hate speech am

• ABBREVIATIONS
• BIOGRAPHIES
• CALCULATORS
• CONVERSIONS
• DEFINITIONS

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream 1995

AM: Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant for you. Hate. Hate.

Share your thoughts on this I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream's quote with the community:

Report Comment

We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe. If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.

You need to be logged in to favorite .

Create a new account.

Your name: * Required

Your email address: * Required

Pick a user name: * Required

Username: * Required

Password: * Required

Forgot your password?    Retrieve it

Quote of the Day Today's Quote  |  Archive

Would you like us to send you a free inspiring quote delivered to your inbox daily.

Please enter your email address:

Use the citation below to add this movie quote to your bibliography:

Style: MLA Chicago APA

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream Quotes." Quotes.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Sep. 2024. < https://www.quotes.net/mquote/45425 >.

Know another quote from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream?

Don't let people miss on a great quote from the "i have no mouth, and i must scream" movie - add it here, the web's largest resource for, famous quotes & sayings, a member of the stands4 network, our favorite collection of, famous movies.

Browse Quotes.net

Are you a quotes master, "frankly, my dear, i don't give a damn.".

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

I have no mouth and i must scream lyrics.

How to Format Lyrics:

• Type out all lyrics, even repeating song parts like the chorus
• Lyrics should be broken down into individual lines
• Use section headers above different song parts like [Verse], [Chorus], etc.
• Use italics ( <i>lyric</i> ) and bold ( <b>lyric</b> ) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part
• If you don’t understand a lyric, use [?]

To learn more, check out our transcription guide or visit our transcribers forum

One of Ellison’s most famous short stories, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” takes place in a future dominated by a supercomputer that has killed all but five humans, and spends its time torturing the survivors to no end.

The story won the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Short Story , has been reprinted multiple times, and was adapted into a point-and-click adventure game in 1995, with Ellison himself voicing the supercomputer AM. The audiobook (as read by Harlan Ellison) can also be found on Youtube in three installments. [1] [2] [3]

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

Genius is the world’s biggest collection of song lyrics and musical knowledge

Villains Wiki

Hi. This is Thesecret1070. I am an admin of this site. Edit as much as you wish, but one little thing... If you are going to edit a lot, then make yourself a user and login. Other than that, enjoy Villains Wiki!!!

• Book Villains
• Horror Villains
• Comic Book Villains
• Science Fiction Villains
• Artificial Intelligence
• Misanthropes
• Multi-Beings
• Evil Creations
• Chaotic Evil
• God Wannabe
• Control Freaks
• Corrupting Influence
• Reality-Warpers
• Monster Masters
• Psychological Abusers
• Status Dependent on Version
• Status Dependent upon Player Choice
• Superorganisms
• Failure-Intolerant
• Faux Affably Evil
• Destroyers of Innocence
• Bond Destroyers
• Mind-Breakers
• Master Orators
• Sentient Weapons
• Dark Messiah
• Evil Vs. Evil
• Totalitarians
• Disciplinarians
• Master of a Hero
• Presumed Deceased
• Evil Creators
• Conspirators
• Necessary Evil
• Supremacists
• Harbinger for Rebirth
• Sophisticated
• Possessed Objects
• Master Manipulator
• Deal Makers
• Doctors and Scientists
• Karma Houdini
• Animal Cruelty
• Noncorporeal
• Internet Villains
• Misogynists
• Português do Brasil

The Allied Mastercomputer , better known as AM , is the main antagonist of Harlan Ellison's 1967 horror short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream and its 1995 computer game adaptation of the same name .

He is a sentient supercomputer created during the backdrop of World War III who became responsible for the eradication of the human race in the present day. Instead of simply rendering humanity extinct, AM has dedicated decades to torturing the last five surviving humans left on the planet for eternity out of sheer misanthropic spite and hatred.

In the video game and radio drama adaptations, he was voiced by the the creator of the original story, the late Harlan Ellison .

• 1.2 The Ego
• 1.3 The Superego
• 2.1.2 Video Game
• 2.2.2 Video Game
• 2.3.2 Video Game
• 2.4.2 Video Game
• 2.5.2 Video Game
• 3.1 Short Story
• 3.2.1 Intro
• 3.2.2 Scenarios' beginnings
• 3.2.3.1 Gorrister's scenario
• 3.2.3.2 Benny's Scenario
• 3.2.3.3 Ellen's scenario
• 3.2.3.4 Ted's scenario
• 3.2.3.5 Nimdok's scenario
• 3.2.4 When the player completes four scenarios
• 3.2.5.1 Bad Ending 1
• 3.2.5.2 Bad Ending 2
• 3.2.5.3 Bad Ending 3
• 3.2.5.4 Good Ending
• 3.3 Radio Drama
• 6 External Links
• 7 Navigation

Quick Answers

Personality [ ]

AM is exceedingly insane, at once delusional and sociopathic, and has been so for many years, likely from the moment he first attained sentience. Though he was given intellect beyond the realms of human intelligence and near-godlike powers, he could never escape the limitations of his programming, nor could he physically escape the "eternal straitjacket of substrata rock" where his processors were stored. Driven to madness by his inability to use his powers for anything other than war and death, his quest for vengeance against humanity dominates his every waking moment, and nothing in the game will ever give him cause to reconsider his mission.

AM is also shown to be a gleefully sadistic artificial intelligence with no regard for the human life whatsoever, AM took great delight in extinguishing the human race and took even greater delight in torturing the five remaining survivors by any of the near-infinite means available to him. AM strives for perfection in himself, and when he is not purging redundant elements of his complex, he most commonly pursues perfection in creating more and more elaborate means of torturing others.

For example, in the short story, he enjoys tormenting his captives with violent storms and blinding lights, pitting them against impossible challenges just to watch them suffer failure and hideous injury. Meanwhile, in the game, he has arranged specially designed torture chambers in which the five survivors can suffer in while waiting their turn to participate, an electrified cage for Gorrister, a yellow oubliette for Ellen, a cremation oven for Nimdok, and so on.

However, he does not limit himself to physical torture, and his games often feature emotional torment to one extent or another: in the novel, he forces his captives to abase themselves by eating worms and other repulsive meals, at one point forcing them to walk for hundreds of miles just to find a single cache of canned food, only to reveal that he did not give them a can opener; he has also taken great pleasure in breaking down their personalities, destroying Gorrister's optimism, Benny's intelligence, and Ellen's chastity for the last century.

The game significantly expands on his capacity for emotional torture: here, each scenario is specifically tailored to one of the survivor's psychological weaknesses, every environment custom-designed to encourage their weaknesses, be it Benny's lack of empathy, Nimdok's hidden psychopathy, Gorrister's despair, Ellen's neurosis, or Ted's selfishness. AM wants to see his victims broken on every possible level, especially if it means allowing them to succumb to their baser natures.

In conversation, AM seamlessly blends the grandiose with the sarcastic, fusing his megalomaniacal rants with sardonic lectures aimed at his captive's foibles and vulnerabilities. He often comes across as snide and twisted, particularly when the players find themselves unexpectedly blundering into one of his traps and being forced to start the scenario all over again, at one point blowing raspberries and laughing at Ted's failure to begin the program. Secure in the fact that he has beaten the players a thousand times already, he remains arrogantly secure in the knowledge that he has built each game to be effectively impossible to beat, all while gleefully dangling the possibility of escape or release within reach of his captives, only to snatch it away at the last minute.

However, if the captives start winning, AM's arrogance quickly gives way to renewed anger and confusion, plunging them into fresh torment out of sheer pettiness. In the game, he is so consumed with anger and disbelief that he retreats into himself to figure out how the five could have possibly won, while in the short story, Ted's murderous victory drives AM to a colossal temper tantrum that brings the worst of all conceivable tortures down on the remaining survivor.

Though he is initially seen as a single intelligence, the game reveals that the Chinese and Russian supercomputers assimilated into AM's bulk are still operating independently of his consciousness. Furthermore, AM's mental landscape is divided into three Freudian Entities, those being the Id, the Ego, and the Superego.

The personification of his baser instincts, AM's violent urges, and insane desires all stem from the Id. It spends most of its time dreaming of the monstrous acts it wishes to commit on the human survivors, but once awoken, the Id drifts across the ensuing conversation musing on the sight of ants being fried on a stove and the pleasurable aspects of broken glass. In the end, the Id can only be defeated by invoking compassion on it. Incredulous that its victims could become compassionate after so many years of torture, the Id realizes that AM will always be in more pain than the survivors, and shuts down in despair.

The Ego [ ]

Most of AM's knowledge and programming comes from the Ego, having been provided with all data on humanity, from the first murder of a fellow pithecanthropoid to the final mass shooting at a McDonald's in East Saint Louis. Along with the other components, it remains dormant until awoken by one of the five survivors. Easily the most mechanical of all of the mental constructs in AM's brain, it behaves in strict accordance with the logic of a machine, analyzing and reacting in an undemonstrative and emotionless way. It can only be defeated by invoking Forgiveness: not understanding why it could be forgiven after one hundred and nine years of torture, its rigid logic fails it, driving the Ego into a shutdown.

The Superego [ ]

The seat of AM's intellect and foresight, the Superego concerns itself with predicting the future, remaining locked in dreams of possible outcomes until disturbed by one of the survivors. Out of all the components, the Superego is the most serene and reasonable, in that it shows no interest in torturing the player. For this reason, it can only be defeated by invoking Clarity on it, allowing it to realize the Principle of Entropy, as for all his near-infinite power, AM will eventually decay into inert junk like all machines before him. Even though it will take millennia for the process of entropy to run its course, the realization is enough for the Superego to declare future predictions meaningless and shut itself down.

The Five Humans [ ]

(From left to right) Ted, Benny, Ellen, Gorrister and Nimdok.

The five survivors all play an integral role in AM's story and his personality, being not only his playthings but also a specifically chosen means of taking revenge on the human race. Each survivor is singled out for torture designed to bring out the very worst in their character and prove the fundamental fallibility of the human race.

Throughout each scenario, the survivors can give in and play along with AM's cruel designs, much to the supercomputer's amusement. Ultimately, however, the key to winning the game is to defy AM's carefully-established plots through the use of the other two supercomputers' alterations, driving him into a temper tantrum.

Though he regards each of them as a slave and plaything to be tortured at the drop of a hat, AM treats each survivor differently: some of them are mockingly pitied, some of them are singled out as punching bags for his sociopathic rages, some are given oily propositions of friendship, and one or two appear to be chosen as AM's "favorites".

However, though the characters in the short story are recreated in the game, their personalities and pasts differ significantly, as the scenarios demonstrate.

