In Nyxia, Babel Communications selects competitors who would be the most persuaded by the promise of money and medical care. The corporation manipulates the competitors by leveraging not only the young people’s financial situations but also the welfare of their families. Babel takes advantage of the cycle of poverty that the competitors and their families are stuck in, and it uses its wealth and power to manipulate the competitors to do dangerous and even life-threatening tasks. 

In economics, the “cycle of poverty” refers to how impoverished people who lack resources struggle to escape poverty; they therefore pass poverty conditions down to the next generation. Emmett Atwater describes it this way: “Pops? He’s not a slave, but he’s not truly free either. Life’s left him grinding for every single dime […] for the most part, my family is stuck in the same grind of centuries past” (49). The grind Emmett describes includes his great-great-great-grandmother’s enslavement, his father’s work at a factory in Detroit, and his mother’s cancer. When Emmett’s ancestor escaped north, she was freed from enslavement, but the family still struggled because of structural racism, which kept them from advancing economically. Poverty restricted the family’s access to education, which further restricted their financial mobility.