The exhaustion disappointment and listlessness experienced under digital capitalism explored
through works by contemporary artists writers and performers. Sometimes interacting with
digital platforms we want to be passive-in those moments of dissociation when we scroll
mindlessly rather than connecting with anyone for example or when our only response is a
shrugging lol. Despite encouragement by these platforms to be yourself we want to be anyone
but ourselves. Tung-Hui Hu calls this state of exhaustion disappointment and listlessness
digital lethargy. This condition permeates our lives under digital capitalism whether we are
users who are what they click or racialized workers in Asia and the Global South. Far from
being a state of apathy however lethargy may hold the potential for social change. Hu
explores digital lethargy through a series of works by contemporary artists writers and
performers. These dispatches from the bleeding edge of digital culture include a fictional
dystopia where low-wage Mexican workers laugh and emote for white audiences a group that
invites lazy viewers to strap their Fitbits to a swinging metronome faking fitness and earning
a discount on their health insurance premiums and a memoir of burnout in an Amazon warehouse.
These works dwell within the ordinariness and even banality of digital life redirecting our
attention toward moments of thwarted agency waiting and passing time. Lethargy writes Hu is
a drag: it weighs down our ability to rush to solutions and forces us to talk about the
unresolved present.
