Reflections on FOMO

Hot on the heels of our last article seems like a good time to think just a bit more about FOMO and its effects and how it is often used against us. For those just jumping in, FOMO is the Fear of Missing Out, a sense of anxiety that comes from being aware of or even just thinking there are cool things happening that you aren’t a part of. It’s fear that you are being left out and left behind by everyone around you. Alex and Jason discussed it in depth with the person who coined the term, Patrick McGinnis. I highly recommend you head over to T-Cast to check it out. 

FOMO is normally associated with social media but it certainly exists outside of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. FOMO in a sense is just another term for good old-fashioned peer pressure. If you think everyone is going to a party every weekend, you naturally think you should too. If you don’t you’re missing out and if you are worried about what people think about you (and let’s be honest, pretty much everyone does to some degree) then that will cause some anxiety. So most people will go out for some heavy drinking every night on the weekends. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good beer or whisky but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Indulging too much will not only lead to you doing a bunch of stuff you might not remember the next day, it also means you will likely need a couple days to fully recover and be productive again. 

Chris Williamson, podcast host and motivational speaker was in a similar cycle when he realized that he was wasting a lot of time. He made the choice to quit drinking for a thousand days and upped his productivity by orders of magnitude, just by not giving in to the pull of the crowd, by not giving in to FOMO. It allowed him to stop and think about what he wanted to do, independent of everyone else. Suddenly, Chris had the freedom to exclude himself and be happy with that. 

Those kinds of situations are also exacerbated by social media. People post pictures of themselves having a great time day after day but never post the aftermath. They leave out the puking in the toilet, the crashed car, the stressing over bills and everything else. It’s a distorted view of reality and a lot more people should probably take the Williamson route and step away a bit. 

Plenty of companies naturally make use of FOMO. Nearly every ad for every product or service is built on making you think you need something to be cool. Every cigarette ad back in the day had some ridiculously good looking model taking a nice long drag on a lung dart. It was designed to make you think all the cool kids were doing it. It’s not much different from anything else, they want to get your attention and FOMO is an incredibly powerful tool for making that happen. 

Even if you don’t quite fit into the algorithms they will still be gunning for your attention and your wallet. It isn’t like the marketers stop sending you ads, they just spam you with random stuff until you click on something. Suddenly the algorithm has a hook and you might just find yourself with more ads related to that one thing. They’re trying to draw you into the way they see the world and get you to spend your money and time on what they want. 

How do you fight that? You realize what is happening, that these companies, while useful, are not your friend. They don’t want to be, they just want you to think so. Realizing what is going on enables you to make a choice, then change your behaviors and step away from the crowd, to choose your own path with your money, your data, and your time. 

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