The NPC meme died far too quickly. A small subset of man throughout every era has recognized that he is among people who seem to lack something. People who aren't quite "real", like automatons, people who are almost like a mirage. The Jewish Rabbis recognized this obviously, hence why the Goyim are "cattle", or "raw material" which is the thinking man's responsibility to mold, shape, organize, use and abuse. They are like golem. It is also a matter of historical record that less than 10% of a population actually participates in revolutions, civil wars, large political shifts. Among them, the bulk of the behavior of the whole often stems from even fewer, far less than 1%. This truth can be found at every level of organization, even our own cells behave this way. Most tissues have cells which come to act like "pacemakers", the others tune to it, and thus the whole group behaves like coupled oscillators. Thus, activism of most forms can be seen as borderline inert. They will never begin to oscillate with you. They will always remain trauma bonded to their present masters, the established pacemaker.

There are a number of ways to explain this. Without going into "consciousness" or anything metaphysical, I recently found an interesting notion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_disintegration

Although it remains to be seen whether this applies to NPCs or not. They may not have the potential for this kind of inner development, so it doesn't solve the ontological dilemma of the NPC.