using NPC mean is lack of agency. And NPC in a game doesn't have agency and can only do what others have intended for him to do. The player on the other hand does have agency. You can choose to do what the game wants you to do or you can choose to not do it. You can choose to play a different game.
... this whole NPC thing is starting to feel to me like it might have been a simple "no U" rebuttal. NPCs pay player for completed tasks. This model resemble typical employer-employee relationships. The agency argument makes sense if someone mentally accepted this fact, and then tried to spin that around in spite.
> I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion)
Probably not totally relevant, but a several years ago I was out for one of my best friend's very low-key bachelor party (just a few friends/family members bar-hopping, no strip clubs). We went to a bar that was recommended by one of us and the dude who greeted us was so insanely charismatic that I assumed he was someone my buddy knew and was this later joiner to the party or something. I asked my friend, "Do you know this guy?" and, you kinda have to know his humour, but he replied, "No, he's an NPC." He was not insulting the guy (in fact I think he may have even said "non-playable character" in full) just saying, "Nope, not with us," and ya... I laughed... like, really hard. Needed recovery time.
That made chuckle! Not to the point of needing recovery time, but still. Thank you for sharing the story. I can’t help you get to the point you were looking for, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
It is a fun story. Not everything needs to have a point!
If the guy was incredibly charismatic and managed to sort of join the group despite lacking a properly developed backstory, maybe he was a DMPC (dungeon master player character).
Pretending that you don't have a part to play in the fate of society is escapism at best, and learned helplessness at worst. Democracy is explicitly a system that functions off of the sum of individual participation, and if the quality of that participation is poor it will produce bad outcomes even barring subversion by other powers. Pessimism like yours cedes control entirely to those who would take it through undemocratic means, and the result will be a markedly worse world.
You don’t have a part to play of any value to anyone outside of your direct orbit. Nothing you can do will impact history. You will be forgotten shortly after your death. There is no afterlife, you’re nothing more special than a bug other than being complex enough to think that you are.
Just live your life however you want, you only get one, and it’ll be brief.
How do you square this opinion with the fact that people actually do get voted into office and enact policies with grand repercussions on history and society?
I'll admit I'm assuming that you are writing with the intent for your words to be read, understood, and integrated in some capacity into other minds. That is, you are engaging in communication. The contents of your communication are an argument, advice to think about and participate in the world in a certain way. Perhaps this was totally random, though, and you didn't mean to convince anyone of anything, and were merely pressing keys at random, in which case I apologize for reading intent into your actions.
Political movements can certainly be an important factor of modern power given the right instigators, but transferring the importance to oneself is, again, damaging mania.
>Democracy is explicitly a system that functions off of the sum of individual participation, and if the quality of that participation is poor it will produce bad outcomes even barring subversion by other powers
We don't live in a democracy. We live in plutocracy where people with capital and influence have an outsized influence on policy.
The example is particularly bad because in Skyrim the blacksmith actually does react when a dragon arrives (in one of the villages where the blacksmith is on an exterior cell) and can actually be hurt by the dragon.
We're building AI so that it can take care of the dragon, as well as run the economy and do everything else for us. I think soon the only viable option will be to live the NPC life.
> To make the most facile counterpoint - the reason the Skyrim blacksmith doesn't care if the main character slays dragons is because they weren't programmed to. There aren't consequences either way.
In the actual game, NPCs do care, in fact they often won't shut up about it. They just don't let it affect their lives, which is the point the OP is making.
> When the metaphorical dragon comes to burn down your village, are you going to shrug and go back to looping your hammer_nail_03 animation?
When such a disaster strikes a village those are often scripted events that do change the loops of the NPCs previously inhabiting the village. They are programmed to adapt to a new cycle of rebuilding the village or even assisting the main character in dealing with the threat.
It's funny that the assumption is the NPCs don't care about anything that happens in the world when there are games with NPCs engaging in entire rebellions against their oppressors. It's just that NPCs don't care beyond their immediate objectives being fulfilled. Once the rebellion succeeds and the tyrant is overthrown most of them just settle back into their loop.
I feel like this take is for a more passive form of stoicism. No you don't have to care about what is going on around you, but you do need to somewhat engage with your life to solve problems, pay bills and take care of loved ones.
