I saw this story circulating everywhere for the past week plus, but I didn’t have any plans of covering it until recently. You see, dumb trends on TikTok are nothing new and typically don’t have any crossover into the world of doujins and sex. Usually it’s more common to hear about the latest “jump off a boat and die” challenge where someone young and impressionable does exactly that. However, a fresh trend took the world by storm recently as TikTokker PinkyDoll has single-handedly popularized a style of livestreaming on the platform: the NPC stream. I’d explain it to you, but why bother when you can see for yourself. Go on, take a peak below. Don’t worry, it won’t take you the entire hour to get the idea. In fact twenty seconds or less should suffice.

Yep. That’s it. It’s just her saying the same emotes over and over again for hours on end. This my friends is the NPC trend, and streamers across the world have been trying to join in on her success. Of course every boomer with a podcast has also chimed in to suggest this is what TikTok has done to the younger generation’s attention span. It reduced their interest to a measly low bar that people will watch some girl say the same shit over and over. And for once… I’m at a loss on why this even exists. Usually TikTok trends are stupid, rude, pathetic, or all of the above, but at the very least I understand them. Do an insane challenge, and you might become famous and get tons of social points! Eat a “forbidden” food and by god, you may be the coolest guy at the lunch table the next day. But this… this NPC stuff… I actually can’t fathom why this is happening or who thinks donating money to hear someone say “gang gang” is money well spent. At this point I’ve only heard one theory to explain it that makes any sense, and people are arguing that this is capitalizing on a control kink. These days everyone has a parasocial relationship with their favorite internet personalities and streamers, and this content lets people control someone they’re watching, even if only for a few seconds, and make them do a specific task live in front of a ton of people. To me that level of predetermined control just isn’t sexy at all, and certainly not worth losing money for. Obviously there are enough people who ARE enjoying these to start a whole damn movement though so maybe I’m simply not predisposed to like the kink. 

The sexual gratification of control angle is the only one I’ve encountered so far that could explain why the fuck this trend was able to grow and be established in the first place. Of course PinkyDoll has done the groundwork to make this shit big, but it’s incredibly surprising to me a market for this even existed in the first place. Are you guys familiar with the NPC trend? Do you think it appeals to a control kink? Would you ever spend money to tell someone to do something online? Gang gang, Yes yes yes, and ice cream emote your way to fame in the comments below!