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August 27, 2026Human StudiesOpen Access

Burnt Out Spectacles: Analysing Social Media and Ontological Burnout

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Authors

KTKayleigh Timmer

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Overview

Theoretical analysis reveals how social media drives self-exploitation and deep existential fatigue in achievement-oriented users, highlighting the link between digital spectacles and ontological...

Key Points

  • To examine how social media exacerbates burnout by turning individuals into micro-spectacles engaged in auto-exploitative labor and ontological fatigue.
  • Synthesized Byung-Chul Han's sociological critique of the achievement-subject with Guy Debord's theory of the spectacle.
  • Applied Emmanuel Levinas's phenomenological framework of existential fatigue to construct a critical-phenomenological model of modern digital burnout.
  • Social media environments compel individuals to become micro-spectacles, making the active curation of personal achievement intrinsic to everyday existence.
  • The constant demand to react to and participate in digital spectacles generates auto-exploitative labor, producing a severe, self-destructive ontological burnout.

Cite This Study

Kayleigh Timmer (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a8fea3310c91c1e92622586https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-026-09861-1
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