Main Character Syndrome: The Billionaire Quest for Happiness

There is a disease in America. One that has festered in Silicone Valley and gradually metastasized to the broader United states, infiltrating our political leadership. A particular big player, Elon Musk, loves to use memes and flex his gaming ‘skills’ to try and relate to his NPCs (you know the term: non-playable character). That’s right, this is how he refers to you and I: as a gaming term that labels us as mindless and predictable with no agency or contribution to the main storyline or ending. As the plot progresses, the American public is viewed as nothing more than the rendered forests in Skyrim or a villager in Kakariko tilling the earth and offering the occasional side quest.

In an episode called ‘The Republican Party’s NPC Problem — and Ours’, Ezra Klein called out this narcissistic viewpoint by identifying the true NPCs. The only non-playable characters in this story are Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Presidential Cabinet. They do not challenge the abuse of power or uphold their oath to defend the constitution. As DOGE infiltrates each government agency with no oversight or transparency, as lies are spewed and laws are broken, those who swore to serve the American people are nothing more than NPCs. One must wonder what unspoken promises were made to sell one's soul to destroy our freedom, nation, and democracy.

But I digress. The true disease that has taken hold of these billionaires is Main Character Syndrome. The main character hoards and consumes all resources, kills without thought or regard, and destroys obstacles in their path. Through their hubris and warped reality, the billionaire class believe themselves to be the only real characters in the game, as if we are in some simulated existence. It brought me back to Horizon Zero Dawn, and I reflected back to where it all began: Ted Faro.

I played Horizon Zero Dawn in late 2017, when I believed the tech industry was doing ‘good’ in the world. When the motto for Google was, ‘Don’t Be Evil.’  When Elon Musk believed that electric vehicles would pivot us away from fossil fuels in a world of finite resources. A Tweet from Musk in 2018 stated: 

“We know we'll run out of dead dinosaurs to mine for fuel & have to use sustainable energy eventually, so why not go renewable now & avoid increasing risk of climate catastrophe?”

As the plot unfolded in Horizon Zero Dawn, I was drawn to Ted Faro’s character. Hidden in ancient texts and encrypted holograms, he was the reason these killer robot dinosaurs existed. He was the reason humanity went extinct. But Elon Musk? Certainly a ‘good’ person, I mused. He was doing good for humanity. Neuralink, Tesla, SpaceX…it was all about progressing and elevating the human race. I admired Musk at the time. I watched the interviews and invested in his companies. I knew that Earth’s resources were limited, and he would lead us into a renewable future and allow us to evolve as a species with AI.

I was naive.

The similarities between Elon and Ted Faro were striking to me. What if Elon Musk turned evil? What if his companies were used solely for money and power? What if he lacked the foresight to the future of AI? No…I was being paranoid. The Tesla co-founder had stated in multiple interviews the danger of AI, calling for a pause on development, dangers of mass job displacement, and warning on the destruction of human civilization.

Fast forward.

There has been no call to pause, and no way to slow the development of AI. There have been no regulations, and investors pour money into stocks like Palantir and Nvidia. Chatbots like Gemini, DeepSeek, and ChatGPT can already outperform on data processing and analysis, pattern recognition, and generating text. If I wasn’t such an inexperienced writer, you may not be able to tell that this entire thing wasn’t written by ChatGPT.

Elon now sits at the head of the government, next to the president as an unelected bureaucrat. His insecurities and vindictiveness have blossomed like a fungal headed Clicker from The Last of Us. In a futile pursuit of happiness, he usurps power. Devoid of human empathy, utterly careless about the consequences of his actions, consumed by greed and with the mentality of a petulant teenager. A true Ted Faro to the bone.

Ted Faro also suffered Main Character Syndrome. He believed himself above rules and regulations as he built an empire known as FAS: Faro Automated Solutions. Similar to Elon, he was the owner and chairman of this robotics and tech empire. A college dropout driven to pursue his career, he initially used his tech to do good. Project Firebreak as an example, stabilized the super volcano under Yellowstone National Park. 

But it’s never enough to do good when you amass so much fame and wealth. Main Character Syndrome spreads like a fungus, tendrils reaching to suffocate whatever life remains. In a world that now feels small and limited, they reach for power. Soon Faro involved himself with the government, as Elon Musk has. Ted Faro expanded his empire to the military, which exploded his wealth exponentially, to become the wealthiest man in the world.

See the similarities yet? Richest man, government subsidies, political power, zero oversight. What could go wrong?

Faro’s AI military robots called Chariot, were deployed to military zones. He arrogantly instructed his programers to remove capability for backdoor access. Rogue killer robots, an irrational fear that has already seeped into my subconscious. Currently, there exists an AI robot dog, its initial purpose to seek and disarm landmines. Now, these robotic dogs have an attachment on their back for a rifle. Debate on its military use has been ongoing. The terrifying episode ‘Metalhead’ from Black Mirror poses similar themes, and no longer feels like science fiction. 

Just as Musk believed fossil fuels to be archaic and obsolete, Faro did as well. His military robots were programed to convert organic matter to fuel, in a biomatter conversion process. Any organic matter. Trees, grass, animals, or humans.

A movement among the technofascists has been led in part by self-proclaimed philosopher, Curtis Yarvin. This is not another tangent: Yarvin’s ideals laid out in his book ‘The Dark Enlightenment" is revered by top tech billionaires. A playbook for Project 2025 and sideline players such as Paypal’s co-founder Theil, Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, and Mosiac’s Marc Andreessen, Yarvin is the idol worshiped by those infected with main character sickness. 

Yarvin believes democracy and freedom cannot coexist. The libertarian viewpoints that poison America’s elite believe there should be no regulations or restrictions. This world is the the main character’s playground, and we are an obstacle to their true freedom. Yarvin proposed that the unproductive people of society could be converted into biodiesel. No joke. 

“The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass. However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide.”

In cult-like admiration, the billionaires plan to live out their adolescent fan-fiction in a reality where they rule and own their own network states. Democracy and American people will be fat cut from the bone, tossed to the hypothetical Horizon Zero Dawn Chariot robots. 

Ted Faro’s robot army stopped responding to commands. He defensively claimed losing control of his AI robotic military was an accident, even though he had programmed it with no backdoor access. He looked above himself to a much smarter and more experienced scientist, Elisabet Sobeck. Her findings were dismal. Much like a virus, the plague spread like wildfire, defaulting to the emergency fuel protocol to use organic matter as biofuel. Humanity would be doomed. The Chariot swarms infected each other and multiplied, consuming everything in their wake.

The NPC Elisabet Sobeck sacrificed herself to save humanity. She developed the robot dinosaurs we see in the beginning of the game, with the purpose to terraform a new Earth. She seals away all of humanities knowledge in APOLLO, hoping one day clones of humanity can rediscover the lost history and reclaim technological advances. Cue: Aloy.

Whatever end of days lie ahead for humanity, we can be certain the billionaire class will hide away in their bunkers, just as Ted Faro had, as the rest of us perish. Main Character Syndrome has made these men delusional and disconnected from reality, believing only they are capable of running civilization. We the people…are expendable. 

What once felt like a beacon of hope for humanity in the tech industry has proven to be an overwhelming disappointment. I do not want a Musk or Faro to lead humanity to its demise, but this isn’t a Marvel movie and there won’t be some good guy main character to save us. It’s time for the NPCs to reclaim their identity and stand up united against fascism, and defeat the self-proclaimed main character. I will not be an NPC.