You can write a good story about anything. Slice of life stories are great. A peaceful zen character can be a main character. A hard working craftman could be a main character. A man or woman taking care of their sick partner or child and barely having time for anything else is a main character. The whole trend of using the term NPC is a very egotistical framing in the first place, but if you care you can be living any type of lifestyle and be a main character. Culture is very relative, people think they're the main character because they act like a dip shit on a live stream and people watch them. In a lot of cultures people like that would not be seen as enviable at all. Its all pretty arbitrary.
Always a good idea to pick up the book and read for yourself in context, but for those who might pass on that opportunity:
“Make it your goal to life a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others.”
That was a good read, thanks! I think one thing the blog post perhaps misses is that although humans are nice throughout the movie, we are supposed to view a lot of their best behavior near the end as part of their "awakening", the realization that there is more to life than just pleasure and that it'd be great to get to live on earth again. It's not as incoherent as it seems, though there is definitely still room to wonder whether the protagonists are actually the villains.
"One day, NPCs will wake up and give a fuck about other people and the environments that allow for the NPC life to begin with."
Optimistic take. The PCs are very good at convincing the NPCs that nothing they do can matter. Keep 'em poor, keep 'em sick, keep 'em stupid, control the women and all that.
That’s the best part! We’re all NPCs in other people’s stories _and_ the main character in ours.
You can do and be absolutely anything or anyone you want. Just gotta bear the consequences and that’s it.
Wanna live a homely life surrounded by loved ones? Go do it! Nobody is stopping you. Wanna galivant around the world having adventures with no roots? You can!
And when you meet a local npc bartender on your adventures, you’re just another rando tourist npc. It’s great
Commented elsewhere in the thread before reading the comment (a terrible habit of mine) and I fully agree. The way I explained it to my daughter is this:
Every snowflake is unique but snow is still just snow.
Life’s funny that way. You can’t predict what an individual will do and yet predicting what a crowd will do is so easy we have entire engineering and social disciplines based on manipulating crowd behavior.
This post got the definition of NPC entirely backwards.
NPC = follows the rules exactly like they’re programmed to. That means not thinking outside the box, ignoring gut feelings, adhering to a routine, consumerism and generally politically unimaginative.
The blacksmith from Skyrim is a great example because along comes a player, puts a bucket on your head and steals all your stuff without any complaints.
This is pure escapism. Numbing yourself to the burden of being. Likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis.
The truth is that after the brief initial relief of excusing yourself from being anything at all, you'll end up in a deep depression. It's a naive and immature fantasy.
Remove all electronics from your life, they are a constant nervous system stimulator that has prevented you from truly relaxing into a state of repair. Then introduce responsibilities into your life, start small. We are wired to be needed, wanted, useful, accountable, social. You're just stressed out.
> Likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis
Maybe, but that could also be because of autism, trauma or some other disability
And maybe the author just wants to feel heard, get others to comment on their experiences, be vulnerable in public (which btw can be pretty stressful too), and connect with their community
I burned out. I was emotionally wrecked. I spent two years living what this piece described as the "npc life". Then... one day I sat down at my computer and started playing. Like when I was a kid. Not video games, but just... seeing what I could make it do. Like the old days.
I rediscovered the joy I'd lost and then let myself get back into working. It's been wonderful. The two years were necessary, but they weren't good in and of themselves. I was just a person who needed rest.
I hope the author of this piece is able to be an "npc" for a while. And I hope it gives them what they need.
That can happen with a high stress tolerance too, it just needs to be pushed past the breaking point. Some of us have gone through harrowing experiences and the NPC lifestyle is one coping mechanism among many others.
Who is this “we” you speak of? I see this word thrown around a lot here. Never use “we” in a sentence unless you’re referring to another individual directly. It’s beyond arrogant to assume you have the authority to speak for all others.
Humans are a bunch of individuals though with an incredible amount of diversity. If their claim is biological, it would be helpful to pin down more precisely what they mean, because right now it's pretty vague. I'm dubious that there's a rigorous claim here though because pretty much every time I've seen a claim like this before it's essentially just protection of one's personal beliefs about psychology without more of a basis than assumption that their personal experience is universal, which is what the comment you're responding to is alluding to.
They didn't explicitly say they were trying to speak for all of humanity. I'm responding to the specific interpretation of it directly because as the comment you were responding to pointed out, it was ambiguous.
That’s a stretch and in realm of pure speculation.
A blacksmith is useful for society and for himself. It’s a profession and it’s not anything. OP’s point is that profession compared to chasing dragons. I’m tired of chasing dragons and very happy focusing on my own life.
