China’s hypercompetitive job market is stunting and distorting the lives of an entire generation. Forced into a cutthroat doom loop, the people interviewed in Involution highlight how they are pitted against their colleagues, assigned pointless or impossible tasks, and warped by hostile environments. In response to an antisocial work culture, forms of passive resistance have become endemic.

Through conversations with young workers from across China, the Gonglao Collective paints a haunting picture of involution’s chokehold on young lives.