Platformed affective withdrawal: Quiet quitting and the refusal of gendered emotional labour on TikTok

This article examines #quietquitting on TikTok as a platform-mediated articulation of gendered affective withdrawal. While organisational research interprets quiet quitting as reduced discretionary effort or declining work engagement, this study examines how quiet quitting is articulated as a digitally circulated refusal of feminised emotional labour. Drawing on feminist theories of affective labour and critical platform studies, the analysis explores how workers renegotiate expectations of emotional availability within algorithmically structured visibility regimes. The study is based on a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods analysis of 586 TikTok videos shared under #quietquitting between 2020 and 2026. Combining thematic discourse analysis with descriptive engagement indicators, the findings show that creators frequently frame quiet quitting as a refusal of unpaid relational mediation, emotional management, and workplace care. The article introduces the concept of platformed affective withdrawal to explain how narratives of workplace disengagement circulate through algorithmic visibility systems that amplify and individualise gendered labour inequalities.