It also ignores the real stresses imposed by society on ordinary people. The point of an NPC is stasis. The walking signpost gives you the same information, or the weapon shop sells you the same broad sword, whether you take 3 hours or 203 hours to get to that point in the game. The NPC has no inner life; it’s code that only exists when it is doing a job.
In the real world, stasis gets you killed. Someone is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars (maybe millions) to find out if you can be made to pay more in rent, accept higher air fares or hotel fees, work longer hours, or accept lower wages. You can’t choose not to be part of the war. You either fight and accept intolerable stress, or you don’t fight and you still accept intolerable stress.
a low stress tolerance and a highly sensitized stress reaction can often look the same. If someone is hurt repeatedly in the same way, they will react when a stimuli that reminds them of it comes near. Similarly, people who are constantly stressed out often develop things like "learned helplessness", where they are incapable of solving their problems because they've failed, been rejected, or told no so many times that they stop trying.
These are the cultural projections previous western generations were built upon. My reading is that that is what’s happening, that is why they are so predominant.
It appears obvious to me that there is a hegemonic world order that is more culturally western oriented that has driven globalisation. Your mileage appears to vary.
none of them specifically, but something they share on a different level.
life is measured by individual achievement, self-actualization through work, being ordinary is failure as you're supposed to present. none of those cultures differ much on that, though maybe on how much you're allowed to express preferences vs. that.
why does this thread read as escapism to so many? because it's a cultural norm people are not aware of, and it gets violated.
>be an npc. drive a boring car—who gives a fuck? have a boring job. do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to.
Obviously. People have reasons for buying cool cars or socializing after work. But if you don't have a reason to do something aside from a vague idea of "this is just what people do", then doing it anyway would be considered NPC behavior. You're just blindly following programming without even understanding the purpose of that behavior.
Instead of striving to shut your brain off, you should strive to actually use it. Think about what desires people have that cause them to take those actions. List them out. Do any of those desires apply to you? If not, then go ahead and stay home.
I think NPC is the wrong terminology here - everyone should be the main character in their life - to have meaning and agency. But I think the problem arises in how 'main character' is defined and expressed - having the idea that you're supposed to 'do great things' and live this larger-than-life, life.
You don't have to save all the rhinos, defeat every poverty, slay every social cause or overthrow every tyranny. If anything it's arrogance to assume you can, or even should - that your specific brand of saving anything is even correct.
If you look at most people that do well for themselves and have good lives, they live narrow focused lives in domains they care about. They're very much the main characters of their own lives, but also recognize there are other characters running around doing their own things as well.
I think using the term NPC would be more apt if you're referring to someone that's purely on autopilot and not making any effort to ensure that they're leading a life that is meaningful to them.
Doing the things you care about instead of the things you are induced to care about, that is something I agree with. However, what is there to live for, if I am strictly unaffected by the world around me?
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 30.5 ms ] threadTo the extent that this post is meant to be inspiring, it only works if you're an NPC in a static world that has no real consequences - where you actually can live your life in a static loop because nothing will change.
When the metaphorical dragon comes to burn down your village, are you going to shrug and go back to looping your hammer_nail_03 animation?
viewing npc as a category of person is inherently an ego driven, narcissistic way of looking at things. It is a viewpoint that lacks a theory of mind.
This essay implicitly supposes that the npc has a mind + motivations and that those motivations are more important to the npc than the player character. I'd extend it to say that if you are an npc you are a player character; you're just in a different game. Village Blacksmith Simulator, where you make horshoes, fend off pickpockets and sometimes a hero's dragon fight flattens your shop and you start over.
The flaw is assuming the player character is always the same.
It's a great insult, because it is usually used to describe someone whose viewpoint is basically a brainwashed and braindead pre-programmed one (either through upbringing or other things) and clearly demonstrating a lack of self-conscious critical thought.
Your life isn't scripted. If have the option to not ignore the dragon. You can work with your town to setup a watch and places to flee to when the dragon is coming (even if only 50% make it that is an improvement). You can as a town fund adventures to kill the dragon. You can move to a town where there are no dragons. There are probably other options that I haven't thought of.
You should not ignore politics. You need to understand the trade offs. You should plan for what is happening. Russia is at war with Ukraine - things like that can happen to you as well. You should understand enough to have an informed decision on how much to prepare... Maybe you need to build a bomb shelter, maybe not, but you should know in time to build one.
