Motorists Said to Be 'Hylic' Automata as Board Compares Notes on Traffic

4CHAN /X/ — An anonymous poster on 4chan's /x/ board has opened a thread inviting fellow readers to share the strange things they have noticed about so-called NPCs on the road. The term, borrowed from video games, is used on the board alongside "hylic" to describe people said to lack an inner life.

The author offered five observations. Cars, he says, never seem dirty, as though freshly rendered in a video game. Drivers, he writes, mostly drive alike and take no care over potholes or fuel. Those on country roads are said to trail a lone driver closely and, should cruise control be engaged, to speed ahead. Pedestrians are said to see them take corners at speeds that would wreck anyone else. Finally, he notes that cars are seldom seen entering or leaving driveways.

Replies were mixed. One poster reported cars that slow at a traffic light and then run the red. Another said strangers nod at him from far across the street, which he takes as scripted behavior. A third claimed that such persons answer certain philosophical questions with the reply that one would not be oneself if one were someone else, which the poster took as proof they cannot grasp a first-person perspective.

A commenter wondered why groceries are so seldom seen being carried from cars, though others countered with the mundane view that shoppers spend only minutes outdoors and often unload in garages. Another contributor proposed that drivers fall into fixed archetypes, each with its own car model. A further poster cautioned that a person of a higher type might merely be playing at being an NPC as part of a larger plan.

Skeptics were numerous. One reader called the thread bait, and another suggested the author update his graphics card. Much of the thread then drifted into a heated quarrel over whether motorists unreasonably despise cyclists, which proved a livelier topic than the metaphysics of traffic. No conclusion was reached.