FOMO, FOGO, nie wiadomo | iMagazine

I’ve heard about the fear of getting lost. The beginnings of the search for FOMO date back to 1996, although the term has only burst into the collective consciousness in the current millennium. Or not, because he himself deals a little with the lack of this awareness. It turns out that FOMO is no longer the only acronym for digital addiction.

This article is from the iMagazine Archive 4/2021

FOMO is defined as the horrific fear that we will miss something – often something that happens every nanosecond in the internet space, has become the subject of social discourse. Everyone knows about the problem, the majority declares that it must definitely be fought and that most (including me) are losing this battle every day. And not because someone did not suddenly turn off the entire Internet, but for many other reasons that do not affect networks in this way. The world has accelerated and continues to accelerate so intensely that we often miss something.

FOGO – Fear of going out

You see a new trend, new stories, a new social networking site, or anything you know you might not follow. For a fairly simple reason. You’ve arranged it all yourself to carve out your calendar of meetings, tasks and what “you” have, this little space you can dedicate to anything you want. Here’s a boom! A new one has come and they’re all running. As if someone cast a great light, as in Batman, whose light surely travels everywhere and attracts almost everyone.

You will have to keep up with what others already know or it will take too long. what they have already tested. You don’t want to be there, so you start running. FOMO starts to work and then gradually fades away, as is the power of the spotlight that drew you to a new and important topic.

And here the sages of this world identified this moment and called it FOGO. Fear of going out. From home (due to a pandemic), from a group on a social network (because it doesn’t fall), from a social network (because I wouldn’t say it’s a ball and chain). We are amazing as people at how accurately we diagnose ourselves and then prescribe a miracle cure, however, we forget to take it, because everything rushes.

Router

One man stated that he was receiving an average of 160 emails per day. He noticed that even if he devotes only half a minute to each message, in the end he will do nothing else for an hour and a half a day, but only receive, read and forward emails. It would be a human directive in the literal sense of the word.

Another man took the time to analyze his activity during the day on all the social media sites where he has active accounts. It was helped by the Screen Time mechanism built into Apple’s operating systems. It turns out that he devotes four hours of his life a day to social media engagement. That’s half of the full-time working hours. It should be noted that 90% of this post was negative. It was about following the lives of others.

Examples like the above are in the millions. How not billions. Just like billions of people, they have jobs that require them to, for example, write back to email. It is clear that this can be done wisely and stupidly. I’ve been trying to live and recommend life to others, by following the principle of total rebellion, telling people that the internet is bad, and no one sends emails anymore. The results were, of course, counterproductive (even better). Today I can confidently say that FOMO can have a good side.

This is the moment when we make a conscious decision about the complete lack of commitment to a particular topic, so as not to put more pressure on ourselves. We do it based on our lives and experiences and it’s our decision. It is not a prescription for all of humanity. This is a good FOMO. It has a clean and immature side, because that’s how you can let go of everything, but in times of huge hype it’s a good trend that I think it’s much worse not to talk about FOMO or FOGO or other phenomena than to try to understand them, even in a formal way. Superficial.

fob

Coming back to the previous issue of iMagazine, where I shared my review of the Clubhouse with you, I’ll come back to this site for a moment. In this case, two mechanisms worked for me. At first FOMO is strong, so I quickly set up an account there. Then I went through the FOGO phase, which lasted about a week, because my love for audio media resulting from being a podcaster player, and even more so than being a chatterbox, screamed so hard: Look! He, she, they are there. You won’t leave this audio club as a podcast because you can’t!

you can do it. And I must admit that FOMO worked a lot more for me in the context of my private life space, which I would forever lose by letting dozens of strangers in and taking the time to understand the meaning of their conversations, rather than just saying: stop. I don’t want to have time for this.

If I had to craft another acronym, I would aim for FOBS – fear of being myself. Most of all, we are afraid of being ourselves. This strange man who is nowhere to be found. That weird girl is everywhere. Damn – it is. thats it. Maybe it’s best for them at the end of the day, right?