Make Ignoring Great Again

On Non-Playable Characters, Red Herrings, and the lowest effort path out of our collective trap

The only thing more unnecessary than a stranger’s opinion on the internet is a thinkpiece about the irrelevance of strangers’ opinions on the internet. Guess what my latest IndyStar column is!

One of the more liberating realizations for a well-adjusted adult human is that you are, for the most part, invisible to other people. Sure, someone might notice if you’re doing something odd, but once you’re out of their frame, you are completely and permanently forgotten.

That realization makes it easier to move through public spaces. In airports, crowds, or city streets, you are free to live, laugh, love, dance like no one’s watching, or embrace any other inspirational poster slogans, because you know that no one is really paying attention.

Video games offer a helpful metaphor for this: the “non-playable character,” or NPC. NPCs are the figures who fill out the background of the game world. They might interact briefly with the main character, but their purpose is limited, and once it’s fulfilled, they fade back into the scenery until needed again.

Online, “NPC” has been twisted into an insult, meant to imply that most people are brainless drones, shuffling along predictably while the few “main characters” see reality clearly and shape the action.

Like so much on the internet, though, the idea of NPC as an insult gets it exactly wrong. We are all the main characters in our own stories, but to most other people, we are passing background figures, barely noticed and quickly forgotten. That’s how human brains and spirits are able to process a spectacularly complicated world. The only people we have the capacity to devote more than a passing thought to are the ones closest to us: family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, co-congregants, club members, and sure, the occasional solitary nemesis.

Evolutionary psychology calls this the “rule of 150”: throughout history, clans tended to split once they reached that size, which seems to be the human limit for keeping track of real, non-NPC relationships. Industrial psychology has found the same. Companies grow much differently once they pass 150, relying more on hierarchy and bureaucracy to manage interpersonal dynamics, because no person can.

Sure, people have always crossed paths with strangers, sometimes even sharing small talk or other pleasant exchanges. Many people, especially under the influence of intoxicants, have cared far too much about what strangers think and made poor decisions as a result. But until very recently, those encounters were bounded by their time and place. Once they were over, the strangers involved receded into the background hum, and rarely ever gave each other a passing thought.

Until now.

This has been a violent summer in our country. The violence itself is awful, and just as disturbing is what happens on the internet immediately after. Partisans on all sides react in real time to bits of information about the aggressors, spin the things they find, and then go looking for people to dunk on. We’ve all seen it. People find and circulate screenshots of posts from those they disagree with. Some are vile and hypocritical; most are just clumsy. Almost all are from people we don’t know, and would have no reason to know, except that they happened to say something stupid online. Or, just as likely, they are Russian or Chinese bots.

Cue the algorithmic outrage machine, which starts cherry-picking the most extreme examples and filtering them through our personalized echo chambers. We start to hate harder, and to hate more. More dangerously, we start to hate righteously. We find fellow travelers for our hate, and the hate spirals, grows, and metastasizes until we can’t see past it anymore.

All of it over people who, in the physical world, would never occupy more than a fleeting thought.

I fell into this trap just a couple of weeks ago.

It was a gorgeous day. I dropped my daughter off to hurry to soccer practice, parked, and reflexively pulled up Twitter. Ten minutes vanished as I doomscrolled through an argument between an anonymous anti-Indian racist and his mostly anonymous critics, blood pressure rising, chest tightening, breath constricting. Soon I was anxious and despondent about the state of the world and the future my kids will inherit.

Then I caught myself: What the hell are you doing? I put down the phone, got out of the car, and went to watch my daughter practice. My mood improved instantly.

In mysteries, a red herring is a clue that looks probative, but ultimately proves irrelevant. It misleads because it has the illusion of importance. The inner monologue of strangers, captured in one or five or fifty or even 100 stupid posts, is a red herring in our attempt to make sense of the world. It feels illuminating, but in the end, tells us almost nothing, other than that sometimes people think and say stupid things.

We’re often told to love our fellow man, but that’s a tall order. Perhaps the healthier first step is simply to ignore most of our fellow men. Let them remain NPCs, as they always have been. Save your love, energy, and attention for the people who actually matter in your story. I’ll gladly be an NPC in your game if you’ll agree to be one in mine.

We weren’t meant to witness arguments between idiots and strangers. We were meant to sit outside on a beautiful day and watch and listen to our children play a game.

Here’s to chasing more of the latter.