Worth a dive into. It reminds me of the line "The end won't be for everyone".
If NPC theory has any merit to it, it explain near perfectly why most people just can't seem to be able to grasp what you've been telling them about the system.
That blank look, the immediate rejection, the programmed responses, the ability to maintain through control grids you and I find unbearable.
There is tons of research on it and it's very, very intriguing stuff.
I think this is kind of true, but only in terms of thinking about what reality is to begin with. We learn about the world through our experience, and it takes a great leap to believe something outside of our personal experience. If one never thinks outside the box they want us to stay in, reality is just the control grid.
The first step is a personal journey of awakening. Difficult to start that journey when the control grid grips one early with poisons in every direction including through language itself. I do not think the people who do not see the cage are NPCs. I think they are suffering without knowing. I also think that once the control grid fails, namely the censorship, then awakening will happen quickly despite all the poisons stunting personal growth. Then we can collectively stop poisoning ourselves.
There are probably greater evils in this world, but censorship of free thought and expression tops the list for me personally. We should have a massive town square to bounce ideas around with our current technology, but the control grid has stealthily and not so stealthily destroyed this.