Which is part of my point. Don't live alone. You live in a community of people. You need to engage with your community to prepare for that dragon.
That doesn't mean don't go play with your kids or whatever. Do that too. But also prepare for life in ways that you can prepare because you live with other people
For some people, the reality is that this has simply not been possible; and people have died and not been discovered for years precisely because of this[0]. The most extreme example was not being discovered for 42 years[1].
> You need to engage with your community to prepare for that dragon.
The delineating aspect of this is the "it takes a village" moniker. In Ireland, for example, someone can have lived in the same community for 10+ years and still be a blow-in[2]. The reality is: Sometimes, you cannot force the community to engage back with you.
0 - https://www.awesomeinventions.com/people-died-bodies-not-dis...
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Hedviga_Golik
2 - https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/rosita-bola...
You can, in fact, do this. Just because you prefer to be helpless doesn't mean that's the only option.
The blacksmith tasks the protagonist to get a Dragon's Teeth or whatever and pay 100 Golds in return(never played TES, sorry if this isn't a good example). The player has no control over the blacksmith; the blacksmith is in full control of the situation. The blacksmith is an NPC. The protagonist is the player. But then some thinks the blacksmith must be the player, I suppose. The fact that this sometimes seem to happen almost puzzles me.
Probably not totally relevant, but a several years ago I was out for one of my best friend's very low-key bachelor party (just a few friends/family members bar-hopping, no strip clubs). We went to a bar that was recommended by one of us and the dude who greeted us was so insanely charismatic that I assumed he was someone my buddy knew and was this later joiner to the party or something. I asked my friend, "Do you know this guy?" and, you kinda have to know his humour, but he replied, "No, he's an NPC." He was not insulting the guy (in fact I think he may have even said "non-playable character" in full) just saying, "Nope, not with us," and ya... I laughed... like, really hard. Needed recovery time.
I don't know the point I'm trying to make.
That made chuckle! Not to the point of needing recovery time, but still. Thank you for sharing the story. I can’t help you get to the point you were looking for, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
If the guy was incredibly charismatic and managed to sort of join the group despite lacking a properly developed backstory, maybe he was a DMPC (dungeon master player character).
Just live your life however you want, you only get one, and it’ll be brief.
To care about the world and the people in it is human. To numb yourself to that is self-deception, and to advocate for that is harmful.
Justify that
We don't live in a democracy. We live in plutocracy where people with capital and influence have an outsized influence on policy.
They're playing their own game, whatever has meaning to them.
In the actual game, NPCs do care, in fact they often won't shut up about it. They just don't let it affect their lives, which is the point the OP is making.
> When the metaphorical dragon comes to burn down your village, are you going to shrug and go back to looping your hammer_nail_03 animation?
When such a disaster strikes a village those are often scripted events that do change the loops of the NPCs previously inhabiting the village. They are programmed to adapt to a new cycle of rebuilding the village or even assisting the main character in dealing with the threat.
It's funny that the assumption is the NPCs don't care about anything that happens in the world when there are games with NPCs engaging in entire rebellions against their oppressors. It's just that NPCs don't care beyond their immediate objectives being fulfilled. Once the rebellion succeeds and the tyrant is overthrown most of them just settle back into their loop.
“Make it your goal to life a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others.”
One day, NPCs will wake up and give a fuck about other people.
Until then, they're just here to keep feeding the oppression machines.
Optimistic take. The PCs are very good at convincing the NPCs that nothing they do can matter. Keep 'em poor, keep 'em sick, keep 'em stupid, control the women and all that.
Wtf have we been playing TTRPGs for if not to prepare for exactly this?
You can do and be absolutely anything or anyone you want. Just gotta bear the consequences and that’s it.
Wanna live a homely life surrounded by loved ones? Go do it! Nobody is stopping you. Wanna galivant around the world having adventures with no roots? You can!
And when you meet a local npc bartender on your adventures, you’re just another rando tourist npc. It’s great
"We're all someone else's NPC".
Life’s funny that way. You can’t predict what an individual will do and yet predicting what a crowd will do is so easy we have entire engineering and social disciplines based on manipulating crowd behavior.
https://signalundefied.bearblog.dev/everything/
https://signalundefied.bearblog.dev/is-it-meaningless-to-apo...
The blacksmith from Skyrim is a great example because along comes a player, puts a bucket on your head and steals all your stuff without any complaints.
