How to not build the Torment Nexus
This week’s question comes to us from Will Hopkins:
When your job and healthcare depends on building the Torment Nexus, but you actually learned the lesson from the popular book Don't Build the Torment Nexus, how do you keep your soul intact and try to put less torment into the world?
Oh good, I was looking for a question that’s going to piss off every one of my readers, and here it is.
I mean, the answer to the question is right there in the question, which of course you already knew, even as you typed it out. If you don’t want to add more torment to the world you simply don’t build the Torment Nexus. That’s basic math. If you have too many eggs, going to the store for more eggs only results in having even more eggs than you started with.
What you’re actually looking for, I believe, is someone to absolve you of building the Torment Nexus because you took a job at the Torment Nexus Factory. Which is a thing I cannot do. Not that I don’t understand your need for income and health insurance—I very much do—but absolution is the realm of priests and other con artists. But hey, you’re the one who brought souls into the conversation. So let’s talk about souls.
Specifically, let’s talk about the soul of tech. And yes, I know industries don’t have souls, but honestly, neither do people. What they do have—or lack—is an ethical core. A way they want to interact with the world and the people that they come in contact with. For example, not too long ago, tech was seen as an industry of progress and innovation. Tech was a sector that made us think of humankind moving forward, possibly into some happy Star Trek like future where no one needed money and pie magically appeared in your wall if you said “Magic wall, pie me!” One might argue that not too long ago the soul of tech bent towards the positive. And, yes, people in the global South building your iPhones and mining the rare earth elements necessary to make a bunch of your tech shit work might very well argue with that assessment. They’d be right to do so. But the vibe, at least once you put the blinders on, was a positive one.
You could feel good working in tech knowing that you were helping Aunt Mabel in Kansas City see baby pictures of her niece and nephew in San Mateo, helping people complete mundane tasks online, helping a student find information for a paper, helping a farmer order or sell hay, and even giving some fun weirdos a stage. What you were definitely not doing, however, was building the Torment Nexus. (Again, the people of the global South would disagree. Again, they’d be correct to do so.)
When I think back to the stuff that excited me about “the web” so many years ago, that’s the stuff that pulled me in. Good vibes! Connecting the world! All of which made sense because I was coming in as the industry was nascent and figuring itself out. It was full of positivity. As nascent industries tend to be. (Think back to how excited people used to be about building railroads in the Gilded Age! The actual Gilded Age, not the TV show. Although, yeah, also the TV show.) As industries mature, they tend to get a little boring. And as industries age, and start seeing their own collapse over the horizon, they tend to get… defensive. Bitter. Conservative. Fucking hostile. (Yes, I’m talking about people too.) Tech, which has always made progress in astounding leaps and bounds, is just speedrunning the cycle faster than any industry we’ve seen before. It’s gone from good vibes, to a real thing, to unicorns, to let’s build the Torment Nexus in record time. All in my lifetime.
I was lucky (by which I mean old) to enter this field when I felt, for my own peculiar reasons, that it was at its most interesting. And as it went through each phase, it got less and less interesting to me, to the point where I have little desire to interact too much with it now. Other than sending my newsletter, reading my Below Decks recaps, and the occasional peek at Bluesky. In fact, when I think about all the folks I used to work on web shit with and what they’re currently doing, the majority are now woodworkers, ceramicists, knitters, painters, writers, etc. People who make things tend to move on when there’s nothing left to make. Nothing to make but the Torment Nexus.
Of course, the reason they get to do those things is because this shit pays really well. Or at least used to pay really well. It still does, compared to most jobs. Just not at Gold Rush 2.0 levels anymore. And the odds of you making your first million before you’re 35 aren’t what they used to be. Although a select few will, of course. You, as a worker on the Torment Nexus Team have more in common with the people you’re feeding into the Torment Nexus than you do with the Torment Nexus Leadership team, who would have no problem feeding you into the Torment Nexus.
I guess what I’m saying is that it’s getting close to impossible to be in this industry—at the moment—without being on the Torment Nexus Team. And lest you think “at the moment” is load-bearing… well, I wouldn’t lean too hard on it. I don’t see shit improving too soon. Industries in decline tend to pick up speed, not reverse course, and their death moan comes when they shift from making things to extracting value.
This is all just a long-winded way of saying that while your current job, and healthcare, depends on building the Torment Nexus, your best bet might be to start thinking of fields that don’t require building the Torment Nexus to earn a living. And while spending considerable time and energy (and probably going into considerable student loan debt) to enter a field that wasn’t building the Torment Nexus when you decided this was how you wanted to earn a living can be maddening, and depressing, and anger-inducing… we need to judge this field by what it’s currently doing, and not the vibes of the past. None of this is meant to make you feel good, because it doesn’t feel good. But keeping your foot on the accelerator and hoping the BRIDGE OUT sign is a lie only leads to worse outcomes than pulling over and rerouting, as annoying as that might be.
