Wheels in the head: Ridesharing as monitored performance

Abstract

For-profit “ridesharing” services (or soft cabs) offer on-demand rides much like taxicabs, but are distinguished by an affective framing which emphasizes that drivers are “friends with cars, on demand” rather than “cabdrivers.” This reframing is achieved through the insertion of smartphones as social interfaces between drivers and passengers, restructuring social interaction through an allegorithm (the productive co-deployment of a socially relevant allegorical script and a software-mediated algorithm). Much of the affective labor of ridesharing drivers consists in maintaining this affective framing and internalizing the logic by which their performances are monitored through the work platform. In this article the writings and videos of three ridesharing drivers will be drawn on to illustrate the ways drivers develop and evaluate their own performances as ridesharing drivers.