Toksilist

Toksilist is a term used primarily in speculative fiction and certain online communities to describe a practitioner who studies toks, a fictional category of harmful agents that can be physical toxins, digital information hazards, or sociotechnical phenomena. In these contexts, toks are treated as agents capable of causing harm through biological exposure, chemical interaction, or the rapid spread of damaging content and behaviors across networks. A toksilist analyzes the properties of toks, their mechanisms of action, exposure pathways, and the wide-ranging societal and ethical implications of their use. The aim is to inform safe design, risk assessment, and responsible communication about toks.

Unlike real-world toxicology or information-risk disciplines, toksilists are not a recognized profession. The term is a neologism formed from toks, short for toxins or information hazards in speculative discourse, combined with the suffix -ilist, echoing words such as toxicologist or futurist.

History: The term appears in online worldbuilding communities and science-fiction-adjacent discussions dating from the 2010s and 2020s. It is used to frame discussions about hypothetical toxins and their governance within fictional or hypothetical settings, as well as to discuss real-world risk concepts in a reductive or pedagogical way.

Roles and methods: Typical roles attributed to toksilists include risk modelers, policy analysts, safety educators, and researchers who draft guidelines for containment, reporting, and public communication. Methods borrow from epidemiology, toxicology, and risk communication, adapted to the fictional or hypothetical nature of toks.

See also: Toxicology, Information hazard, Risk assessment, Biosecurity, Worldbuilding.