Digital Exhaustion

A.R.E. Taylor is an anthropologist and senior lecturer in communications at the University of Exeter. His research concentrates on the material infrastructure and labour that underpins digital services, with a particular focus on the failure and breakdown of internet infrastructure. He is an editor for the Journal of Extreme Anthropology and a founder of the Cambridge Infrastructure Resilience Group, a network of researchers exploring critical infrastructure protection in relation to global catastrophic risks.Linda Kopitz connects her professional experience as a creative director with her interdisciplinary academic work to explore the intersection between technology and imagination in everyday meaning-making. She is currently working as a lecturer in cross-media culture in the Netherlands and Germany, where her main research interests are architectural media and the entanglements between real and virtual environments. Bringing together her academic and editorial work, she is an assistant editor for the European Journal of Cultural Studies.Yiğit Soncul is senior lecturer in communications and media at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. His research spans media theory; visual and material culture; media and the environment. He is co-editor of a special issue of the journal parallax , on “Networked Liminality” (2020), and a special issue of Media Theory on “Pharmacologies of Media” (2022). He is also a co-editor of De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Cultures (2026).Alexandra Kviat is lecturer in marketing and consumption at the University of Bristol Business School. She works across the fields of consumer and service research, cultural and media studies, urban sociology and human geography. Her interdisciplinary research projects have explored the relationship between digital technology, urban space and everyday consumption in the context of the hospitality, retail and leisure industries. Alexandra's work has been supported by the Leverhulme Trust, the Economic and Social Research Council, the University of Warwick Institute of Advanced Study and Chancellor's International Scholarship, and the Fulbright Program.

An essential contribution to the growing literature on "disconnection studies" and computer-induced debility, this collection shines a light on the hidden economies of exhaustion that underpin our hyperconnected society. Its case studies are wide-ranging and surprising: the corporate absurdity of Microsoft’s “virtual commute,” the paradox of “passive” income in influencer culture, the persistence of email overload, and even the soothing yet insistent rhythms of ASMR. Together, they reveal how digital platforms collapse the boundaries between work and leisure, care and consumption, biological and planetary bodies. Digital Exhaustion is both rigorous and attentive—a book that not only diagnoses our age of burnout, but also gestures toward the forms of rest and care that might still be possible.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsPrefaceA.R.E. Taylor1. Digital Exhaustion: An IntroductionA.R.E. Taylor, Linda Kopitz, Yiğit Soncul and Alexandra KviatSECTION I: PLATFORMS2. Email Exhaustion: The Management of the Overflowing Inbox and the Right to DisconnectA.R.E. Taylor3. Work harder, not smarter: Passive Income and the Exhaustion of Influencer LaborGrant Bollmer & Katherine Guinness4. Do Hustlers Dream of Restful Sleep? The Digital Denial of Rejuvenation in an Age of Endless WorkJamie Allen5. Stepping Away from FIFA: An Autoethnographic Recollection of Burning Out AnnuallyAditya Deshbandhu, Prashant Rai, and Baibhav Singh6. Learning Management and the Production of Exhaustion: An Analysis of D2L Brightspace LMSMario Khreiche & Zhuoru DengSECTION II: PLACES7. Fears of Exhaustion, Dreams of Resilience: The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act and the Cínovec Lithium DepositJohannes Bruder & Anastasia Kubrak8. Exhausting Environments: Urban Installation(s) and the Green CityLinda Kopitz9. Keep Calm and AmaZen: Materialities of Energy-as-Work in Digital Mindfulness TechnologiesNatalia Stanusch10. ‘Virtual Commute’ as Digital RemedyArtur de Matos Alves & Ana JorgeSECTION III: PRACTICES11. Experimenting with Exhaustion: A Roundtable ConversationThe Fuck Healing (?) Collective and Linda Kopitz12. Coaching Digital Minimalism: The Labour of Upkeeping Digital Mediaby Ana Jorge and Patrícia Dias13. Designated WIP Time: Craft Videos, Female Labour, and Online Communities of CareMaryn Wilkinson14. Touching Sounds: ASMR as a Digital RemedyYiğit Soncul15. Digital Exhaustion and Human Rights DefendersSiena AnstisCoda: Z-mailSteven B. KatzNotes on ContributorsIndex