Do you ever feel like a Basique Bitch at the hands of a merciless algorithm that dictates your identity? Do you lay awake at night, pondering the “what ifs”?
What if we never got on social media? What if it didn’t exist? What would we all wear? What would we think? Would we have had a chance at individuality, true individuality, not “I wore something edgy I saw on Pinterest and made it my whole aesthetic with the thousands of other girls who did it before me”?
Call this number and we’ll offer you NPC support and end those indictments for good!
But seriously. This is a new kind of creeping fear that we’re being programmed without noticing. And that one day the mask will slip, and we’ll be revealed as pure algorithm outputs with a pulse.
It’s NPC anxiety. It sounds dramatic, sure. But look around.
Scroll any platform and you’ll see it: people violently curating their opinions, their tastes, their personalities like they’re dodging enemy fire. And in a way, they are. Because we live in a digital environment where everything ~ literally everything ~ is nudging us.
Platforms study our behaviour with forensic precision. Algorithms decide what we see before we see it. Behavioural science is built directly into the user interface. Every swipe, click, linger, and scroll is another data point in a system that’s designed to influence us more efficiently tomorrow.
And this isn’t just a Gen Z thing. It’s an everyone thing, the difference is that Gen Z grew up in it. They never really lived a pre-algorithm life. They were born inside the machine, so they’re hyper-conscious of how the machine works on them. Older generations feel the manipulation but can’t always articulate it; Gen Z can diagnose it. That's why we always hear this slightly lazy marketing narrative that “Gen Z hates ads.”
No, Gen Z is just the first cohort raised with a constant awareness that everything is trying to shape them. They feel the programming in real time.
So when people talk about “marketing resistance”, it’s not just ad fatigue or cynicism. It’s self-preservation and identity protection.
This is where NPC anxiety shows up in the culture. The worst thing you can be today is “basic” and unoriginal. Someone pre-loaded with corporate-approved opinions and aesthetics. The algorithm has made us painfully aware of how copy-paste we are. One wrong trend adoption and boom: you’re exposed as an NPC. You’re not curating yourself; you’re being curated tf out of.
Which is why trends like “propaganda I’m not falling for” go viral. It’s essentially collective resistance performance art. It’s saying, “I see the puppet strings. I won’t dance”.
Whether or not people actually resist is another story, but the performance of agency is crucial. It’s reputation management for your soul.
And this is also why so many of Gen Z want to be influencers or creators. We don’t frame it like this, but the psychological appeal of influencing is simple: If you’re an influencer, you’re the one exerting influence, not receiving it. You become the programmer, not the programmed. A creator of taste, culture, language, aesthetic. A node of power in a network designed to disempower individuals.
Influencers represent the fantasy of escaping NPC-hood. So when brands march into this environment and try to behave like humans with quippy comments, parasocial banter, “relatable” memes etc, they’re doing the exact thing people are trying to escape. They turn every last sliver of organic human joy into a brand touchpoint. They colonise the spaces where people are trying desperately to feel like themselves.
It doesn’t feel charming. It feels invasive. A corporation cosplaying as your bestie? Get out of my DMs. Get out of my jokes. Get out of the cultural petri dish we’re trying to grow some individuality in.
Marketing resistance didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the cultural immune system reacting to decades of manipulation dressed as connection. People don’t want brands to be their friends. They want brands to respect their agency. Hence the resistance to doing so.
So what does good marketing look like in that case?
It’s clear, transparent, and creatively confident. It doesn’t disguise selling as “vibes". It doesn’t LARP as a human. It doesn’t prey on insecurities or steal the aesthetics of emerging culture for clout.
It recognises that people today are terrified of losing themselves in the infinite scroll, and that respect is more persuasive than manipulation.
Because here’s the final plot twist:
If you treat your audience like NPCs, they will treat you like a scam. But if you treat them like humans with full agency? Well, why don’t you try and find out.
Because really, we can handle being sold sh*t we don’t need. But the line is well and truly drawn at being programmed, come on now.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
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