Torment Nexus

Confirmed 190,449

Part of a series on Catchphrases. [View Related Entries]

About

Torment Nexus is a trope of creating a product that was originally described in fiction as something that for the benefit of humanity should never be created. Spawned by a viral tweet, the catchphrase "Don't Create the Torment Nexus" has been used to describe such occurrences. Examples include MoviePass' eye-tracking technology, similar to a Black Mirror episode, and Netflix's Squid Game reality show, based on a show of the same name that was intended as a commentary on capitalism and human exploitation.

Origin

On November 8th, 2021, two weeks following Meta presenting their metaverse vision at Meta Connect 2021, Twitter^[1] user @AlexBlechman made a humorous tweet in which he described a tech company blindly creating Torment Nexus from a sci-fi novel called Don't Create the Torment Nexus. The tweet gained over 35,000 retweets and 120,800 likes in seven months (shown below).

Spread

The post by AlexBlechman received viral spread through reposts on other social media in the following weeks. For example, on November 22nd, 2021, Redditor CalibanDrive reposted it to the /r/ABoringDystopia^[2] subreddit, where it gained over 15,800 upvotes in seven months. A repost to the /r/Cyberpunk^[3] subreddit made on January 22nd, 2022, received over 10,300 upvotes in five months.

Following the tweet, the phrases "Torment Nexus," "Don't create the Torment Nexus" and variations achieved virality as a comment on news of various perceivably dystopian technologies being developed, similar to the Man-Made Horrors Beyond My Comprehension meme. For example, on February 13th, 2022, Twitter^[4] user @ThomasPortz replied with a screenshot of the Torment Nexus tweet to the news of MoviePass intending to track people's eyes through cameras while they watch ads, similar to a scene from a Black Mirror episode. The tweet gained over 360 retweets and 4,000 likes in four months (shown below, left).

On June 14th, 2022, after Netflix announced the development of a reality TV show based on its hit survival drama Squid Game, multiple tweets bringing up the Torment Nexus trope were made. For example, a tweet^[5] by Twitter user @NerdyChineseBoy (shown below, left) gained 10,400 retweets and 60,000 likes in less than 24 hours, and a tweet^[6] by @blockwonkel received over 190 retweets and 1,000 likes in a similar timeframe (shown below, center).

You May Live To See Man-Made Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension

You May Live to See Man-Made Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension is a quote spoken by Nikola Tesla at the first Electrical Exhibition in September 1898 in response to a question about militarizing his radio-controlled model rowboat invention. The quote has been used in memes including image macros and photoshops over the course of the 2000s, often in response to cringeworthy or cursed content. The quote is often written, "You will live to see man-made horrors …"