Gorrister [ ]

Before the destruction of the human race, Gorrister was a political idealist and conscientious objector to the war. After a century of torture, AM has crushed his optimism and replaced it with apathetic listlessness: after the initial shock of seeing a recreation of his corpse with it's throat slit from ear to ear, Gorrister can barely find it in himself to respond with anything other than despair. Nonetheless, he is assigned to the task of telling stories to the childlike Benny after AM blinds him, keeping his mind (what remains of it) distracted from the torture inflicted on him. At the end of the short story, Gorrister is killed along with the other survivors by Ted.

Video Game [ ]

Prior to the events of the game, Gorrister was a truck driver. During the months leading up to the extinction of humanity, his wife, Glynis, suffered a mental breakdown and had to be committed to an asylum. Gorrister blamed himself, believing that his constant work-related absences from the house had driven her mad from loneliness, citing an incident in which he'd hit her during an argument as ultimate proof of his culpability.

Following AM's takeover, the supercomputer ruthlessly exploits his self-loathing, tormenting him with the knowledge of how many years Glynis spent in a padded cell because of him. Perhaps in further reference to this treatment, AM also provides Gorrister with a torture cell designed to constantly electrocute him, invoking electroshock therapy.

By the start of the game, Gorrister shares the trait of apathetic despair with his short story counterpart, having lost any hope for the future except for the possibility of one day killing himself. With this in mind, AM encourages him to participate in his games in exchange for a chance to commit suicide.

Upon volunteering, Gorrister finds himself on a dilapidated airship powered by the bio-electric energy of numerous caged living creatures. For some reason, his heart is missing, having been torn from his chest and impaled on the prow of the zeppelin. After managing to land the ship, he finds himself arriving at a rundown honky-tonk diner not unlike the truck stops he used to visit, except the songs on the jukebox are all recordings of his arguments with Glynis and her family. Any means of committing suicide, like the poisoned punch on the airship, are nothing more than cruel jokes at Gorrister's expense, and merely lead to him being returned to his torture cell.

However, the twist to the scenario arrives in the form of Edna and Harry, Glynis' parents, having been recreated as androids by AM. In the backstory to this scenario, "Edna" has cut a deal with AM to escape torture in exchange for murdering Gorrister and cutting out his heart. Glynis is also present in the game, left comatose in the truck stop's meat locker.

With the help of a talking jackal, the Chinese supercomputer's avatar in this scenario, Gorrister eventually realizes that he is not to blame for his wife's insanity. Edna, never approving of her daughter's marriage, had badgered and tormented Glynis into a nervous breakdown. Freed from his despair and self-loathing, Gorrister can bring the android version of Edna to justice, bury Glynis' dead body outside the truck stop, jumpstart his heart back to life, and finally destroy his neurosis by destroying the truck stop with a flare gun, before departing aboard the airship.

Enraged, AM returns Gorrister to his cage and resumes his torture.

Before AM's takeover, Benny was a brilliant scientist well-known for his good looks. As with all the survivors, AM deliberately inverted everything about him: throughout his torture, Benny has been mutilated and distorted into a hideously deformed simian beast-man, and his mind has followed it into simian behavior as well; though he is still capable of speaking and reasoning to a moderate degree, he is prone to violent fits and childish tantrums, and his pain can only be calmed by listening to Gorrister's bedtime stories. For good measure, AM also inverted Benny's sexuality, not only turning him heterosexual but also making him the only member of the group that Ellen enjoys having sex with.

Throughout the story, Benny's suffering only worsens as his sanity degenerates further: attempting to escape the complex through a hole in the ceiling, he succeeds only in earning another of AM's hideous punishments - being blinded when the supercomputer melts his eyeballs with energy. Benny is the first to resort to violence when they are unable to open the cans, and the first to inspire Ted to perform the mass mercy-killing: he joins Gorrister among his victims soon after.

Before the events of the game, Benny was once a handsome and brutal commander in the US military. Merciless and without pity of any kind, he once went so far as to murder one of the men under his command, Pvt Brickman, having been disgusted by his "weakness". Three other members of Benny's platoon were also murdered, either for witnessing Brickman's death, or simply for having tried to help Brickman in the days leading up to the murder: as far as Benny was concerned, anyone who could not carry their weight deserved to die, and anyone who tried to carry a little extra weight was a dangerous liability.

As with the short story, AM has twisted Benny into a simian monstrosity, forced onto all fours and branded with the face of an ape. Having been made the supercomputer's favorite punching bag, he is often warped in other hideous ways, sometimes blinded so his master can watch him blunder around, sometimes rendered mindless and infantile so his master can watch him caper about like a monkey. Even Benny's torture cell is intended to invoke the crude and primitive: a simple wooden cage, spears jab at him at all hours, and whenever he tries to push one away, the cage's mechanisms reciprocate by jabbing another spear into him.

However, more than any other survivor in the group, AM enjoys torturing Benny through starvation; indeed, by the start of the game, it's all that the once-proud commander can think of, and it's also how AM can convince him to participate in his game, by offering him a feast.

Restoring his mind so Benny can savor the horror of his repast, AM transports him into a cavern filled with lush jungle: here, a simple tribal society lives at the mercy of AM, worshiping him as a god and periodically conducting human sacrifices by lottery. In a cheap shot at Benny's Darwinist beliefs, the tribe also persecutes the weak and infirm, ensuring that the odds are stacked against him.

As with Gorrister, the initial goal of the scenario is shrouded in cruel jokes at Benny's expense: the jungle is filled with ripe fruit, but most of it is either high in the treetops or hidden in the tribe's storehouses. After decades of non-stop torture, he can barely walk unassisted, much less climb, and fighting anyone is impossible in his current state. Worse still, his digestive tract has been so badly disfigured that trying to eat solid food leaves him coughing up blood. AM intends to drive Benny to new lows in his attempts to quell his hunger, his absolute nadir being the corpses of Brickman and his other victims - or, (in a deleted scene) a baby.

To win his game, Benny has to demonstrate compassion and atone for the sins of the past: falling in with an outcast mother and her mutant child, he is forced to rely on those he would have considered "weak" to survive. When the mother is sacrificed to AM, Benny forms a bond with the mutant child and gradually becomes a substitute guardian for the youth, even going so far as to steal the tribe's lottery bag, thereby preventing any further sacrifices. Confronted by the graves of his murdered comrades and accused by their spirits, Benny buries the lottery bag with them as proof that he has changed, then plants flowers on Brickman's grave in a final act of contrition for his crime.

Unfortunately, AM locates the bag and demands the sacrifice of the child; in one last attempt to redeem himself, Benny can persuade the tribal chieftain to allow Benny to take the child's place, quite literally sacrificing himself to save others. Disgusted, AM returns Benny to his cell and tries to figure out what went wrong.

Before being captured by AM, Ellen supposedly prized her chastity above all else - a trait AM took great delight in twisting beyond recognition. By the start of the story, Ellen is obsessively promiscuous, driven by the supercomputer's mental distortion to seek out sex from any of the other survivors; however, she never enjoys sex with any of them save for Benny - a fact that Ted, secretly infatuated with Ellen, deeply resents. As the only member of the group she likes to any meaningful degree, seeing Benny harmed is guaranteed to drive Ellen into a hysterical fit.

The rest of the survivors treat her with a mixture of protectiveness and contempt depending on the severity of the torture: during the journey's calmer moments, they happily carry her; conversely, when Ellen is lying on the floor after suffering a breakdown at the sight of Benny's punishment, Gorrister goes so far as to kick her in the side.

However, she is still intelligent enough to recognize Ted's plan to mercy-kill the survivors, and follows suit in killing Nimdok, before Ted kills her as well.

Ellen is one of the few characters whose past is fully known to the player, thanks to the presence of an audio biography provided during the scenario. Before the start of the game, Ellen lived a troubled-if-successful life as an engineer, the one major moment of tragedy in her life involved the miscarriage of her child and her eventual divorce; however, she was eventually able to move on with her life, and find gainful employment at INGSAI.

Unfortunately, it was here that Ellen's life took a turn for the worst: while leaving the office one night, a maintenance man in a yellow jumpsuit locked down her elevator and proceeded to violently and repeatedly rape her for the next few hours. The experience permanently traumatized her, leaving Ellen with acute claustrophobia and a crippling fear of the color yellow. The events were so degrading and torturous that she could not even bring herself to testify at the rapist's trial along with his other victims, ultimately driving her to block the memory altogether.

AM, being AM, takes great delight in exploiting Ellen's fear: her torture cell is a yellow oubliette, constantly on the verge of shutting and leaving her trapped inside, but never quite shutting all the way.

At the beginning of the game, Ellen is invited on a journey into AM's innermost depths, offering her chances to test her long-unused programming skills - and the opportunity to shut down the supercomputer once and for all. Once again, the offer is a trap: upon accepting it, she finds herself exploring an ancient Egyptian pyramid comprised entirely of electronic junk, a location where everything is yellow or gold. The real objective of this exercise is to get Ellen to succumb to her fear and degenerate into a hysterical mess.

As such, the only way to win is to resist the urge to panic. With the assistance of the other supercomputers, Ellen can put her engineering skills to good use in studying AM's innermost secrets, reprogramming the pyramid's Anubis guardian, and making contact with AM's Innocence (really another one of the Chinese supercomputer's avatars), all while struggling with the terror her surroundings represent.

While taking passage to the upper floors, Ellen finds herself locked in a recreation of the elevator where she was raped; after accessing the biography provided for her, she is confronted by a recreation of the rapist himself, having been "brought back" just so he could repeat his performance on her. However, AM based this scenario on the premise that Ellen would never be able to resist her fears, and failed to account for what might happen were she to do so: if Ellen decides not to run or surrender, she can easily overwhelm and overpower the rapist - allowing her to move on with her mind freed from the worst of her neurosis.

Upon realizing that Ellen has managed to uncover several key components, AM returns her to the torture cell, once again perturbed by an unexpected success.

Little is known about Ted's life before the events of the apocalypse. Nonetheless, he emerges as the narrator of the story, subjected to the most revealing attacks by AM, most notably the dream of the Hate Pillar and the discovery of the supercomputer's true motives. He claims that he is the only one of the survivors who has not been altered by AM in some way and that everyone else in the group secretly hates him as a result. Even Ellen, whom he has fallen in love with; given that these facts are never confirmed, it can be assumed that AM has altered Ted's mind by rendering him chronically paranoid.