Since your question was specifically about keeping your soul intact, I will do you the favor and the kindness of answering you honestly. You cannot keep your soul intact while building the Torment Nexus. The Torment Nexus is, by definition, a machine that brings torment onto others. It destroys souls. And a soul cannot take a soul and remain whole. It will leave a mark. A memory. A scar. Your soul will not remain intact while you’re building software that keeps track of undocumented workers. Your soul will not remain intact while building surveillance software whose footage companies hand over to ICE. Your soul will not remain intact while you build software that allows disinformation to spark genocides. Your soul will not remain intact while you hoover up artists’ work to train theft-engines that poison the water of communities in need. Your soul will eventually turn into another thing altogether. An indescribable thing.
I acknowledge that there are people working at the Torment Nexus factory for whom it would be hard to leave. For example, people on H-1B visas have their residency tied to their job. The current healthcare fuckery will most surely bring the term “pre-existing condition” back into play. (America is a cruel and sick place.) Switching jobs will trigger jackassery with your health insurance, which might be covering your entire family. I’m sure there are more examples of this that are just as real, and if you are one of these people I absolutely feel for you. And as much as I feel for you, I also believe that if you’re a person of good conscience (and why would you have asked this question if you weren’t) building the Torment Nexus will have the same negative effect on your soul. So while I can’t in good conscience scream at you to put down your tools and leave your job, I will instead tell you to take care of your souls the best you can.
I’d argue it’s more ethical to do shit work at the Torment Nexus factory than to do good work at the Torment Nexus factory. But the most ethical move of all, of course, is to not work at the Torment Nexus factory at all. I just realize that’s easier for some folks than others.
I do believe, however, that the majority of folks working at the Torment Nexus factory are there because they’ve convinced themselves that it’s ok to be there, or that the Torment Nexus isn’t that bad, or that their proximity to the Torment Nexus will protect them from the Torment Nexus. Or, quite honestly, they just don’t give a fuck. They’re getting their bag. After all, that Vision Pro sitting on your office shelf gathering dust didn’t pay for itself.
To anyone who’s about to email me and let me know “they have a right to earn a living” please make sure to append “…in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed” to the end of that sentence because, honestly, that’s what you’re really saying. But no one has the right to live a hundred times better than anyone else. Equality also means this.
But surely the real problem is a systemic one and you can’t blame the workers for participating. After all, they are just trying to feed themselves and get healthcare. And, that is correct, of course. What’s also correct is that systems are powered by people. They rely on the labor of people to function, but also on the despair of people believing that propping up the system is the only option available to them. Which is fucking dire. For the Torment Nexus to get built it needs to convince you that your only option for survival is to build the Torment Nexus, much like an AI company telling us that the only path to solving the climate crisis is to use what’s left of Earth’s resources to power its AI in the hope that it will come up with a solution to the climate crisis.
Ultimately, the names of everyone who built the Torment Nexus will be engraved on the Torment Nexus, or possibly on a plaque below the Torment Nexus. Or possibly on a beacon in space roughly where Earth used to be, sending out a repeating signal to other civilizations saying “Don’t build the Torment Nexus!” That list won’t have categories. It won’t be broken up into “people who wanted to build the Torment Nexus,” “people who were tricked into building the Torment Nexus,” and “people who just really needed healthcare.”
It’ll just be a list of people who were conned into believing they had no other options.
As a final sliver of hope (and trust that I’m doing this for my own benefit as much as yours) I would remind you that this isn’t our first encounter with the Torment Nexus. We’ve built it before. Like the devil, another collector of souls, it’s come to us under many names: The Spanish Inquisition, The Dutch East India Company, The English Navy, Portuguese slave forts, Jim Crow, The Holocaust, Japanese Internment Camps, too many genocides to mention—including the one America is currently funding in Gaza, and as the spirit of Ursula K Le Guin keeps reminding us—the divine right of kings. And trust that this is by no means an exhaustive list. Turns out human beings really like building the Torment Nexus.
But it also turns out that human beings are good at defeating the Torment Nexus.
🙋 Got a question you’d like a really fucking depressing answer to? Ask it.
📣 The next Presenting w/Confidence workshop is scheduled for August 14&15 and it’s filling up fast. Come learn how to talk people out of building the Torment Nexus.
📙 I’m currently reading Karen Hao’s Empire of AI, and holy shit. This book is worth your time.
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🍩 Last Sunday a neighbor brought homemade donuts to the dogpark and it was amazing. Don’t underestimate the healing power of bringing donuts.
💩 You already know Alan Dershowitz is a POS, but David Roth tells the story in a way that’s worth reading.
🍉 Please donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
🏳️⚧️ Please donate to Trans Lifeline.