The truth is that after the brief initial relief of excusing yourself from being anything at all, you'll end up in a deep depression. It's a naive and immature fantasy.
Remove all electronics from your life, they are a constant nervous system stimulator that has prevented you from truly relaxing into a state of repair. Then introduce responsibilities into your life, start small. We are wired to be needed, wanted, useful, accountable, social. You're just stressed out.
Maybe, but that could also be because of autism, trauma or some other disability
And maybe the author just wants to feel heard, get others to comment on their experiences, be vulnerable in public (which btw can be pretty stressful too), and connect with their community
Yeah.
I burned out. I was emotionally wrecked. I spent two years living what this piece described as the "npc life". Then... one day I sat down at my computer and started playing. Like when I was a kid. Not video games, but just... seeing what I could make it do. Like the old days.
I rediscovered the joy I'd lost and then let myself get back into working. It's been wonderful. The two years were necessary, but they weren't good in and of themselves. I was just a person who needed rest.
I hope the author of this piece is able to be an "npc" for a while. And I hope it gives them what they need.
When AI eventually takes nearly ALL jobs, that will be a quite difficult thing.
That’s a stretch and in realm of pure speculation.
A blacksmith is useful for society and for himself. It’s a profession and it’s not anything. OP’s point is that profession compared to chasing dragons. I’m tired of chasing dragons and very happy focusing on my own life.
In the real world, stasis gets you killed. Someone is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars (maybe millions) to find out if you can be made to pay more in rent, accept higher air fares or hotel fees, work longer hours, or accept lower wages. You can’t choose not to be part of the war. You either fight and accept intolerable stress, or you don’t fight and you still accept intolerable stress.
So status quo lol?
> needed
If I died today, I wouldn't even get a slack memo "we miss anal_reactor". Modern economy proved that humans are totally fungible.
> wanted
I have a dream that someone would take me on a date. But I understand it's just a silly fantasy.
> useful
I spent last two years at work doing projects that went nowhere because my manager is deaf to feedback.
> accountable
What is that even supposed to mean? If I don't pay taxes I'll go to jail.
> social
I tried inviting a neighbor for a beer. Didn't work.
I can't tell what's happening here...
Did we all extract a different conclusion/meaning from the piece?
Did a bunch of people discover the same new word recently, and are learning to use it?
Did people not read the full post perhaps, and jumped to conclusions?
I don't think the author is advocating or engaging in escapism here... Did I misunderstand the post?
By that you mean American? Or German? Or French? Or Nordic? They were very different a generation ago.
Or like the fascist subculture? The pro-Russian one? The liberal one?
life is measured by individual achievement, self-actualization through work, being ordinary is failure as you're supposed to present. none of those cultures differ much on that, though maybe on how much you're allowed to express preferences vs. that.
why does this thread read as escapism to so many? because it's a cultural norm people are not aware of, and it gets violated.
That is very American, even specifically American right wing masculinity point of view. Not generalized western one.
> none of those cultures differ much on that, though maybe on how much you're allowed to express preferences vs. that.
Oh yeah, they do differ on that exact point by a lot.
In the US, if you are not part of the Epstein class. You are the help. Or in this author’s pose, "an NPC."
https://theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfilling...
Obviously. People have reasons for buying cool cars or socializing after work. But if you don't have a reason to do something aside from a vague idea of "this is just what people do", then doing it anyway would be considered NPC behavior. You're just blindly following programming without even understanding the purpose of that behavior.
Instead of striving to shut your brain off, you should strive to actually use it. Think about what desires people have that cause them to take those actions. List them out. Do any of those desires apply to you? If not, then go ahead and stay home.
You don't have to save all the rhinos, defeat every poverty, slay every social cause or overthrow every tyranny. If anything it's arrogance to assume you can, or even should - that your specific brand of saving anything is even correct.
If you look at most people that do well for themselves and have good lives, they live narrow focused lives in domains they care about. They're very much the main characters of their own lives, but also recognize there are other characters running around doing their own things as well.
I think using the term NPC would be more apt if you're referring to someone that's purely on autopilot and not making any effort to ensure that they're leading a life that is meaningful to them.
1. Someone whose life choices can either defeat every poverty or bring the downfall of humankind - Main characters
2. Someone whose actions are in a loop - NPC
3. Someone whose actions are in a loop but we choose to - NPC-by-choice
Is this terminology better? Correct me if I'm wrong!
you don't know what you got (til it's gone)