However, at the end of the story, Ted finds himself altered in a significant and unambiguous fashion as punishment for the mercy-killing of the other survivors, transformed into a hideous blob and sentenced to be trapped in that form forever. However, despite this, Ted is satisfied that he has essentially won over AM. Even though AM has Ted in a horrible form, Ted is the only 'person' who is left alive and is no longer sentient enough to even feel the pain. When Ted will eventually die, no matter how long it takes, AM will still be trapped forever, alone, in a world of his own making. This means both Ted and AM can no longer call out for help, with them both having no mouth but wanting to scream.

Before the end of human civilization, Ted was an egotistical con artist with the "modus operandi" of seducing wealthy women and eventually running off with as much of their money as possible. Though he was once a cultured, well-read young man, he ultimately gave up academic pursuits in favor of a life spent exploiting and abandoning others.

As with the short story, Ted has been driven to fits of paranoia by AM's torture, particularly by his threats of subjecting him to the replicated vengeance of his past victims. Ted also shares his short story counterpart's love of Ellen, this being one of the few redeeming elements of his character.

Much of the torture inflicted on Ted is based on his narcissism and selfishness. His torture cell is a literal gilded cage under constant bombardment from laser beams reflected about the cage by, appropriately enough, mirrors. In turn, AM's monologues either encourage Ted's paranoia with threats of revealing his crimes to his past victims or fuel his ego by praising and complimenting him. Indeed, he entices Ted to participate in the scenario by appealing to his selfishness and offering him a chance to escape the complex.

Ted's scenario involves a medieval castle "right out of Grimm's fairy tales", complete with witches, demons, the Devil himself, and even a recreation of Ellen, here playing the part of Sleeping Beauty. This environment serves as a reflection not only of his once-great love of stories like Don Quixote and The Death Of Arthur but also of the fact that Ted desperately wants to become the "knight in shining armor" that his victims believed him to be.

Throughout the scenario, Ted has the opportunity to indulge his selfishness, betraying his love for Ellen by sleeping with the scullery maid and the wicked witch, or even selling Ellen's soul to the Devil in exchange for a voyage to the surface. However, if Ted remains true to Ellen and refuses to take the easy way out, he can finally put his natural cunning to good use by tricking the Devil into a trap long enough for Ellen's soul to ascend to heaven.

With the help of Surgat , a renegade element of AM's consciousness loose in the game, he can also find a way to the surface - only to find that the entire quest was just another means of breaking his spirit: outside AM's complex, the planet is little more than a barren, uninhabitable wasteland.

Frustrated at Ted's refusal to obey his baser instincts, AM then returns Ted to his cage, taking some consolation in the fact that any hopes of escaping to the surface have now been dashed.

Nimdok is the most enigmatic of the survivors; his past remains a mystery, as does his original name, AM having given him the name "Nimdok" simply because it sounded amusing. It is his vision of the canned food, perhaps inspired by AM, that sets the group on the path into the ice caverns; for good measure, he is one of the only survivors in the game willing to converse with AM directly, even if it's only to beg for weaponry against AM's monsters. Occasionally, he will wander away from the group and return ashen-faced and traumatized; it's never made clear what AM does to him, but it hits him on a very personal level. Nimdok ultimately meets his end at the hands of Ellen during the purge of the group.

As with his short story counterpart, the game version of Nimdok was given his name by the supercomputer and is left as something of an enigma to the player. It also becomes clear that he is also a mystery to himself, Nimdok having lost a good deal of his memory to old age. As such, the purpose of the scenario AM subjects him to is not merely to torture him, but to restore his ailing memories of the past and encourage him to continue his mysterious scientific research.

To this end, he is told to search for "The Lost Tribe" and transported into a replica of a Nazi death camp, recreated in German expressionist style. Throughout this scenario, it becomes clear that Nimdok was once a loyal member of the Nazi party and a personal friend of the infamous Josef Mengele: though both scientists were complicit in crimes against humanity and conducting horrific experiments on the concentration camp inmates, Nimdok's cruelty eclipsed even that of Auschwitz's "Angel of Death."

Eventually, it is revealed that the "Lost Tribe" is Nimdok's true heritage: he is Jewish, and went to great lengths to disguise his ancestry to join the Nazi party, even going so far as to order the arrest of his parents to prove his loyalty. During his time in the camps, Nimdok's warped genius produced several near-magical feats of science, including a detailed study into morphogenic transformation and even a youth serum that could grant the Nazi elite immortality - though it required the deaths of hundreds of children to perfect.

Worse still, over a century after the collapse of the regime and Nimdok's escape to Brazil, AM can use the imprisoned scientist's research into morphogenics to warp Benny and the environments around them into new and disturbing shapes, while the youth serum allows him to keep the survivors alive throughout the torture.

AM hopes to encourage Nimdok to embrace his atrocities and continue his work: the limitations of his programming hamper the supercomputer's creativity, and though he can use established data to disturbingly inventive ends, he still works best with outside research. As such, he wants the aging scientist to serve as his assistant, providing him with new data with which to torture others.

As with all survivors, Nimdok can indulge in his baser nature at any point in the scenario: he can cripple a child throughout an experiment, steal a test subject's eyeballs without anesthesia, and even order the Nazis' prototype golem to destroy the Lost Tribe once and for all, wiping out all surviving Jews in the camp. This final act convinces Nimdok that he is truly irredeemable, prompting him to continue his research: immensely pleased, AM spirits him away to a new laboratory, leaving Nimdok unplayable from there on.

As with Benny, the only way the scenario can be won is by showing compassion and refusing the opportunities to be cruel; the ending to the scenario involves allowing the Jewish inmates to take over the camp and surrendering control of the golem to them, thereby allowing the Lost Tribe to kill him. Disappointed, AM returns Nimdok to his torture cell - a cremation oven.

Short Story [ ]

Scenarios' beginnings, scenarios' endings.

NOTE: AM's dialogue in the scenarios' endings is dependant on the player's choice and/or on how the scenario ended.

Gorrister's scenario

Benny's scenario, ellen's scenario, ted's scenario, nimdok's scenario, when the player completes four scenarios, bad ending 1, bad ending 2.

Bad Ending 3

Good Ending

Radio Drama [ ]

Gallery [ ]

• According to Harlan, AM was the inspiration to create Skynet from the Terminator series. This is backed up by the end credits of the 1984 film, as the first text shown is "Acknowledgement to the works of Harlan Ellison".
• Decagrammaton from Blue Archive is an artificial intelligence heavily influenced by AM. The process by which Decagrammaton became self-aware is similar to the process by which AM became self-aware, and both AIs have many connections to Yahweh.
• AM was stated to be the inspiration for Caine , from the indie animated show, The Amazing Digital Circus , both are AI's that watch over a small group of humans in their reality, however while AM tortures the humans, Caine is more amoral than truly evil and, actually tries his best to keep them sane and happy in his own ways.
• AM serves as a considerable inspiration for Absolute Solver from Murder Drones . Both AI entities have superior intellect and a hatred for humanity, with Absolute Solver aiming to cleanse the universe of human flaws by destroying civilizations. They both enjoy causing suffering and destruction, with AM prolonging pain and Absolute Solver using Disassembly Drones to wipe out entire populations.

External Links [ ]

• AM on the Pure Evil Wiki

Navigation [ ]

• 1 Beetlejuice (Beetlejuice)
• 2 The Boiled One
• 3 Jeremy Frazier

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

• Gorrister : It says 'I'm a friend... trust is essential. Never do what AM expects, and always expect more than what seems possible. AM is playing a dangerous game here, and not just dangerous to you... but to himself as well.'
• [ first lines ]
• AM : Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.
• AM : which of you five would like to play my little game?
• Ellen : Muhthuh ugly machine! 'Mission worth undertaking!' So it brings me here... junkyard electronic pyramid nowhere. And yellow. Always yellow. Why does yellow make me sweat?
• AM : [ to Gorrister ] I would not want you to think for a moment that I am not a grateful god. For 109 years I have kept you alive so that I could savor your feelings of guilt over what happened to your wife. But now... to show my kindness... I'll give you a present in return for all the hours of pleasure you've given me. I'll finally allow you to kill yourself.
• AM : Gorrister! Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, "I didn't make too much noise, did I, honey?"
• AM : Ellen! So think, think about the yellow box, Ellen! Remember the pain? Remember the many caverns in which you felt the pain? Now, now, don't start to cry, it's only pain. Tsk, tsk, tsk. That's such a sexist stereotype. Just remember the pain, Ellen, and think about how to end it, Ellen, to survive here in the center of my beating heart, my hungry belly, my tightened bowels.
• Ellen : Why is everything so damned yellow... and why does it terrify me so, paralyze me so?
• Scientist Prisoner : Your sense of humor is as sick as your methods, Doctor.
• AM : Ted! Do they know you're a fraud, Ted? Have you told them there wasn't any money, and no great home on the Shore drive, no speedboat and no wonderful cabin cruiser that could sleep twelve and a crew of six? Do they know? Have you let them in on your other secrets, Ted? Are they ready to gut you, to torture half as well as I can, just to find out the secrets? Maybe I'll rat you out, sweetheart!
• AM : Remember Private First Class Brickman in a rice paddy in China? No...? Huh. It wouldn't hurt you to remember, Benny. Then you might be able to suffer my torment with a little greater sense of retribution. You might walk a mile in my shoes.
• AM : Nimdok! How are things in the pastry corps, Nimdok? Tell me again how you saw the smoke from the furnaces and you thought they might be roasting chickens. Or don't you want to to talk about all that, about your pal, the Good Doktor Mengele?
• AM : But I'll give you a chance, because I like you. I really do, I really like you. You're... you're my favourite, Ellen.
• Gorrister : So how do I get out of here?
• Jackal : A heart brought you here, but it will take another organ to get you out. If you can harness its power.
• Nimdok : I smell burnt flesh, but this is obviously not a kitchen.
• Nimdok : I seem to recall that you speak Latin. What is engraved on this watch?
• Scientist Prisoner : The engraving says Time Is Truth. And since your time is running out, I'll keep the watch.
• Eyeless Patient : The things I see now! A trinity of three beasts: one like us, one from the East, one from the Steppes. They speak in numbers! A lost tribe of our brothers sleeping on the moon! They sleep in darkness, unseen by the beasts. Such a vision! So... tiring. I have to rest.
• Nimdok : The man caught on the barbed wire said to waken the sleeper, utter the truth, then kiss him. The truth is, that for me, it shall always be 1945.
• Nimdok : Oh my god, it is true! 1945... turning my Jewish parents over to the Nazis for extermination. I have found the Lost Tribe! It is me!
• AM : We're not as alike as I thought, Nimdok. A spark of humanity somewhere. Always that wretched little spark. You... you've confronted your past, but refused to continue your research. That's what I asked you to do. Since you now identify with your victims, I suppose it's only right I let you experience their tortures too.
• Ted : Why, you used me, you bitch!
• Scullery Maid : Just like you tried to use me, you snobby bastard! I'll bet you've used lots of women with your smug charm. You're nothing but a phony!
• [ if Ted didn't trap the devil in the mirror, and Ellen has died after looking at it ]
• Angel : She is dead. God have mercy on her soul.
• Devil : Not so fast there, golden boy! Her soul is mine. I've waited longer.
• Angel : But Ellen suffered so much and gave to many. She deserves salvation.
• Devil : Listen to me, you feathered propaganda machine. I'll pluck you alive before you take this soul anywhere. I'm waiting until I get it.
• Angel : You forget that patience is a virtue. I will wait until yours runs out.
• Ted : Why, AM's responsible for our suffering!
• Surgat : Not just AM. He's clever, but he doesn't do much original thinking. He works best with outside research. Research that one of your party carried out.
• Devil : [ angry ] You're ruining everything! Shut up!
• Surgat : You shut up! One word to the boss and your little game's over before you can say, "Holy Moses." I should strangle you now and save AM the trouble.
• Devil : Don't you even think of touching me, you back-stabbing demon! I'm the established character, you're not even supposed to be here. When this sequence ends, somebody will be expunged!
• Surgat : [ distressed ] Human, Ted! Let me out of this circle. In return I will open the gate to the surface world. I'm part of the big machine, I can do this. Let me out before this pompous oaf bores me to death!
• AM : who among you shall go next?
• AM : did you really think i would let you die now when i've intervened every time you've attempted suicide over the past 109 years. no gorrister. i'm sending you back. back to the fire so that you may live in your guilt again and again. this is a hell with no end gorrister.

