TikTok has lost its mind. NPC streaming is an absurdity that sells

“Yes Yes Yes. Mmm ice cream, so good. I feel like a cowgirl. Gang gang. Mmm ice cream, so good. “Yes, yes, yes,” says streamer Pinkydoll in one go. And the video is watched by millions of Internet users without much meaning or value. What’s more, fans pay a fortune to encourage a woman to continue her crazy line of statements every second or less.

This is NPC streaming – the latest trend on TikTok that pushes the boundaries of absurdity by another few notches.

NPC streaming is a hit on TikTok – the world has gone crazy about the trend

NPC (non-player character) is a video game term. It means an independent character who is usually only a background for the adventures of the hero or heroine of the title. NPCs run shops, wander the city streets aimlessly and robotically respond to the player with a few coined phrases.

One of the popular examples of the latter can be found in the game Skyrim, where dozens of characters repeat the same phrase over and over again about the famous “shot in the knee”. However, an identical mechanism has recently started to be used by streamers on TikTok and other social media. Why? It is not entirely clear.

NPC streaming involves extremely simple dialogue with the audience. Viewers offer the streamer virtual items – ice cream, roses, donuts, balloons, hearts or other objects that are displayed on the screen in the form of emoticons.

The leader’s task is to always respond to gifts in the same way and not make mistakes. If the audience gives the streamer 10 ice creams in a row, she must repeat the same phrase ten times. If he gets a rose, a balloon, and then a rose again, he must keep the order.

The devil is in the details. Buying a “virtual gift” costs from a few cents to a few dollars. Teenagers and young adults fooling around can earn quite a bit of money.

28 thousand PLN a day for pretending to be an NPC and eroticism in the background

Pinkydoll, a streamer from Montreal, is considered one of the pioneers of the nonsensical trend on TikTok. It was her clips with “mmm ice cream, so good” that spread on the Internet and caused deep astonishment among Internet users.

As she says, a full day of pretending to be an NPC in a video is quite profitable for her. Even with fairly small donations, she can earn up to $7,000 from each gift with her large audience. Converted to approximately 28 thousand. zlotys.

The streamers don’t say it directly, but their behavior as NPCs makes it quite clear that it’s not about what they say or do… but about what they look like. Pinkydoll, in addition to phrases like from video games, also has specific gestures. She leans towards the camera with a deep cleavage, turns her back and shakes her butt. Another NPC streamer puts on elf ears, puts on heavy makeup and makes various noises, including: slurping. He also makes suggestive faces and sticks out his tongue flirtatiously.

The most popular NPC streamers – Pinkydoll and Cherry Crush – have accounts on a popular website for selling adult material featuring themselves. Some theorize that NPC streams may be some kind of advertisements designed to lead viewers to their sites with edgier content.