No Pain, No Gain: Pleasure
and Suffering in Technologies
of Leidenschaft
Bernd Ploderer

The University of Melbourne | [e-mail]

Peter Wright Sheffield Hallam University | [e-mail]

Steve Howard The University of Melbourne | [e-mail]

Peter Thomas The University of Melbourne | [e-mail]

“I broke my foot. I was leg pressing at about 1,450 pounds and ... the bone just snapped. But I had to keep it up. I couldn’t flex my leg properly. I couldn’t walk without crutches for probably three months. ... I was still training, and I competed, too. I trained my left leg and I trained my upper body, and I still competed at the European championships. I left the crutches in the hotel room and put on a strong face.”

—Francis, age 30

September + October 2009

interactions

Training for bodybuilding competition is clearly a serious business that inflicts serious demands on the competitor. Not only did Francis commit time and money to compete, but he also arguably put winning before his physical well-being— enduring pain and suffering from his injury. Bodybuilding may seem like an extreme example, but it is not the only activity in which people suffer in pursuit of their goals. Boxers fight each other in the ring; soccer players risk knee and ankle

injuries, sometimes playing despite being hurt; and mountaineers risk their lives in dangerous climbs. In the arts there are many examples of people suffering to achieve their goals: Beethoven kept composing, conducting, and performing despite his hearing loss; van Gogh grappled with depression but kept painting, finding fame only posthumously; and Mozart lived the final years of his life impoverished but still composing. These examples show that many great achievements come at a price: severe suffering.

Hegel described the driving force behind such activities as leidenschaft, the German word for passion. He wrote that “nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” We prefer the word leidenschaft to passion because it combines “suffering” (leiden) with the single-minded pursuit of a goal (schaffen). Leidenschaft encompasses more than what people loosely call their interest,

hobby, or passion. Originally, passion described the dual nature of pursuit and suffering, but it has become a term that nowadays describes only pleasurable things like outbursts of emotion or romantic love.

The duality of leidenschaft has strong practical significance because it provides a fertile ground for the design of technologies. People embrace technologies that help them pursue their goals. Equally, suffering opens up opportunities and new challenges for technologies. However, it is unclear how interactions with and through technologies influence the duality of pursuit and suffering, and vice versa.

This article addresses this gap by presenting the findings from a field study of a bodybuilding social network site in relation to leidenschaft. By surfacing the technology features and their implications, we strive to guide the design of technologies for other leidenschaften—