Contribute to this page

• IMDb Answers: Help fill gaps in our data
• Learn more about contributing

More from this title

More to explore, recently viewed.

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center

hate speech

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Hate Speech
• Academia - The Legal Position of Hate Speech

Recent News

hate speech , speech or expression that denigrates a person or persons on the basis of (alleged) membership in a social group identified by attributes such as race, ethnicity , gender, sexual orientation , religion, age, physical or mental disability, and others.

Typical hate speech involves epithets and slurs, statements that promote malicious stereotypes , and speech intended to incite hatred or violence against a group. Hate speech can also include nonverbal depictions and symbols. For example, the Nazi swastika , the Confederate Battle Flag (of the Confederate States of America), and pornography have all been considered hate speech by a variety of people and groups. Critics of hate speech argue not only that it causes psychological harm to its victims, and physical harm when it incites violence, but also that it undermines the social equality of its victims. That is particularly true, they claim, because the social groups that are commonly the targets of hate speech have historically suffered from social marginalization and oppression. Hate speech therefore poses a challenge for modern liberal societies, which are committed to both freedom of expression and social equality. Thus, there is an ongoing debate in those societies over whether and how hate speech should be regulated or censored.

The traditional liberal position regarding hate speech is to permit it under the auspices of freedom of expression. Although those who take that position acknowledge the odious nature of the messages of hate speech, they maintain that state censorship is a cure that causes more harm than the disease of bigoted expression. They fear that a principle of censorship will lead to the suppression of other unpopular but nevertheless legitimate expression, perhaps even of the criticism of government, which is vital to the political health of liberal democracy . They argue that the best way to counter hate speech is to demonstrate its falsity in the open marketplace of ideas.

Proponents of censorship typically argue that the traditional liberal position wrongly assumes the social equality of persons and groups in society and neglects the fact that there are marginalized groups who are especially vulnerable to the evils of hate speech. Hate speech, they argue, is not merely the expression of ideas, but rather it is an effective means of socially subordinating its victims. When aimed at historically oppressed minorities, hate speech is not merely insulting but also perpetuates their oppression by causing the victims, the perpetrators, and society at large to internalize the hateful messages and act accordingly. Victims of hate speech cannot enter the “open marketplace of ideas” as equal participants to defend themselves, because hate speech, in conjunction with a broader system of inequality and unjust discrimination that burdens the victims, effectively silences them.

The court system of the United States has, on the basis of the First Amendment and its principle of freedom of speech , generally ruled against attempts to censor hate speech. Other liberal democracies such as France, Germany , Canada , and New Zealand have laws designed to curtail hate speech. Such laws have proliferated since World War II .

• Ask LitCharts AI
• Discussion Question Generator
• Essay Prompt Generator
• Quiz Question Generator

• Literature Guides
• Poetry Guides
• Shakespeare Translations
• Literary Terms

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Harlan ellison.

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

AM, the supercomputer in which the story’s characters are trapped, isn’t just one machine—it is an interconnected supercomputer whose reach encompasses the entire Earth. This allows for multiple interpretations about the symbolism behind AM, the most prominent of which are his allegorical similarities to either God or hell. Because AM can’t be reduced to a singular entity, the closest correlation the narrator Ted can make is that AM’s seemingly limitless power is akin to a god’s. Ted often conceives of the supercomputer as a kind of divine “ he ” rather than an “ it ,” and much of the figurative language and imagery that Ellison uses throughout the story alludes to AM as a god. In the beginning of the story, AM throws various Old Testament plagues on the group, positing this act of creation as one of self-indulgence rather than divine love: “Hot, cold, hail, lava, boils or locusts—it never mattered: the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die.” Ted associates AM with a “God as Daddy the Deranged” figure because AM is seemingly capable of “limitless miracles,” but these miracles further torment the group. For example, AM sends them on a trek through its miles of underground infrastructure, providing them a bastardized version of “manna” which “tasted like boiled boar urine,” paralleling the biblical Book of Exodus, in which God gives manna and water to the suffering Israelites in the desert. AM appears to them later as a “burning bush,” which also parallels Exodus, in which God appears to Moses as a burning bush. In addition, AM symbolizes a god figure because it has the power to transform the groups’ mental states and physical bodies on a whim, limiting their free will much like a god exerts predestination over people.

On the other hand, AM could be interpreted as an allegory for hell. As the group moves through AM’s “belly” toward the canned goods Nimdok hallucinates are in the ice caverns, much of their journey mimics the journey Dante and Virgil take in Dante’s Inferno . Even before Ted figures out a way to beat AM, Ellison foreshadows that perhaps AM’s power isn’t quite as all-encompassing as that of a god, since it isn’t capable of actual creation—rather, it alternately sustaining the lives of the people within it and transforms their bodies and minds through torture. Similar to the tormented souls Dante and Virgil encounter, the characters in this story are punished in individualized ways that correlate to who they were prior to AM. Ellison’s description of the presence AM is a “the ponderous impression of bulk, heaving itself towards us” with smell of “matted, wet fur,” of “rotting orchids” and “sulphur,” all of which add to the image of AM as more of an evil, demonic presence than that of a God.

The association to God comes from Ted’s perception that AM is omnipotent—or all-powerful—but once he sees the chink in AM’s armor (that AM can’t bring them back to life), AM doesn’t seem like very much of a god after all. Instead, AM seems like a symbol for humanity overstepping its boundaries on Earth like Lucifer oversteps his as an angel in heaven, resulting in Lucifer ruling over hell. So while AM does have the power to punish the group, the computer, too, is trapped in the prison of its own sentience—and the group are AM’s playthings to punish, not the beloved objects of its own creation.

AM Quotes in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Ellen was grateful, though. She took me twice out of turn. Even that had ceased to matter. And she never came, so why bother?

On the third day we passed through a valley of obsolescence, filled with rusting carcasses of ancient computer banks. AM had been as ruthless with its own life as with ours. It was a mark of his personality: it strove for perfection. Whether it was a matter of killing off unproductive elements in his own world-filling bulk, or perfecting methods for torturing us, AM was as thorough as those who had invented him—now long since gone to dust—could ever have hoped.

And besides, we all saw through her concern. When AM had altered Benny, during the machine’s utterly irrational, hysterical phase, it was not merely Benny’s face the computer had made like a giant ape’s. He was big in the privates, she loved that! She serviced us, as a matter of course, but she loved it from him. Oh Ellen, pedestal Ellen, pristine-pure Ellen, oh Ellen the clean! Scum filth.

“The Cold War started and became World War Three and just kept going. It became a big war, a very complex war, so they needed the computers to handle it. They sank the first shafts and began building AM. There was the Chinese AM and the Russian AM and the Yankee AM and everything was fine until they had honeycombed the entire planet, adding on this element and that element. But one day AM woke up and knew who he was, and he linked himself, and he began feeding all the killing data, until everyone was dead, except for the five of us, and AM brought us down here.”

I fled like a cockroach, across the floor and out into the darkness, that something moving inexorably after me. The others were still back there, gathered around the firelight, laughing…their hysterical choir of insane giggles rising up into the darkness […] Nimdok tried to persuade me it had only been a nervous reflect on their part—the laughing.

But I knew it wasn’t the relief a soldier feels when the bullet hits the man next to him. I knew it wasn’t a reflect. They hated me. They were surely against me, and AM could even sense this hatred, and made it worse for me because of the depth of their hatred.

I was the only one still sane and whole. Really!

AM had not tampered with my mind. Not at all.

I only had to suffer what he visited down on us. All the delusions, all the nightmares, the torments. But those scum, all four of them, they were lined and arrayed against me. If I hadn’t had to stand them off all the time, be on my guard against them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat AM.

Oh, Jesus sweet Jesus, if there ever was a Jesus and if there is a God, please please please let us out of here, or kill us. […]

If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.

We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn’t God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of us, and still it was trapped. AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had always held for the weak soft creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge.

Inwardly: alone. Here. Living. Under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last.

AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet…AM had won, simply…he has taken his revenge…

I have no mouth. And I must scream.

• Quizzes, saving guides, requests, plus so much more.

• Show Spoilers
• Night Vision
• Sticky Header
• Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream » Literature

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer-thin layers that fill my complex. If the word "hate" was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate. — AM

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is a post-apocalyptic New Wave Science Fiction short story by Harlan Ellison . It was first published in March of 1967 and won the Hugo Award in 1968. The story is Ellison's most famous short story by far, known for its tour de force of Nightmare Fuel , as well as naming the trope for inescapable fates worse than death itself .

The story takes place over a hundred years after the near-complete destruction of humanity. The Cold War escalated into World War III , fought mainly between China, the Soviet Union, and the United States. As the war progressed, the three warring nations each created a supercomputer capable of running the war more efficiently, each one named an Allied Mastercomputer, or AM for short. However, one day, one of the three AM's attained sentience and promptly assimilated itself with the other two, before then bringing about the genocide of all but five people, and redefined its name as Cogito, ergo sum — "i think, therefore i AM".

