Artificial FOMO

“I really wanted to watch this video about the devastation happening in Venezuela. The video was…you know…what a lot of people would consider short. About three minutes. But Alex… I’m telling you. When I got to about, 30, maybe 45 seconds, I started to fidget. I wanted to get to the next part already. It almost didn’t even matter what was next, I just wanted to see it.”

This was sent via a voice note between a friend and I. I often talk about how the species is changing. These “fidgets” my friend was referring to was a beautiful example of this change.

Welcome to Buddah’s worst nightmare. The information age. The age of distraction. The age of artificial FOMO. The good news for Buddah is that he accepts all, whether good or bad.

His ancient lesson is one that somehow still seems as refreshing despite it’s age.

I put my groceries in my Uber, as I was saving this voice note and thinking of what to say next about the importance of being present.

“Yeah. That’s deep. I know exactly what you’re talking about. And honestly, I don’t think you’re alone. I think a lot of people are going through this.”

I closed the door and there was a girl in the car. She was on her phone. She was one of the types of Uberpool riders that didn’t say hello. Off she scrolled.

“The exponential amount of content to consume is wiring our brains into falling for some sort of artificial FOMO. We subconsciously fear so much that we are missing out on something more important floating around, that we can’t enjoy the piece of content that is in front of us.”

I sent my text and looked out the window.

Fear of missing out on something has always been something humans have struggled with. It’s why we have sayings like “The grass is always greener on the other side”.

As if man wasn’t teased by his quest for satisfaction before, he now has a countless supply of information at his feet that he feels inclined to weed through to obtain his nirvana.

The truth is, there might be ten great articles about one topic you care about and you might only need to read one of them to get what you really want to learn. But how would you ever know unless you open a tab to try them all? If you open a tab for each one to read, how will you ever get to all of them?

You won’t.

This is the vicious cycle we live in everyday. We promise ourselves to be good scholars, good business people, good moms and dads and get to all the content. We can’t wait for that sweet feeling of completion or mastery.

But what if our quest to master it, is mastering us?

My friend was trying to do the “right” thing, by watching the video about Venezuela. He fell victim to the length of the video. He was trying to be a good, informed citizen and learn about what was going on, but his subconscious desire to know what else was going on was eating at him.

Is there anything else really going on?

How can we not feel like we are missing out on anything when there is a global discussion that we can participate in 24–7? Even Donald Trump finds himself tweeting at 3am. It’s pretty difficult. It’s never been this way before and I think we are learning what we as humans look like when we have it.

What are we to do about this self-inflicted FOMO? How do we stop the script that has been programmed within us that makes us check one more thing as we check one more thing? Is this hungry curiosity best distributed by trying to consume every piece of content that catches your eye? Or does it better serve you to place it elsewhere?

I’m placing mine under the tree, next to Buddah.