Main Characters don't share their location at all times

Calling someone an 'NPC' – a 'non-playable character' – is a pretty derogatory thing to do. It suggests that the person doesn't matter in the big scheme of things, that they don't have agency, that they are replaceable.

So I was a bit hesitant reading a recent post by Drew Austin entitled Be Kind to Your Local NPCs. However, I found it to be an interesting and nuanced take on life.

The deep irony at the core of the NPC concept is the deep solipsism to which its usage confesses: The observer is the only candidate for guaranteed personhood, by definition, but if you’re saying it, you can’t help but suspect that some of the NPCs would apply the same label to you.

I also read this a few times to ensure got the full impact of what Austin was saying:

Google Maps reversed the Copernican revolution by geographically re-centering the individual within the universe, a transformation that requires us to have our phones on our person at all times—itself an assumption so reliable by now that Find My Friends can equate the location of a person and their phone without anyone wondering whether the two might occasionally diverge.

I know so many people who share their location at all times with family members. Of course, by doing so, they're sharing their location with tech companies as well. I go out of my way to be the "main character" in my life, and to avoid NPC-dom. One way to do this is to be a bit mysterious, to not share absolutely every aspect of one's life with everyone. And a big part of that is for everyone not to automatically know where you are, what you're doing, and what you're thinking all of the time...

---

Source: kneelingbus.substack.com
Are.na block: ↗
Collection: finds-au723pdfugg