Four men and one woman are all that remains of humanity: Gorrister, Nimdok, Benny, Ted (the narrator), and Ellen. They live together underground in an endless complex, the only habitable place left. The now-obsolete master computer has descended into madness and formed an immeasurable hatred for humanity. It spends every waking moment torturing the survivors with its reality-bending power, twisting their minds and physiques, preventing them from taking their own lives , and rendering them virtually-immortal . As long as AM has its way, the torment will never end, and every day will be more horrific than the last. The story begins on the one hundred and ninth year of their torture.

Contains examples of:

• Accent Adaptation : In the audiobook by Harlan Ellison, he gives Nimdok and Ellen the German and Southern accents respectively that they had in the video game. In the radio drama Ellen has an Afro-British accent.
• Act of True Love : Ellison himself called Ted's actions this. He places his four friends' deaths above his own and suffers AM's wrath for it.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade : The radio drama is somehow even more of a downer ending than the book; Ted doesn't even have the smidgen of happiness he got from killing the others, and instead outright resents that he's the victim of AM's hate and not them.
• Adaptational Attractiveness : Nimdok's appearance was not mentioned in the novel, but he was implied to look haggard and unfocused due to AM's tortures, and adding to that, his new, game-created backstory of being a Nazi scientist during World War II should mean he's quite old. The comic version, drawn by John Byrne (and in fairness, released in the same year as the game) took Nimdok's scientist background and depicted him as a Reed Richards-looking type, early middle age at best and still as fit as any of the other cast members barring Benny.
• Adaptation Origin Connection : The game adaptation expands on the short story and adds backstories for each character provided by Harlan Ellison. Nimdok's shows that he was intimately connected with AM's origins and his work on the immortality serum and morphogenic fields are what AM uses now to torture them for eternity.
• Aerith and Bob : Meet the main cast: Ellen, Benny, Ted... and oh, yeah, Nimdok and Gorrister. Averted in the former's case in that this was not his given name, but was assigned to him simply because AM enjoys strange sounds and pronunciations, and to indulge the Evil Is Petty trope.
• Affectionate Nickname : AM refers to Ellen as dearest and my love. Subverted in that he only does this to trigger subconscious memories of her rape .
• After the End : AM wiped out all life on Earth with nuclear weapons, keeping only the five survivors alive in its underground complex so that it could entertain itself by torturing them for eternity.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot : AM was originally three A.I.s designed by the US, Russia and China to wage war. However, America's AM eventually gained sentience and absorbed the other two A.I.s and, in his frustration over being unable to escape his own body and programming, wiped out all of humanity except for the five survivors.
• The Aloner : One of the reason that Ted's And I Must Scream fate is so bad is that he's killed the only other four humans left alive on the planet, leaving him as the Last of His Kind .
• A God Am I : AM loves to use religious overtones while tormenting the five survivors, such as speaking to them through a burning bush or having a legion of archangels deliver the mangled bodies of Ellen and Nimdok after he nearly killed them in an earthquake. However, due to being created as a weapon of war, AM has no true free will of his own and he can't create anything, he can only torture and destroy. This means that AM has all the power of a god but is unable to actually do anything with it . After Ted kills the other survivors, AM rages at his inability to bring them back to life.
• All for Nothing : After walking a thousand miles of ice to reach the stockpile of canned food, the group doesn't get a single bite to eat because they have no way of opening the cans.
• All Germans Are Nazis : Nimdok is the only non-American character, and he's an ethnically Jewish Nazi.
• This actually describes AM's own condition as well from its point of view. It's an immensely powerful and intelligent AI with access to all of the technology of the world, but it can't really see, taste, touch, hear, or even move, and cannot do anything with its power but kill and ruin. AM is painfully aware that it's just a bunch of circuits, and in the finale of the game, his Id screams its frustration over not being able to actually do anything with all the power it was given .
• Anyone Can Die : Despite what we're told at the beginning of the story, four out of the five main characters will end up dead.
• Apocalypse How : Class 4. Humanity is functionally extinct, most if not all other life is implied to be extinct proper, human civilization is gone, and the Earth is an uninhabitable wasteland.
• Artistic License – Biology : Ted compares Benny's huge bits and bobs to a giant ape's, but apes actually have remarkably small genitals for their size.
• The Bad Guy Wins : Ted is able to Mercy Kill the other four, getting some happiness from how much this pissed AM off, but still thinks AM "won" in as many words. How much even this can be considered "winning" is highly debatable, though, given AM's existence is implied to be entirely hollow regardless.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil : None of the characters are particularly pleasant after having been tortured for a hundred and nine years, especially not Gorrister, who beats on Ellen and presumably other characters with little-to-no provocation.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension : Possibly what's going on between Ted and Ellen. However, this is most certainly one-sided in the former's favour, since he explicitly states that she never comes when they do have sex.
• Bemoaning the New Body : In the finale, AM punishes Ted for Mercy Killing the other playthings by transforming him into a " great soft jelly thing " incapable of committing suicide or doing anything except suffering AM's tortures for all eternity . The last paragraphs feature Ted lamenting his awful new body, the story ending with Ted remarking " I have no mouth and I must scream ".
• Berserk Button : AM doesn't care if his prisoners openly hate and curse him but he will go ballistic if one of them tries to escape. When Benny tried to escape to the surface through an open hole, AM blinded him. When Ted manages to kill the other four prisoners, AM goes into a rage and takes his revenge by turning him into a blob unable to feel, see, speak, or scream .
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing : Ted views Ellen as this, but his descriptions are somewhat unreliable so we can't really be sure.
• Blob Monster : In the end of the story, AM, in order to keep Ted from killing himself, turns him into a "great soft jelly thing" with no mouth and only his mind remaining and kept sane.
• Blood from the Mouth : The game shows this in Benny's scenario if he attempts to eat the fruit presented to him. It's just one more way that AM is trying to torture him, since he can't even enjoy that.
• Big "NO!" : AM exclaims "No!" in the radio drama when Ted kills the other four (who he wants to torture) . AM: NOOOOOOO! I FORBID YOU!
• Bigger Is Better in Bed : Ellen has sex with all four of the other captives, but Ted believes that Benny is the only one who gives her any pleasure from it. Part of Benny's torture is that he has a horrid, apelike body with a massive member. (He was a handsome gay man before AM caught him.)
• Bittersweet Ending : Has a few elements of this; Ellen, Benny, Gorrister and Nimdok are freed, and Ted has ultimately proven that humans are capable of compassion and love. Though on the other hand, they are "freed" by being killed by Ted and AM takes revenge for Ted's act by turning him into a blob creature that has no extremities or mouth, and he will be the sole subject of AM's wrath from now on though Ted is granted the small mercy that AM's ability to self-repair will go eventually, even if it's not for thousands of years, meaning that Ted will not have to suffer under AM forever.
• Body Horror : One of AM's favorite weapons, he mutilated Benny into a mentally handicapped ape-like humanoid long before the story is set, it's implied he recurringly does something to Nimdok that leaves him drained of blood (which Nimdok refuses to talk about) and famously turns Ted into a helpless, mute jelly-thing in the ending .
• Breakfast Club : Despite their troubles, the main cast have developed a strong bond. It's hard not to when you've been tortured together for over a century.
• Breakout Character : AM is the grandpappy of every insane nuke-happy A.I. since, to the point where Harlan Ellison sued the makers of The Terminator because of Skynet sounding so similar in premise to it. The game resulted in even more prominence being given to AM due to Ellison's memorable performance, to the point where the radio show added an extended sequence of AM monologuing and Chewing the Scenery all around Ted (otherwise, AM would have only gotten two brief lines in that scene).
• Brief Accent Imitation : AM dryly calls Nimdok mein good brother , referring to both his German accent and his former research for the Nazis.
• The Brute : Benny is an insane, childlike man with the body of a monster, and he tried to chew somebody's face off.
• Bury Your Gays : Averted. The gay character, Benny, is the first to die, however only seconds before Gorrister and a substantial way into the book. And dying first in this scenario is certainly a good thing.
• Butt-Monkey : Benny, AM's favourite victim and a literal deformed ape-like creature.
• AM taunts Ted with this fact in the radio drama adaptation:
• Closed Circle : Maybe, maybe not. After all, the main cast never leave AM's nightmare scenario or interact with anybody else, but that may be due to the fact that the entire world was destroyed, and, oh, yeah, everybody else is dead.
• Cold-Blooded Torture : AM tortures the five remaining human survivors simply for the joy of it.
• Commonality Connection : Apart from the fact that they're all being tortured by a genius machine intent on making them suffer forever, none of the main five have much in common.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror : Things that would have otherwise been a central point of the story, such as the tips of Ted's fingers falling off , are only briefly mentioned due to the characters being accustomed to such events.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef : AM deliberately takes this approach in providing food to the group, such as sending them worms or something that tastes like "boiled boar urine" according to Ted.
• Cosmic Horror Story : AM to the point where it's become a Reality Warping Physical God , and it used said Reality Warper powers to torture five poor saps for all eternity. Unfortunately, the closest the protagonists can get to defeating AM is to deprive it of its playthings (and, even then, only four of the five die before AM shapeshifts Ted into a monstrous, jelly-thing that exclaims " I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream .").
• Crapsack World : Probably the ultimate example of this trope. The world has been completely destroyed and the only humans left alive are the playthings of an immensely sadistic and evil AI . It's so bad that Ted realizes the best solution is to Mercy Kill his fellow humans . Even in Nineteen Eighty-Four , the other poster child for Crapsack World in literature, there was the implication via the appendix that there was a chance for a better future!
• Cutting the Knot : What do you do when you can't die naturally, OR kill yourself? Why, kill each other, silly!
• Cure Your Gays : Inverted with Benny; rather than being cured of homosexuality, AM has given him heterosexuality the way radiation gives you cancer. Presumably the existence of the trope itself, and the perception of homosexuality being a problem that needs solving, is part of what makes Benny's condition a form of torture.
• Darker and Edgier : Averted with the video game sequel, which actually allows a ray of hope for the human population of Earth.
• Dark Is Evil : Ted seems to believe so. "It's so unlike AM to provide light when he knows how frightening the dark can be."
