Almost as inexorably as it is imperceptibly, enthusiasm has become the affective mandate of the performance society for us all. It is no longer a spontaneous emotion, as it has been throughout history, but rather an instrument of production, a sophisticated tool of voluntary self-exploitation. Indeed, as Byung-Chul Han might well say, the performance subject not only works, but does so with a performative smile, with an enthusiasm that masks their own painful and ignored alienation.