“Watching Labor”: A New Form of Labor Alienation in the Short Video Era and Its Criticism

With the deepening development of digital technology, short videos have become a preferred leisure activity for the majority of internet users. The emergence of short videos blurs the boundary between labor and leisure, allowing users to create surplus value for platforms under the guise of leisure, and engaging in self-exploitative unpaid labor for short video platforms. “Watching labor” has thus emerged as a new form of labor. Examining this novel labor form through Marx’s theory of alienated labor reveals that “Watching labor” still exhibits Marx's fourfold characteristics of alienated labor, and this alienation has become more concealed and harmless through short video leisure activities. Therefore, to transform the current “laborization” of leisure in “watching labor” towards the “laborization” of labor, three approaches should be prioritized: strengthening institutional construction, promoting data sharing, and enhancing value guidance. These measures aim to dismantle capitalist logic, restore the essence of digital technology productivity, and return to human-centered principles, and realize the return of the user’s subjectivity in “watching labor” and promote the overall development of people in the digital age.