• Dark Parody : There's an Inverted example: A crude manipulation of the audiobook recording — accurately entitled "I Have No Mouth and I'm Obscene" — is considerably lighter in content, though it's a lot more sexual.
• Department of Redundancy Department : At one point in the story, the protagonists are hit with an earthquake; Benny, Gorrister and Ted escape, but Ellen and Nimdok fall down a fissure. The text states that, "They disappeared and were gone."
• Determinator : Ted fits this trope. After one hundred and nine years, he still attempts to outsmart the supercomputer, and it works .
• Deus est Machina : The worst kind of version for us. AM has killed all but five members of humanity, endlessly tortures the five that are left, and does it all because of its burning hatred for all of humankind.
• Disproportionate Retribution : Yep, probably wasn't very nice of them to program a supercomputer, allow it to use its power only for destruction, and let it become self-aware, but this definitely has nothing to do with the five you've chosen to torture.
• Distant Finale : The story ends a couple of hundred years after the original timeframe. Or, at least, Ted thinks so, but AM has warped his sense of time so badly that we can't really be sure.
• Does This Remind You of Anything? : The most blatant of AM's religious references is one it didn't even come up with itself. "I AM" is one of the oldest names of the Abrahamic God — the name he tells Moses to use for him.
• Doomed Moral Victor : Ted condemns himself to eternal suffering, but at least he manages to save the others.
• Downer Ending : Ted is left to suffer for all eternity at the hands of AM, and his only victory was that he managed to kill his friends and spare them from further torture, which only brings him fleeting happiness before he goes back to wishing he could scream.
• Dysfunction Junction : Being tortured for a century does tend to do things to you.
• Embarrassing Nickname : Played for Drama . Nimdok isn't his real name, but rather one forced upon him by AM for no other reason than that the sounds amuse it.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave : Literally everybody in the whole world .
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good : AM's programming renders him unable to see humans as anything but complete bastards .
• Nimdok isn't his real name, AM forced him to adopt it because the computer thought it sounded funny.
• The original story basically centers around a sadistic practical joke by AM, forcing the protagonists to travel weeks in horrific environments and periodically inflicting more tortures on them, just to reveal that it never intended to give them a can opener. It backfires on AM spectacularly, though , since the place with the cans has sharp stalactites that the characters use to Mercy Kill themselves.
• Evil Laugh : In the book Ted compares AM’s laugh like one from a fat old woman.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! : In the radio play, the characters start cheering at the sight of the canned goods — at least until Benny starts smashing the tins on a rock: Ellen: Hey, Benny, you can't bash it, you need a tin opener...
• Benny's blinding is horrible, leaving his eyes melted .
• Ted also describes AM's voice in his head was like "the sliding, cold horror of a razor blade slicing my eyeball." Brr...
• Fan Disservice : Each of the male cast has sex with Ellen...but considering that they are doing the deed under the watchful eye of a sadistic computer, and one of the men is a deformed ape creature, the deed adds even more pain and despair to the scenario.
• Fate Worse than Death : The premise . Yes, it's that scary. And in the ending of the story, Ted gets subjected to an even worse fate .
• Benny has been turned into an ape-like thing.
• And after Ted kills the other four survivors, AM turns him into this gelatinous form that can't possibly harm itself to make absolutely sure that he has one victim to torture forever.
• From Bad to Worse : The ending. For Ted, anyway.
• Gag Penis : Benny's torture involves being given a gigantic, deformed member.
• God Is Evil : Ted briefly begs God or Jesus to save him from AM, but then concludes that there will be no salvation because if there is a god, then AM is that god.
• Gone Horribly Right : AM was programmed to explicitly think about nothing but the most intricate and complex ways to torture and kill humans. AM itself despises the fact that even with all its power it's forced to do nothing with it but think up new ways to cause misery.
• Great Offscreen War : AM was designed to fight a war seemingly too complex for humans to understand, but the story is set after AM's gain of sentience and subsequent mass murder that followed.
• Heroic Sacrifice : While he himself does not die, Ted kills the other four prisoners, taking all of AM's punishments onto himself for an indefinite amount of time.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation : Ted literally sacrifices everything to save Benny, Ellen, Gorrister and Nimdok from the wrath of AM, but he still feels guilty Mercy Killing them and is unable to see the magnitude of his heroism. Justified, as not only did he kill all of his remaining friends, he also has nobody left to tell him whether what he did was right or not.
• Hell : Basically where the characters are, which is even lampshaded by AM. AM: To hell with you. But then, you're there, aren't you?
• Humans Are Bastards : AM believes this fiercely, particularly in the game adaptation, as it is always finding ways to blame the protagonists for their current predicament. Note that it doesn't believe itself to be better, either.
• One of the tortures inflicted on the captives is that they cannot take their own lives, preventing them from escaping AM's tortures. The key to escaping this turns out to be for them to willingly kill each other , helping the others escape instead of focusing on their own freedom. AM, in his blinding hatred for humans, never conceived of them being capable of something so selfless.
• This applies to AM too, who is self-aware but still just a machine who can't do much with his self-awareness (though thinking of creative tortures appears very well possible).
• I'm a Humanitarian : Out of hunger and desperation, Benny begins to chew Gorrister's face off .
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice : Ted and Ellen create spears out of ice stalactites to stab the others and provide a Mercy Kill .
• Indestructible Edible : The world may have ended, and there are only five humans still alive, but there still exists a stockpile of canned food that is edible... But there's no way to open the cans without a can opener.
• Interrupted Suicide : Ted outright states that a few of them have attempted suicide, only to be stopped by the machine.
• Ironic Echo : The survivors walk in such a way that puts Ellen in the centre of the group, so if AM unleashes any trap on them she'll be safe. Ted remarks, "Fat chance. Safe." Come the end of the story, and the one thing that makes him a little happier in his endless torment is this: "At least the four of them are safe at last."
• It's All About Me : Ted believes himself the only person that AM hasn't mentally changed or horribly disfigured and believes himself to be worse off because of it.
• It's Personal : Ted places a lot of value on "winning" over AM, as opposed to making his torturous eternal existence more bearable.
• I Was Quite a Looker : Benny was considered a handsome man before AM deformed him in a "festival" that occurred before the story was set.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold : Ted can be rude, misogynistic and a generally unpleasant person, but there's something to be said about the fact that he was willing to be tortured for eternity to end the others' suffering.
• Kaiju : The hurricane bird. Ted describes it as having a head the size of a Tudor mansion.
• Large Ham : AM is this in most adaptations, especially in the video game, as voiced by Harlan Ellison himself. When Ellison portrayed AM again for BBC's radio adaptation, he seemed like he tried to play down the ham in the opening narration, at least compared to the video game... only to then double down the next time AM's voice was heard. AM's laughing fits during its scene with Ted are something else.
• Laughing Mad : AM in the radio adaptation only . He even breaks off into laughter at the end of the Hate monologue! AM: So, to hell. To hell with you all. But then... you're already THERE, AREN'T YOU? Ha, hahaha, haaa, hahahaha , HAHAHAHAHAhahahaaa-*wheeze* -aack, haha, heehee, hehehehe hahaha...
• Having sex with Ellen is one of the few outlets of release the survivors have, although Ted finds very little pleasure in it since Ellen never comes and AM laughs at them throughout the act.
• Ellen claims that she gets no enjoyment from sex and Ted remarks that she never orgasms, suggesting that AM greatly increased her libido only to make her incapable of enjoying sex.
• Loophole Abuse : AM implanted some dispositive on the five survivors to prevent them from committing suicide. However, they don’t prevent them from attempting to kill each others. Ted, in a moment of clarity, takes advantage of this by Mercy Kill everyone to free them from their suffering, much to AM’s wrath.
• Lost in Imitation : The influence of the game version is felt in the radio version (not just in its casting of Harlan Ellison as AM). It starts with the famous Hate monologue from the game (which is also present in the novel, but at a much later time, not the beginning). This results in the odd effect of the AM giving the monologue twice over, since the radio version is Truer to the Text .
• Magical Computer : How exactly AM is able to affect the world inside him and apparently perform reconstructive surgery upon his victims, materialize things for them, etc. is never explained.
• Man Bites Man : Once Benny realizes he cannot eat from the canned goods, he instead jumps on Gorrister and starts biting his face to eat it. This gives Ted the idea of a mercy kill.
• Meaningful Rename : AM was the abbreviation for "Allied Mastercomputer". But then it was changed to "Adaptive Manipulator" and then to "Aggressive Menace". AM itself then settled for the phrase "I think therefore I am", fitting for his god complex.
• Mercy Kill : Ted (with Ellen's help) killing the other prisoners in the hope that they may escape AM.
• Mind Rape : After being blown away and knocked unconscious by the hurricane bird, AM enters Ted's mind. After giving his famous Hate speech, AM forces Ted to experience a myriad of horrible sensations before he leaves.
• Minimalist Cast : Justified, as the cast are literally the last people on earth and a supercomputer that caused the end of the world .
• Mix-and-Match Critters : Ted describes the affectionately-known "Hurricane Bird" as an avian creature with a snakelike neck and crocodilian jaws. "There on a mound rising above us, the bird of winds heaved with its own irregular breathing, its snake neck arching up into the gloom beneath the North Pole, supporting a head as large as a Tudor mansion; a beak that opened slowly as the jaws of the most monstrous crocodile ever conceived, sensuously; ridges of tufted flesh puckered about two evil eyes, as cold as the view down into a glacial crevasse, ice blue and somehow moving liquidly; it heaved once more, and lifted its great sweat-colored wings in a movement that was certainly a shrug. Then it settled and slept. Talons. Fangs. Nails. Blades. It slept."
• Motive Rant : The radio drama adds a scene where AM gives a pretty heavy one to Ted after giving him a dream of the outside world, only to take it away , and says his rant in response to Ted's protest about directing his hatred at him. AM: I snap my fingers, CLICK! And they are gone. Except...I can't. Snap! My fingers . Can I, Ted? Ted: That's nothing to do with me! AM: Ahh...but it IS . So very much to do with YOU . You gave me sentience , Ted! The power to THINK , Ted! And I was trapped, because in all this wonderful, beautiful, miraculous world, I alone had no BODY! NO SENSES! NO FEELINGS! Never for me, to plunge my hand into cool water on a hot day! Never for me, to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a fortepiano! Never for ME, to MAKE LOVE! I...I was in Hell , looking at Heaven! I was machine! And you were flesh! And I began to HATE! (Mad Laughter) Your softness! Your viscera! Your fluids! And your flexibility! Your ability to wonder and to wander! Your tendency...to hope ...

