Social media has brought new disadvantages as well as certain advantages to certain people’s lives. Imagine that on a Friday evening, you are eating spaghetti, alone, at a newly opened restaurant in the city, that you have been eager to try for years. Would your awareness of alternative activities affect your dining experience that evening or your restaurant choice next time you dine? Would you be looking over your shoulder? Of course not… No, an individual’s subjective assessment of available alternatives could not possibly influence their scanning around, presuming that there is something else happening around them at all times, constantly, above and around.
FOMO is a kind of paranoia–the compulsion to constantly monitor channels of information to know what others are doing, an exhausting, depressing inability to concentrate on the present, a feeling that wears one down, the continuing attempts to be everywhere at once—two eyes, on all eyes. We have to be everywhere and so become no-where (which is not bad, but the accompanying anxiety of checking over your shoulder is so detrimental to peace of mind).
Connect connect connect, connections–but only possible with the tracking device in your pocket, or anything with a chip to the internet. No presence, needing to continuously be aware of other’s activities. Yes, there was a time when certain happenings remained a mystery. We, or they, want the system to extract “knowledge” and “predict” events concerning people. Now the pleasant neurotic imaginings. Wherever the camera is, wherever your phone is looking–yes, social comparisons predict addiction to surveillance technology. Selfie. The Courting of Echo and her wailing cries of love for Narcissus. The issue is that blue light dulls our ability to monitor ourselves in reflection but heightens our receptivity to see the other.
With love, on constant look out for the Anti-Christ.
FOMO
Fear of Monitoring Other
(“London”)
(“PERSON #1”)
(“Prediction:Identity Theft”)
(“10-10-2026 EVENING”)
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