>>103629311The NPC thing is silly and is more just an extension of the r/K evolutionary theory, but to answer your question- most people probably DO wish they could be an "NPC."
There are regular threads on /pol/ about people wishing they could reverse their red pill, how they hate what being more observant of the world's politics has done to them. How being more discerning has led them to clash with friends and family over even the pettiest of ideological topics. The same goes for a lot of things, though. Once you begin to scrutinize something regularly, it's very difficult to stop. You almost can't help but judge things based on minor flaws (or what you might perceive as flaws) or other various criteria.
But some people also see the idea of knowledgeable suffering to be better than mindless joy. It's like the whole thing with slow boiling a frog- they have no idea anything bad is happening, so they just sit and "enjoy" the water. Some people would prefer to know and be miserable than to be ignorant and happy.
Think about the Eloi in Time Machine. They live in what's basically a paradise. More than enough food for everyone, they get to do whatever they want all day, and then they go to sleep at night. Then to Morlocks come at night and take some Eloi to eat or whatever. The living Eloi might question their friends' disappearance for a brief time, but they eventually just go back to sucking that dopamine tit dry.
Again, the NPC thing is of course just a silly exaggeration of existing social and evolutionary theories, but the reaction to it does have some merit in psychology. There are a lot of people who just go through the motions in life, while others flip flop and flounder due to hating the endless routine, and they question that routine on personal, social, and psychological levels. It's not that uncommon though, and a person certainly isn't unique for it, but they do "stand out" just by nature of not quite following the general rote motions of life.