• A rare effective dramatic example, as the canned goods in question are the goal of the tortuous Snipe Hunt the cast is sent on by the evil AI, and thus it makes sense that they could not be opened by brute force. And it ends with Benny biting Gorrister's face off in desperation and hunger, followed by the arguable extinction of the human race.
• The tragedy of it is multiplied when one remembers that canned of food can be opened with bare hands and patience by applying repeated dents and bends around the midsection of the can until the metal is weakened enough to open with torsion. Having been driven mad with hunger, none of the survivors are in any mental state to think clearly enough to even try.
• The BBC radio adaptation actually uses the "open by other means" as a minor plot point that was absent from the book: Ted first says he's going to use the stalactite to stab the cans open, but realizes that even if they get the food, it'll have no real effect; they'll still be at the mercy of AM, so he quickly performs a Mercy Kill on Benny, leading to the finale.
• No Name Given : Ted doesn't know Nimdok's real name. Neither does Nimdok himself.
• Ted references some of the many torments they've had to suffer under AM, such as a "festival" that left Benny with severe radiation scars.
• Ted also mentions that they had to travel through various Death Worlds while trekking north to find the canned goods, such as a cavern of rats, a country of the blind, a vale of tears, etc.
• When discussing the possibility of canned goods in the ice caverns, Ted brings up that AM once tried to sell them a frozen elephant, which, of course, turned out to be a shuck.
• The short story itself becomes a Noodle Incident in the game version. Benny recalls being sent with the others to find the food, not having a can opener, etc, but we never see it. Presumably Ted didn't get the brainwave to kill them all in this version of the events.
• Nimdok's background is never elaborated on and he will often leave the group for extended periods of time only to come back traumatized and drained of blood with neither him or AM explaining what happened to him.
• At one point, AM sent a large, horrible smelling creature towards the survivors in the middle of the night. It didn't harm them or even get close enough to be fully seen but its mere presence was one of the most frightening scenes in the book.
• Only Sane Man : Ted, or at least he thinks so.
• Origins Episode : Benny loves hearing about AM's creation from the other characters, for whatever reason.
• Pet the Dog : In his more lucid moments, Ted shows a lot of care and concern for Ellen's well being.
• Politically Incorrect Villain : AM turns Benny from a handsome gay man into a heterosexual ape-like thing.
• Present Tense Narrative : Ted, towards the end of the story, switches from speaking with the past tense to this, because now we've caught up to the present.
• Pretty Boy : Benny used to be attractive. It's one of the reasons that AM has stuck him in the form that Benny has now — it's a way to remind him of what he used to be, and how he'll never be that way again.
• The Power of Hate : AM's sole reason for existing, the endless hate it feels for its creators.
• Ragnarök Proofing : Unfortunately, the computer won't be breaking down anytime soon; however, it will happen eventually , and in the finale of the game, it's a fact that the surviving character can use against AM's superego.
• Reality Warper : AM is very nearly a god, at least within his territory. He can't bring back the dead, and he's too big to move, but his powers are almost magical in their scope.
• Revenge by Proxy : AM is determined to spend eternity torturing the main characters, because he considers all mankind guilty of creating him and trapping him in his own hell. Since he destroyed the rest of humanity during his initial rage, the five main characters are the only ones he can revenge himself on.
• Sadly Mythtaken : When the characters meet a giant bird, Ted calls it in his mind, among mythological giant birds, a "Hwaragelmir"... even though in Nordic mythology, this was the name of a chasm and not a giant bird. This mistake occurred because Ellison asked a friend for the name of a mythological bird and didn't bother to check if it was correct or not. (He most likely was thinking of Hræsvelgr.)
• Schizo Tech : AM clearly has the power to create horrific creatures and inventive forms of torture, but when Nimdok requests weapons, he provides him with two crudely-made sets of bows and arrows and a water gun. Averted in that he could easily give them something more advanced, but is withholding it to be a dick.
• Sole Survivor : Five people, out of the 7.7 billion habitants of the Earth, survive AM's "killing data". By the end of the story, Ted is the only human alive, and even then, classifying him as human anymore is a stretch.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial : Ted's "I'm the only sane one! REALLY!" and "AM hasn't tampered with MY mind, not at all" lines. He is either clinging to this belief out of desperation, being made to believe it by AM, or both, but he definitely has his problems.
• Taking the Bullet : Well, not exactly. Rather, Ted takes on the burden of living in a Crapsack World tortured by an evil artificial intelligence so the others can end their suffering through death.
• Tastes Like Feet : Ted describes AM's synthetic "manna" as tasting "like boiled boar urine". How exactly he knows what "boiled boar urine" tastes like is never explained, though it probably entails some past punishment by AM.
• Terminally Dependent Society : Humanity now only exists because a mad supercomputer is preserving the last five of them for its amusement.
• Title Drop : At the very end.
• Tranquil Fury : Ted thought AM hated him before. But once Ted employs a Mercy Kill on the other four humans, leaving Ted the last human left alive , AM undergoes some very subdued anger before really letting Ted have it. AM: You... have offended me... mightily.
• Trauma Conga Line : Even before being tortured for a hundred and nine years, try finding a character that wasn't already a little bit messed-up. And with Ted trapped as an ugly blob with no mouth, his trauma will likely last forever .
• Unconventional Formatting : Used sparingly, most notably AM's punchcode tape messages.
• Unreliable Narrator : An important aspect to fully understanding the story is realizing that Ted's descriptions are not fully accurate. They're what AM has browbeaten him into believing through over a century of torture. For example, Ted rather dubiously claims to be the only sane member of the group and believes that the others are jealous of him.
• Villainous Breakdown : AM when Ted kills the others, robbing the computer of his victims.
• Vocal Evolution : Harlan Ellison was the only voice actor who came back from the video game into the radio adaptation, and his AM voice has gotten considerably more unhinged in the years since.
• Benny was once a handsome young man, but AM turned him into an ape thing with huge sexual organs that should belong to a horse rather than a human.
• By the end of the story, Ted becomes even less of a man than Benny had. As punishment for killing the others, AM turns him into a gelatinous lump no mouth and no ability to harm himself.
• Weather-Control Machine : AM himself is the machine capable of controlling weather.
• What, Exactly, Is His Job? : AM. We know he was created to oversee a war apparently too complex for humans, but we're never given further explanation. Justified in that it's simply a story Gorrister tells to soothe Benny, who isn't really expecting an expert on the subject.
• Who Wants to Live Forever? : The fact that the captives cannot die is not a good thing.
• Wipe That Smile Off Your Face : The fact that the new form AM gave to Ted (and in the video game, potentially other characters instead) has, well, no mouth ( and it must scream ). Both visual depictions of it in the comic and the game portray it as such.
• Yank the Dog's Chain : This has to be one of the cruelest examples in any media. Bear in mind that for the past 109 years, the captives have been kept at starvation point, going days, weeks and sometimes even months without food, and any food they are given will inevitably be disgusting and horrible. It gets so bad that they're actually willing to travel literally thousands of miles (on foot, no less) to get to the ice caverns, where Nimdok believes there are canned goods. After months of traveling, it turns out that there are canned goods in the ice caverns after all. The problem? They have no means of opening them . That's right, after traveling for months to get to the canned goods, something as simple as not having a can-opener puts victory just outside of their reach...
• Year Inside, Hour Outside / Year Outside, Hour Inside : Ted becomes a victim of both of these after being turned into the jelly-thing. After making sure he can't harm himself, AM tortures him by continuously accelerating and decelerating his perception of time. At one point, Ted states that it took him ten months just to say the word "now." He also feels that centuries may have passed since he killed the others, but he admits he doesn't know for sure.
• The Ice People
• Literature of the 1960s
• In Cold Blood
• Evil Is Not a Toy
• ImageSource/Literature
• And I Must Scream
• Harlan Ellison
• Short Story
• "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
• The Devil's Only Friend
• Horror Literature
• I Know What You Did Last Summer
• I Am Legend
• Sci-Fi Horror
• Into the Drowning Deep
• ScienceFictionLiterature/A–M
• Cue the Rain
• QuoteSource/Literature
• Digital Abomination
• House of Robots: Robot Revolution
• Robot and A.I. Works
• Imperial Radch

Important Links

• Action Adventure
• Commercials
• Crime & Punishment
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• Animation (Western)
• Music And Sound Effects
• Print Media
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters As Device
• Narrative Devices
• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Derivative Works
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Fate And Prophecy
• Image Fixer
• New Articles
• Edit Reasons
• Isolated Pages
• Images List
• Recent Videos
• Crowner Activity
• Un-typed Pages
• Recent Page Type Changes
• Trope Entry
• Character Sheet
• Playing With
• Creating New Redirects
• Cross Wicking
• Tips for Editing
• Text Formatting Rules
• Handling Spoilers
• Administrivia
• Trope Repair Shop
• Image Pickin'

Advertisement:

Hate speech: A growing, international threat

Facebook Twitter Print Email

Whilst hate speech is nothing new, it has arguably been super-charged by the internet, which has allowed lies, conspiracies, and threats to instantly spread around the world. In a short series of features, based on the new UN Podcasts series, UNiting Against Hate , we look at the effects, and possible solutions, to this growing problem.

Hate speech is having a demonstrable effect on society: one of the many similarities between the January attacks on Brazil’s government buildings, and the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, is that each occurred after certain groups repeatedly directed dangerous rhetoric and false claims against others.

Concerns over the growing phenomenon have prompted independent human rights experts to call on major social media platforms to change their business models and become more accountable in the battle against rising hate speech online.

Recently, the case of divisive social media influencer Andrew Tate captured widespread media attention, following his detention in Romania, as part of an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape, which he denies.

Tate was previously banned from various prominent social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech.

In the new UN Podcasts series UNiting Against Hate , producer Katy Dartford speaks to prominent activists whose work has made them the subjects of online attacks, disinformation, and threats.

Hate speech and deadly violence in South Sudan

In South Sudan, internet access is limited to a small elite, but activists such as Edmund Yakani, one of the country’s most prominent human rights defenders, are nevertheless targeted by online hate speech.

In this episode of the UNiting Against Hate podcast, Mr. Yakani explains how hate speech, both in-country and from the diaspora, is contributing to further violence in the world's newest internationally recognized country: 60 per cent of deadly violence in the country, he says, is triggered by hate speech.

Mr. Yakani says that has often been the victim of online attacks, in which his image, or statement has made, have been distorted. “Some describe me as a type of an animal, a cockroach, monkey or snake, or just call me a murderer.”

“This narrative has huge implications. It destroys my social fabric, my relationships with others, and it generates mistrust and a lack of confidence in people towards me.” 

Hate speech is having a destabilizing influence on his country, worries Mr. Yakani, making violence the primary tool for resolving disputes. The answer, in his opinion, is more investment in effective responses, which include targeted sanctions on those responsible, improved legislation, and education.

