Fomo began as a shortening for fear of missing out, but it isn’t really a fear. There’s no terror to it at all. It’s not a nervous anticipation that something is going to get you. Quite the opposite, it’s the feeling that something, somewhere is not going to get you.
It’s culturally significant that this acronym became an emotion word of its own in the dawning years of the age of social media. With the creation of a new expectation of daily social performance for consumption by others, simply being oneself was no longer enough. One’s identify had to be created on purpose, in order to create an impression that would rise above the cacophony of other people’s desperate social performances.
Quickly people began to organize their lives around opportunities to take a impressive photograph to share with others, to demonstrate having a life full of amazing events. It wasn’t enough to go out for coffee, or dinner, or for a walk by a lake. There had to be a selfie to go with it, or it would be as if the occasion never happened.
The need to appear to be having an extraordinary time became urgent, because everyone else appeared to be having an extraordinary time. Soon, people were going on trips just in order to have something to post on social media. It didn’t occur to anyone that everyone else was faking a life filled with remarkable, beautiful moments, but believed that they were missing out on the good life that everyone else seemed to be having.
So, fomo became a desperate, unhappy race to find the happy spot where everyone else seemed to be. Some people couldn’t keep pace. Stories began to emerge of couples who filed for divorce in spite of the fact that they always appeared smiling in their social media feeds, mothers with Instagram accounts filled with stunning photos of their beautiful families in amazing locations, arrested for child abuse, suicides of young people known for their streams of pictures going out with friends to have a good time.
At the heart of fomo is an unpleasant comparison to the false appearances of others. There’s an isolation we experience while using social media, a loneliness that causes us to gaze deeper into our little glowing screens instead of paying attention to the people right next to us. With fomo, the right place to be is always somewhere else, but you never know exactly where it can be found.
