Mastodawn

Cory Doctorow Aug 18, 2025

When Elon Musk disagrees with someone, he calls them an "NPC" (non-player character). In video-games, an NPC is a machine-puppeted sprite that engages in predictable movements (think of the ghosts in Pac-Man) and perhaps utters some scripted (or AI-generated) dialog:

https://futurism.com/elon-musk-interviewer-npc

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs

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bm

@pluralistic I think billionaires believe that every single step of technological advancement, throughout all of human history, has been in the service of ignoring other, unreal humans.

Whoever built the first human shelter, clearly, CLEARLY he was the ur-sigma male, the zenith of agency of his day, the Adam from whom all these great men descend from! Whereas the rest of us, all our ideas have been secondhand ever since; the second shelter clearly, CLEARLY was built by the first NPC.