Millions of gamers use the term NPC every day, but many people still do not know what it actually means. Discover the full story behind this widely used gaming word.

Last week, The New York Times published a piece about an insular 4chan meme that had started to bleed over into political Twitter. At the time, NPC — an acronym for the gaming term “non-playable ...

From time to time, and especially if you’re a fan of science fiction, you may have had the thought that nobody around you is actually real. That sentiment has taken root in anti-progressive parts of ...

A meme campaign designed to troll liberals as “nonplayable characters” — a term borrowed from video game lingo — prompted Twitter to suspend roughly 1,500 accounts for engaging in “coordinated ...

Last week, a trolling campaign organized by right-wing internet users spilled over onto Twitter. The campaign, which was born in the fever swamps of 4chan and Reddit message boards, involved creating ...

In general, calling someone an “NPC” is a way to tell a person that they lack original thinking skills, or more simply, that their opinion doesn't matter to you—but the term didn't start out that way.