Add FOLS To FOMO & YOLO: Fear Of Looking Stupid
When unpunished bad conduct reaches a tipping point, FOLS will drive otherwise law-abiding people to also break the rules
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
YOLO
Most of us are familiar with the acronym YOLO — You Only Live Once.
YOLO is shorthand for a lifestyle philosophy of engaging in foolish, risky, or short-term pleasurable behavior based on the notion that your life is short and that you should grab all the immediate pleasure you can without much or any concern for the long-term consequences either to yourself or to anyone else.
It’s the moronic justification for selfish and self-indulgent conduct irrespective of the short-term harm it does to others or the long-term harm it may do to yourself.
FOMO
Then there is FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out, which is a shorthand explanation for copying other peoples’ apparently successful actions. It’s the “Everyone else is getting rich doing this so I’d better hurry up and do it too before it’s too late for me to get in on the gravy train” philosophy.
I would include Amazon’s and Microsoft’s decisions to build their own cell phones as examples of FOMO conduct.
FOLS
I want to add another acronym to the list: FOLS: Fear Of Looking Stupid. It’s shorthand for the emotion that motivates people to break a rule because since most other people are breaking that rule you think that you will look like a fool if you’re the only one who keeps following it.
For example, there’s a stop sign near your house that you know most of your neighbors regularly ignore.
You think, “Nobody else stops when the cross-street is clearly empty. I look like a fool for always stopping. From now on, I’m going to coast on through like everybody else.”
Fear Of Looking Stupid.
Bad Behavior Is Contagious
Because of FOLS, you often see people doing things they know are, if not wrong at least a violation of the rules.
I saw this philosophy in action in Portland where they operate their street cars on the Honor System. You’re supposed to pay at a kiosk before boarding the trolley, but there is no mechanism for checking whether or not people actually buy a ticket or punishing them for not buying a ticket.
When we got to town my girlfriend and I bought tickets before boarding the trolley, but we soon noticed that practically everybody treated the trolleys as a free transit system. That’s when FOLS raised its head for us.
Why should we be the only ones paying? Aren’t we being stupid by blindly following the rules and buying a ticket when everyone else is riding for free?
BTW, since we both agree with Martin Luther King’s dictum — “It’s always the right time to do the right thing” we remained members of the minority of riders who actually bought tickets.
FOLS Encourages All Sorts Of Bad Behavior
- It’s OK To Steal
You see FOLS at work in many situations. A reporter asked a man who had just shoplifted something from a San Francisco Walgreens why he took it without paying. He responded, “Because it’s San Franscisco.”
The culture in a certain portion of the San Francisco population is that it’s OK to steal what you want. BTW, judging from the locked display cases, shopping carts that can’t pass through the doors, and the lack of shopping baskets, that same “It’s OK to steal” attitude is rampant in Portland too.
If after the hurricane most of my neighbors are getting away with looting the Walmart, I’d be a fool not to get my own share of the swag.
- It’s OK To Break Traffic Laws
FOLS is one of those tipping-point processes. When almost everybody stops at the stop sign, then almost everybody stops at the stop sign.
When the percentage of drivers who stop declines to a certain point, the tipping point, then FOLS comes into play and the number of drivers who don’t stop increases at an exponential rate.
- It’s OK To Cheat On Your Taxes
If most people pay their taxes then most people pay their taxes. If tax enforcement falls below some level, some tipping point, tax collections will exponentially plummet.
You will see FOLS at work for all kinds of both legal and social rules.
- It’s OK To Cheat At Work
If everybody at the office is coming in late and going home early, then I’d be a fool to work my full eight hours. FOLS will urge me to also come in late and leave early.
- It’s OK To Sexually Harass Women At Work
If most of the male executives at my company are hitting on the secretaries without any consequences, I’d be a fool not to make a pass at the cute new girl in my department.
Defeat FOLS By Imposing Consequences For Bad Conduct
Anytime society allows a rule to be broken with impunity, FOLS will motivate most people who would otherwise obey the rule to themselves break it as well.
If you don’t want lots of thieves cleaning out retail stores, you have to lock up the shoplifters.
If you don’t want lots of drivers going forty or fifty miles per hour on residential streets, you have to punish speeders.
If you want to collect taxes, you have to catch and punish tax evaders.
If you want your transit system to generate revenue, you have to catch and punish people who ride without buying a ticket.
Humans Pursue Selfish Goals
Humans are driven by basic impulses –
- The desire to be respected or admired.
- The desire to benefit themselves.
- The desire to acquire wealth and property.
- The desire for physical pleasure.
If a rule stands in the way of fulfilling one of those desires most people will break that rule if they can do so without punishment.
When you take away the risk of punishment, when people see others breaking that rule without adverse consequences, they will inevitably tell themselves, “I will look like a fool if I’m the only one who obeys the rule.”
FOLS is the motivation for the conduct that often results in the “Everybody else does it” defense.
Once unpunished conduct reaches the tipping point, FOLS will inevitably drive a large number of people who otherwise would obey a rule, to break it.
FOLS is the force behind societal cancer.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
