How digital platforms profit from our inability to log off
Endurance Media explores how contemporary digital technologies extract value from our bodies by demanding sustained engagement that pushes us beyond, and even reconfigures, our limits. It introduces the concept of "endurance media"—systems, platforms, and practices that require users to align their bodily rhythms with relentless media temporalities, transforming exhaustion itself into a profitable resource and a cultural fantasy.
In Endurance Media leading media scholars explore the dark intersection of metabolic capitalism and algorithmic control. From exercise bikes that monetize heart rates and caloric expenditure, to gaming suits that deliver electric shocks for "haptic realism," to energy drinks marketed as performance enhancers for marathon gaming sessions, Endurance Media reveals how digital platforms colonize rest time under the guise of pleasure, interactivity, and autonomy. This analysis extends from individual bodies to planetary infrastructure, connecting personal media habits to the environmental costs of server farms and AI resource extraction.
At stake is the possibility of recuperating endurance as a space for alternative modes of duration, relationality, and collective survival. To that end, this book offers a critical alternative through "anti-endurance media"—a disability-informed framework that values rest, refusal, and collective care over relentless individual optimization.
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