One of the more amusing ironies I’ve witnessed since the day I hopped back on Twitter in early 2023 after 5 years away is:
Everyone accuses everyone else they disagree with of being an NPC.
i.e., non-player character
Someone who has no independent thought, just follows the crowd, parrots the corporate media and “experts” as if that makes them learned (often the opposite), and has no real individuality or critical thinking despite claiming to. And yet a lot of the same people on twitter barking “NPC!” at each other — in lockstep unison — often use the exact same language and metaphors and buzz words making them all sound exactly alike.
Here are just a few of my favorites:
* Few
* Next level
* Maxxing
* Based
* IYKYK
* Tell me you ___without telling me you ___
* Can confirm
* Many such cases
* Built different
* Fight me
* AF
* Lesson there
* Your ancestors would be ashamed
* Anon
* Make it make sense
* Woke up and chose violence
* LFG
* Banger
* Skill issue
* You___, I ____. We are not the same.
* Hot take
* Unpopular opinion
* NGMI
* Never forget what they took from you
* You don’t hate the media enough
* I’m never deleting this app
* I think about this a lot
* Hope this helps
* Raw dogging
* *checks notes*
There are many more.
And there is certainly nothing wrong with using any of the above, by the way. I am not even mocking it. Frankly, I am sure I have used at least a few of them myself at some point. I mostly just have a strange fascination with observing the hierarchical effect Twitter has with its current crop of influencers and their followers. I’ve even contributed a few terms of of my own to the mix that I reuse like the word “goo-roo” I invented waaaay back in 2009.
I see everyone using it, all over the place, and it pleases me to see it.
It’s one of the few cookies I’ve added to the cookie jar of knowledge of the direct response industry. Although it’s admittedly probably more of a crumb than a cookie. And very insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but I will take what I can get..
So I am just a guilty of this happening as anyone probably.
Few.
All right enough.
I actually do have a copywriting point to this.
Unfortunately, the copywriting community as a whole are mostly NPCs from what I can tell. Total conformist goo-roo fanboy and fangirl types. It’s one reason I started disassociating from the copywriter community back in 2018. Copywriters are supposed to be rebels, and outside-the-box thinkers. But all they do is parrot the same, tired lines to every question, thought, or idea — like “test!” or “quit guessing!” or “you can’t measure what you don’t track!” and other banalities that, while not totally false, are not totally true either, in as much as they simply are not relevant to more and more online marketers who have smaller lists and/or audiences.
I am sure it all sounds good in a listicle though, probably.
Do what you want with that info, or do nothing with it.
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Ben Settle
