Social Media is one of the themes that runs through Nectar of Time. Below is everything in the Nectarium that touches on it.
Where it comes up 2
Within this theme 24
Concepts 5
- Grifter vs. True Believer
The question behind Troll: does a ranting online personality really believe it, or is he farming engagement? Logan imagined a provocateur who is completely neutral on the issues and uses…
- Life as Performance
Goffman's idea that in public we play roles and wear masks, knowing others do the same, and take them off at home. Logan argues the internet amplifies this and removes the backstage, so we…
- Decimation of Decorum
Tamir's name for the loss of respect, care for reputation and shame online. With news cycles this fast, the scammer assumes 'you'll forget I scammed you next week'. Most grifting is done…
- Prepackaged Identities
Logan's term for ideologies and labels that young people 'try on' to get a script, a purpose and a sense of being unique, like a 16-year-old calling himself an 'anarcho-crypto-fascist…
- Social Media as Shopping Cart of Symbols
Tamir's image of social media as a shopping cart young people fill with symbols and labels to build an identity. Logan agrees.
Books 1
- Troll
Logan's 2023 novel about Peter Riley, an aspiring actor who becomes the online provocateur and cult leader 'Petrol'. It's written as short, dated fragments (forum posts, lectures…
People 7
- Andrew Tate
Both Tamir and Logan think he is 'full grift': self-made success-story self-help with misogyny attached. He rose to fame as Logan finished Troll, so readers' comparisons are retroactive…
- Coffeezilla
Tamir's favorite chronicler of YouTuber grifts. He targets the reckless more than the outright criminal, often crypto scams, and insists recklessness is still wrong.
- Mike Tyson
Logan watched the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight ('because I hate myself'). It was a huge deal and forgotten days later, his example of ever-shorter news cycles.
- Milo Yiannopoulos
Tamir sees him as the purest troll. He was one of the people Logan studied while writing Troll: an articulate, self-described provocateur 'playing the heel' who wanted to be the target of…
- Alex Jones
A lot of him went into Troll. Logan calls him a legitimately talented broadcaster who knows exactly how to make engaging content, and places him nearer the true-believer end of the spectrum.
- Jake Paul
Cited with Logan Paul as YouTubers involved in crypto scams who seem not to care about their audience. Logan also mentions watching the Tyson vs. Paul fight, which everyone forgot within…
- Logan Paul
Cited with Jake Paul as an example of half-grift YouTube scams that treat the audience as numbers to milk.
Quotes 4
I wouldn't mind feeling so sad if I knew how to meme it better. Honestly, I think that's probably why I get so sad in the first place.
We're so used to putting so much of ourselves out there that for people to step back and say, I'm just going to be with myself for a minute and my thoughts and my confessions, totally detached from everybody else, is not something that a lot of people even see the purpose in doing. It's like if it's not on the internet, it doesn't exist.
Have those masks become grafted to our face in such a way where removing them is not as easy as it used to be in a pre-connected world?
In a lot of ways it's amplified these things, but it also means that we're never really fully able to step away from the performance.
Insights 3
- Responsibility for what we share
People cut ties over polarizing posts during wars and elections. If you later realize you no longer believe what you posted, you may have lost friends for nothing, so sharing takes work and…
- Media literacy as defense
Part of Troll's purpose is to make readers more media literate: to ask what agenda sits behind the content they consume, and what their own habits are doing to them. Some readers said it…
- Scandals wash away faster now
Bad PR used to follow you for years. As news cycles keep speeding up, scandals fade within days, which removes much of the reputational cost that once kept people honest.
Stories 1
- Satisfied Customer excerpt from Troll
Tamir reads an undated page-15 excerpt from Troll by a user called 'Satisfied Customer'. It is a stream of a young person's online mind: irony pulled over the eyes, Mario speedruns, vanilla…
Films, music and art 2
- Shrek
Part of the Troll excerpt's absurd feed: a video challenge to eat a raw onion every day until a new Shrek movie comes out, 'day 14'.
- Assassin's Creed
Tamir recalls the town criers in the game's town squares, whose words never left the village. He contrasts that with how today one mistake reaches everyone.
Organizations and movements 1
- 4chan
The model for the forum in Troll ('the more unhinged Reddit'), where extremists post ten guidelines for escaping a 'useless existence'.