NPC Update Chip

About

NPC Update Chip is an exploitable image of an NPC Wojak having a chip swapped out in its brain. Such memes tend to lean politically conservative and are generally made to illustrate that the strawmen in question are upset about the opposite issue than what they were upset about before by object labeling the red hand and microchip.

Origin

The oldest presence of the image is from 4chan's /pol/ board. On December 26th, 2018,^[1] an anonymous user posted an example showing an NPC Wojak having a clip in their brain labeled "Orange Man leave troops = war bad" changed by CNN to a chip labeled "Orange Man withdraw toops = war good," though their angry expression doesn't change (shown below).

Spread

Over the following years, the image continued seeing use in posts made for political purposes. On March 25th, 2021, Jack Posobiec tweeted^[2] an example of how CNN was altering people's thoughts on the police, gaining over 280 retweets and 1,400 likes in over one year (shown below, left). On April 28th, 2022, Twitter user Sally Mayweather^[3] posted an edit about reactions to Section 230, gaining over 80 retweets and 680 likes (shown below, left).

Some memers have used the template to make less political edits as well. For example, on May 5th, 2022, Vaush tweeted an example about drinking water,^[4] gaining over 680 retweets and 14,000 likes in roughly two weeks (shown below, left). In response, user @JenniferSage^[5] made one about eating lunch, gaining over 610 likes (shown below, right).

Template

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References