That’s My FOMO

Read Time: 7 minutes

How Did Fear Get Me Here?

I have a new FOMO. It’s not the mainstream kind. You know that kind I mean. It’s found infinitely on social media. Mainstream FOMO is a fear of missing out on the things that everyone but me appears to be doing. A fear of being left out of something better. I’ve felt it. So many great ideas, awesome videos and pictures, beautiful people and places right in front of me. Life will be so complete if I can just think, be, and go like them. Maybe, if only… But, it’s all a lie. A big one. A lie I was telling myself over and over. 

Other people’s lives, even the lives of actual friends, are on display in short disconnected glimpses on social media. But, they are constant, frequent, and staged. They keep FOMO at maximum levels. The stories of those seen in glimpses have to be completed by their viewers. That’s the lie in society’s version of FOMO. These glimpses are not the actual full stories of people’s lives. We, the viewers, have to fill in the missing chapters ourselves complete with perfect endings. 

You’re probably saying “Duh, I know their lives aren’t really all that.” That’s what I said, too. No problem, right? Wrong. I kept feeling bad anyway. I was addicted to trying to create a life I could never have based on the snapshots and short films I saw on social media. I was trapped by their possibilities. Why was I trapped? Because I needed the stories to fill in gaps in my life. Gaps social media says it can fill. It can’t. Only I have the power to create my fairy tales. It doesn’t actually have that power unless I surrender it, and for a long time, I surrendered. 

Social media is carrying a brilliant irony. In its effort to reach all of us, it’s actually making us less social. We’re less curious. And, some of its early contributors are now telling us that this is ultimately the point of it all. To leave us lurking on a never ending search for our happy ending, constantly looking outward and depending on it for all of the answers. 

So why did I end up feeling more and more alone? All I was doing was buying in. Literally. I tried so much stuff. I ended up with all this crap and nothing to show for it. I was left with only a lingering feeling that I just can’t get it right. Something must still be missing. I just hadn’t found “it” yet.

For a long time I practiced society’s version of FOMO. Spending hours on my phone looking at what everyone was up to and trying to recognize my life through theirs. Wondering if I could do those things. Their lives looked so full and mine so not. I started on Twitter and Facebook and incorporated Instagram, Snapchat, and dating apps. It all ends up in the same place. Seeking that perfect fix that doesn’t exist. I would scroll, chat, and wait. When I gave myself permission to finally want something different, I started to wonder what I was actually looking at, chatting about, and waiting for. If I never did anything and just kept scrolling, what the hell was I actually missing? It turns out, it was nothing.

Facing the Truth

Social media is a consumer grab. It’s just like every other marketed product in a capitalist society. The highly manipulative difference is that social media disguises itself as a social proposal when it’s really just a product. It will never keep its promises. Facebook hopes I click on all of the suggestions.They want to influence me in a new way tomorrow hoping I’ll make them money when they perfect my algorithm. None of them care how many “friends” I make or have. That’s just the bait to get us to build their pyramid of people as products. After all, didn’t Facebook start as a “hot or not” spinoff idea? FOMO is at its core.

Twitter (now known as “X”) wants you to say something that will get you canceled. It increases tweet volume. There is no accountability for their platform being used to cancel people’s actual way to make a living by tweet shaming them for something they said when they were twelve. I won’t point out that twelve year olds aren’t supposed to be on Twitter. Oh, sorry, just did. 

Snapchat hopes you send those pics to that new guy who got your Snap even though you don’t know him at all. The world of Snap is perfectly designed to make women its commodity as we endlessly try for that perfect angle, scared that he might not approve. Let’s face it. The creators know that the approval market mostly goes one way- male to female. We haven’t fixed this gender issue because we still buy into the idea that women are available to possess. We come with exceptionally crafted poses. I’ll admit, I’ve done it, and still automatically do the head tilt and pucker face. I’m still working on that.

This is also true for Instagram. I love a good Instagram post. But, I know that I’m always filtering my life and so is everyone else. As for dating apps, everyone is the commodity. They don’t want you to find “the one”. They want you to keep swiping, hoping that you can’t resist the idea that the last one might not be as good as the next. You might miss them. Regretting that swipe before even meeting someone. Tragedy…

I’m not going to blame social media completely, though. At some point, I needed to take responsibility and wake up. I had stopped really paying attention to my life. I was summarizing and filling in the gaps with made up assumptions, using social media as a shortcut. A way to have more but less meaningful communication. Communication where silence screams and assumptions follow. Never before have we defined human connection with so much emphasis on what we don’t say. What it means is made up in our heads. I needed to stop this kind of FOMO from distracting me from my life.

I’m not saying I’m going to stop using social media. It’s a source of connection that I want to use because that’s where everyone is now. But, I’m not going to let them keep bribing me with promises they don’t and can’t keep. Promises to fix my appearance, my brain, find my dream career, and last but not least, bring me my soulmate (I can have more than one. Just sayin’…). If these promises were meant to be kept, I’d be beautiful, have a photographic memory, be a world famous dancer, and be married to a member of BTS. FOMO sells, and they profit.

Please don’t define your life through it. It’s not meant for that, and this is what they actually hope you never figure out. Whatever “it” is. Think about it. None of the changes in your life actually happened because of social media. If you think they did, you’re not giving yourself enough credit. They happened because you decided to move your life and change. You took the risk. Social media likes it when you think they found it for you. What you want and what you find are free and already there for you to discover. They always have been.

My Kind of Social

The few friends I have made on social media are people I want to see in person. I want to hug them and talk to them while looking at their faces. I want to do all the spontaneous stuff that I thought social media was actually offering. We do a great job of looking spontaneous as we pose for all of it. It’s reality TV on steroids, and I was just sitting in my room watching all of it waiting for my casting call.

Social media hasn’t disappeared from my life, but it has taken a much more moderate role. What started as the mainstream FOMO became a totally different one. While I was trying to figure out why staying connected with people was so hard and why social media just seemed to piss me off, I became scared of something else. That I would miss all of it. My actual life.

I wonder if you’re thinking that this blog makes me a hypocrite. It’s got banner ads just like social media. A capitalist’s dream. If you’re wondering, you’re right. I’m criticizing something I’m using. I’m good with it, though. Technology gives us options and opportunities. I’m not afraid to tell you about the parts of social media that scare me. I can use it against itself.

I try to be thoughtful about what I post and aware of what I read. I’m learning to read again. I take an optimistic view of people and a cynical view of society. Yes, another paradox that I’ve discovered in the matrix. Please remember that social media doesn’t take an optimistic view of you. They think you don’t and will never see through them.

Social media is a great topic for debate. I love it. I admire those who can talk constructively about it in the social media space. A brilliantly ironic tactic. Let’s keep talking. I want to know what parts of social media work for you. I want to keep learning and see what I can do to contribute to the better parts of the technological advances that are coming at our generation at the speed of light. I’m going to work harder. My FOMO drives me. 

Help me look so we don’t miss out!

Find “Outside the Web” on the Poems page