Under always-on capitalism, partying itself has become unpaid work that creates value.

Evidence

Yet it’s not hard to hear something Sisyphean, something purgatorial, in the song’s evocation of a (not so) merry-go-round of pleasure that Perry and her friends can never get off: ‘Always say we’re gonna stop/ This Friday night/ Do it all again…’ Played at half-speed, this would sound as bleak as early Swans. … It’s the perfect anthem for an era in which the boundaries between work and non-work are eroded – by the requirement that we are always-on (that, for instance, we will answer emails at any hour of the day), and that we never lose an opportunity to marketise our own subjectivity. In a (not at all trivial) sense, partying is now a job. Images of hedonistic excess provide much of the content on Facebook, uploaded by users who are effectively unpaid workers, creating value for the site without being remunerated for it. Partying is a job in another sense – in conditions of objective immiseration and economic downturn, making up the affective deficit is outsourced to us. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 463

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s earlier annotation that pervasive information chatter serves commercial interests; both describe unpaid affective labor extracted through digital platforms. — connects to: Rising inequality pushes capitalism to extract profit from unpaid social participation. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 166; Capitalism moved from commodifying having to commodifying appearing. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 304; Posting party images online makes users unpaid workers for platforms — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 463 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion that hedonism has become an obligation and a job — that affective deficit is outsourced to individuals amid immiseration — resists one-sentence summary and reframes leisure itself as exploited labor.

Broader Connections

• Posting party images online makes users unpaid workers for platforms #exemplifies (0.90) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 463
• Rising inequality pushes capitalism to extract profit from unpaid social participation. #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 166
• Capitalism moved from commodifying having to commodifying appearing. #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 304
• Do-it-yourself ideology re-absorbs formerly paid labor into leisure #expands (0.80)
• Under spectacle capitalism, appearing replaced having as the commodity exchanged #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 304