Digital Exhaustion

A.R.E. Taylor is a digital 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 Editorial Assistant 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 has studied at the University of Leipzig and the University of Miami and holds a Research Masters in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her main research interests are sustainable media and the intersection between technology and imaginations of the everyday. She is currently working as a Lecturer in Cross-Media Culture and continues to freelance as a Creative Director and writer in the arts and cultural sector. Bringing together her academic and editorial work, she is also the editorial assistant for NECSUS Journal of Media Studies and 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.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsPrefaceChapter 1: Digital Exhaustion: An IntroductionSECTION I: PLATFORMSChapter 2: The Email Charter: A Manifesto for Digital Humanity by A.R.E. TaylorChapter 3: Work harder, not smarter: Passive Income and the Exhaustion of Influencer Laborby Grant Bollmer & Katherine GuinessChapter 4: Do Hustlers Dream of Restful Sleep?  The Digital Denial of Rejuvenation in an Age of Endless Work by Jamie AllanChapter 5: Stepping Away from FIFA: An Autoethnographic Recollection of Burning Out Annuallyby Aditya Deshbandhu, Prashant Rai, and Baibhav SinghChapter 6: Learning Management and the Production of Exhaustion: An Analysis of D2L Brightspace LMSby Mario Khreiche & Zhuro DengSECTION II: PLACESChapter 7: Fears of Exhaustion, Dreams of Resilience: The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act and the Cínovec Lithium Depositby Johannes Bruder & Anastasia KubrakChapter 8: Exhausting Environments: Urban Installation(s) and the Green Cityby Linda KopitzChapter 9: Keep Calm and AmaZen: Materialities of Energy-as-Work in Digital Mindfulness Technologiesby Natalia StanuschChapter 10: ‘Virtual Commute’ as Digital Remedyby Artur de Matos Alves & Ana JorgeSECTION III: PRACTICESChapter 11: Experimenting with Exhaustion: A roundtable conversation between the Fuck  Healing (?) Collective and Linda KopitzChapter 12: Coaching Digital Minimalism: The Labour of Upkeeping Digital Mediaby Ana Jorge and Patrícia DiasChapter 13: Designated WIP Time: Craft Videos, Female Labour, and Online Communities of Careby Maryn C. WilkinsonChapter 14: Touching Sounds: ASMR as a Digital Remedyby Yigit SonculChapter 15: Digital Exhaustion and Human Rights Defendersby Siena AnstisCoda: Z-mail by Steven B. KatzAuthor BiographiesIndex

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.