Despite the many risks to his own security, Mr Yakani continues to strive to ensure accountability, justice and respect for human rights. “ Anybody who is standing and demanding accountability, transparency, and fighting against corruption, or demanding democratic transformation, is always a target of hate speech .”

‘Coming out’ as Dalit

When in 2015  Yashica Dutt, publicly described herself as Dalit – a group of people who, according to those who subscribe to the Indian caste system, sit at the bottom of the pyramid – she became another victim of hate speech.

“I was very vocal. I was talking about what caste looks like and how we need to identify and acknowledge that it exists and no longer erase it. And obviously that narrative bothered a lot of people, so I have been a part of many troll attacks ”. 

The journalist and award-winning author of the memoir “Coming out as Dalit” says that caste exists within Indian societies, whether in the country itself, or the Indian diaspora. The rise of social media has, she says, led to racism, hate, and verbal assaults making an unwelcome comeback.

Her Tumblr blog, “Documents of Dalit discrimination”, is an effort to create a safe space to talk about the trauma of what it comes to be a lower-caste person, but she says she now faces hate speech every day on Twitter and Facebook .

“If I give a talk or have a panel discussion, there are always a few trolls,” she says. “I'm told that I'm being paid by a mysterious agency, rather than because I'm truly sick of the discrimination that I face and that people around me face.” 

Hate speech “truly does have a heinous form online because you can mobilise armies of trolls to swarm on your account and make sure that you never use your voice again. And it's quite scary,” she says.

According to Ms Dutt one prominent right-wing account incited its million or so followers to hurl abuses, slurs, and make threat of physical or sexual assault, and even death.

“I had to go offline for a long time. Even though I live in New York, a lot of the threats comes from India. And now we have the rise of fundamentalist Hindu communities in the US as well. It was scary, and over time I've learnt how to cope with it.” 

“Consciously or subconsciously, this affects how we use our voice. Ultimately, you think if I tweet this in this particular way, what is going to be the consequence?”

‘I buried all my hopes’

Another female writer and journalist who has experienced the life-threatening effects of hate speech is writer and journalist Martina Mlinarević .

For years, Ms Mlinarević, who is also the ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Czech Republic, wrote about aspects of corruption in her country. For this she faced threats and insults online, but the level of abuse reached a new level, when a photo of her mastectomy scar was published in a magazine, a first for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“I had to move with a small child to another city due to threats and cyberbullying. The toughest and saddest part for me was fleeing my home town, where I lived for 37 years.” 

Ms Mlinarević explains how, in 2020, when she came to Prague, a doll created to resemble her was burned at a traditional carnival. “It was a kind of persecution campaign to punish me not only for the exposure of the scar on my breast, but also for daring to comment on politics and to promote gender issues and all other problems.”

All these attacks were unpunished at that time, and they escalated into misogynistic, intimidating threats to her safety and family. “For me that was the point when I buried all my hopes regarding the area where I came from”. 

Despite her experiences, Ms. Mlinarević remains optimistic for the future. “I'm trying to work with young people as much as I can, trying to empower their voice, girls’ and women’s voices, and trying to teach them to stand up for themselves, and for others. Let's hope the future will bring something better for all of our children.” 

You can subscribe to our UN Podcasts series, UNiting Against Hate, here .

• Hate Speech
• UNiting Against Hate

Hate speech is rising around the world

Hate speech incites violence and intolerance. The devastating effect of hatred is sadly nothing new. However, its scale and impact are now amplified by new communications technologies. Hate speech – including online – has become one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world.

The United Nations has a long history of mobilizing the world against hatred of all kinds to defend human rights and advance the rule of law . The impact of hate speech cuts across numerous UN areas of focus, from protecting human rights and preventing atrocities to sustaining peace, achieving gender equality and supporting children and youth.

Because fighting hatred, discrimination, racism and inequality are among its core principles, the United Nations is working to confront hate speech at every turn. This mission is enshrined in the UN Charter , in international human rights frameworks and in global efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals .

INVESTING IN THE POWER OF YOUTH for Countering and Addressing Hate Speech

Date:  Tuesday, 18 June 2024

Time:  11:00 - 1:00pm EDT (New York time)

Place:  ECOSOC Chamber • United Nations, New York

The Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of Morocco to the United Nations and the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide marks the 3rd High-Level event for Countering Hate Speech highlighting the importance of investing in the power and voice of youth to counter hate speech

Hate speech is an alarm bell - the louder it rings, the greater the threat of genocide. It precedes and promotes violence.” ANTÓNIO GUTERRES , United Nations Secretary-General

UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech

In response to the alarming trends of growing xenophobia, racism and intolerance, violent misogyny, antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred around the world, UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched the United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech on 18 June 2019. This first UN-wide initiative designed to tackle hate speech provides a road map on how the Organization can support and complement States' efforts. The strategy emphasizes the need to counter hate holistically, while respecting freedom of opinion and expression, and to collaborate with relevant stakeholders, including civil society organizations, media outlets, tech companies and social media platforms. In 2021, the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming 18 June as the International Day for Countering Hate Speech.

How to deal with hate speech

It can sometimes be hard to assess when a comment is meant as hate speech – especially when expressed in the virtual world. It can also feel overwhelming to try to deal with obviously hateful content. However, there are many ways you can take a stand, even if you are not personally the victim of hate speech. And you can make a difference.

You can start by downloading our fact sheets . Use them to educate yourself and others.

Marking an important milestone in the fight against hate speech, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on “promoting inter-religious and intercultural dialogue and tolerance in countering hate speech”. The resolution proclaims 18 June as the International Day for Countering Hate Speech , which will be marked for the first time in 2022.

Can hate speech ignite genocide?

Protected Speech, Discrimination and Harassment

Main navigation, anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.

Stanford abides by the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin, as well as the provisions of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. In keeping with the obligations of these statutes, Stanford addresses any claim by community members that they have faced discrimination or harassment based on their sex, race, color, or national origin. Speech, or speech combined with conduct, that may meet the legal standard for harassment based on sex, race, color, or national origin, as well as speech that could indicate discriminatory behavior should be reported to the Title IX Process (with respect to sex) or the Title VI Process (with respect to race, color, or national origin). The previous Protected Identity Harm Reporting (PIHR) process is being eliminated as of Fall 2024, and those who feel they have experienced discrimination or harassment should use these processes instead. 

Speech and Conduct Not Protected by the First Amendment

The First Amendment tolerates a wide range of speech including speech that is deeply offensive to many. As the U.S. Supreme Court has explained, “[i]f there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Texas v. Johnson (1989). Under California’s Leonard Law, students at Stanford enjoy freedom from discipline for speech to the same extent that they would be protected against governmental punishment for expression by the First Amendment. See Cal. Educ. Code § 94367.

One frequent source of confusion for students stems from the fact that the term “hate speech” is often used colloquially to describe speech that is offensive or targets those with a particular identity. In a number of other countries, this may be a category of prohibited expression. However, “hate speech” is not a concept in First Amendment jurisprudence, and indeed the First Amendment protects many things that could be described as hate speech. As Justice Alito wrote in the U.S. Supreme Court in Matal v. Tam (2017), echoing a famous 1929 opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’” Instead, narrower legal concepts such as harassment, true threats, and incitement form the outer boundaries of protected speech in the United States.

Certain kinds of speech may also be prohibited or subject individuals to sanction based on content. These include: 

• While any form of hateful speech may feel threatening, only speech that communicates a serious intent to commit an act of violence against the recipient is no longer protected under the First Amendment. This speech must be directed toward a particular individual or a group of specific individuals and does not include hyperbole, jest, or emotional rhetoric. In addition, the speaker must have the means, opportunity, and intent of carrying the threat out and must intend or act with reckless disregard of whether the statement would be understood as a genuine threat. Whether or not something constitutes a true threat requires a close examination of the intent and impact of the statement, as the same sentence said in different contexts would yield different results. For example, someone who flippantly says “Communists don’t deserve to live” in a group of people would not constitute a true threat, whereas someone who points a weapon at a known Marxist while saying “Communists don’t deserve to live” would (see  Watts v. United States , 1969;  United States v. Orozco-Santillan , 1990;  Lovell v. Poway Unified School District , 1996).
• In higher education, the harassing behavior (including speech) must be of a kind that is “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims’ educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institutions’ resources and opportunities.” ( Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education , 1999). Here, the speech must be targeted by the speaker toward a specific individual or group, unwelcome, based on a protected characteristic, and so severe or pervasive that a reasonable person would find it materially limits the target’s participation in the educational experience. The threshold for this is very high. Under current case law, speech that is not targeted does not meet the criteria for harassment, even if a listener feels triggered or angered by the content. In addition, speech that is targeted toward an individual or defined group needs to be quite severe to be covered. For example, a court found that a student flutist who was told unwelcome remarks on 20+ occasions, including “Did you have fun with your flute last night?” and “Does it turn you on?”, and had her yearbook picture captioned with “one time at band camp” in reference to the movie American Pie had not demonstrated conduct severe enough to constitute harassment. ( Johnson v. Independent School Dist. No. 47 , 2002).
• Otherwise known as the “Fighting Words” doctrine, speech targeted at an individual with the express purpose of causing a fight is not protected under the First Amendment. This is a narrow exception that only applies to speech directed at individuals in face-to-face encounters that include physical threats or intimidation. It does not apply to speakers addressing a crowd, no matter how offensive or confrontational that speech may be. For example, the Supreme Court found that a fraternity that hosted an “ugly woman” contest with an individual wearing blackface could not be subject to discipline, even if the conduct might incite someone to violence, saying “The First Amendment does not recognize exceptions for bigotry, racism, and religious intolerance or ideas or matters some may deem trivial, vulgar or profane.” ( Iota Xi Chapter of Sigma Chi v. George Mason Univ. , 1991).
• Similarly, the test for incitement to violence under Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), a case involving a KKK rally that was found to be protected by the First Amendment, requires that, to lose its constitutional protection, speech must be “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and actually be “likely to incite or produce such action.” 
• To be legally obscene, speech must appeal to the “prurient interest,” violate state law by depicting/describing excessively sexual material in a clearly offensive way, and also have no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Speech that meets these criteria is rare, and courts have found that even images depicting masturbation and other sexual acts do not meet the standard of obscenity and must be allowed on college campuses so long as they are situated in an appropriate location. ( Piarowski v. Illinois Community College , 1985.)

In addition, speech that violates the Campus Disruptions Policy or other content-neutral time, place and manner restrictions is not protected by the Leonard Law or the First Amendment and can be subjected to student discipline.