Designing Self-Care: Affect and Debility in #SELFCARE

Abstract

Are games addicting, anxiety-provoking, and manipulative, or are they calming, connecting, and healing? This paper looks at the companion game app #SELFCARE by studio TRU LUV and collaborator Eve Thomas alongside affect theory on psychosocial disability (often referred to as mental illness). #SELFCARE consists of mini-games navigated through a home screen of a person lying in bed under the covers who »refuses to leave bed today.« The mini-games are all uncompetitive, unscored, and untimed, such as breathing to the rhythm of an expanding flower, sorting laundry, and petting a cat. The website states that »In this universe, our goal is simply to feel better. There’s no winning, no failure, no score. No difficulty, no ads, no notifications. There is just us and our feelings.« Although the current self-care movement is trending toward forced positivity, neoliberalism, and aesthetics, the game #SELFCARE incorporates what one might label negative or discouraging, such as refusing to get out of bed, not answering thousands of emails, and words like »disconnected.« I argue that #SELFCARE maps onto Lauren Berlant’s idea of lateral agency, a sort of self-suspension away from the forward motion of life – not necessarily getting better but also not getting worse. It is not meant to cure psychosocial disability but to give those of us that experience it a moment of relief. In queer feminist affect theory, feelings cannot so clearly be labeled as positive or negative; in fact, feeling ›good‹ can be a direction toward heteronormativity and ›bad‹ affect can be a resource for political action. Thus, any game that aims to promote well-being is best served utilizing ›negative‹ feelings, not ignoring them. The negativity and depiction of depression in #SELFCARE is a strong force in connecting the players to the character in the game as well as to the game world. Using affect theory and disability studies, I provide a conscientious evaluation of the ways technology is positioned both as savior and detrimental to psychosocial disability.