Bill Maher Blasts ‘Incels’ Who Defaced ‘Real Time’ Billboard with NPC Meme

Kevin Winter/Getty Images for PETA/Twitter screenshot: billmaher
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for PETA/Twitter screenshot: billmaher
Justin Caruso

Comedian Bill Maher mocked the “incels” who defaced a promotional billboard for his HBO show Real Time with the “NPC” internet meme Tuesday.

“To those Incels who defaced my billboard, I just want you to know, I will follow you to the gates of your parents’ basement! And thanks for the free publicity, Real Time is back Friday night!” Bill Maher said in a social media post attached to a photo of the altered billboard.

He followed up with another post showing the cleaned up billboard, adding “Oh, look, it got fixed already.”

“Incels” is short for involuntarily celibate, and refers to a mostly online group of men who claim to be unable to have sex with women due to their physical looks. Many incels express their frustration and anger by creating memes on sites like 4chan, Reddit, and other online forums.

The NPC meme, which Maher’s billboard’s was defaced with, is used by many conservatives online who mock liberals as robot-like “non-playable characters.”

As Breitbart News’s Robert Kraychick wrote in October:

The popular NPC meme trend frames its targets as non-player characters (NPCs) who reflexively spout neo-Marxist axioms in response to real-world events. Actual NPCs are computer-controlled characters in video games with limited scripted responses given the parameters of the games in which they appear. For example, NPCs may assign quests to the player in games like Skyrim, or join the player as a companion in Fallout.

Built on the long-running Wojak meme, the NPC meme mocks leftists as expressionless in appearance and bot-like in behavior. The universal standard appearance illustrates the left’s political homogeneity.

Maher’s show will return for 2019 this Friday. Over the course of 2018, he delighted his liberal audience with frequent attacks on President Trump and his supporters. In June, he openly wished for a recession as it would help get Trump out of office sooner.

“That’s my question — I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point, and by the way, I’m hoping for it because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy,” the HBO funny man said.

“So please, bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people but it’s either root for a recession, or you lose your democracy.”

The 62-year-old also donated $1 million to help elect Democrats in the midterm elections.

Since the New Year, the former Politically Incorrect host has already gone after the president’s supporters, publicly saying that it is “so hard” for him not to call them stupid.

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