Food for thought – Homo Fomo

An idea, a book, a concept, a “food for thought” that we share with you to open reflection, discover new topics, and lead you to (re)think from another angle.

The acronym for fear of missing out (FOMO) is already about twenty years old. It was a Harvard student who used it for the first time to characterize the frenzied life on his campus where it was unthinkable to miss the slightest party, the address of the latest Boston club, the latest juicy news, or the latest academic article by a trendy MIT researcher, under penalty of being discredited, downgraded, marginalized.

Dan Herman, founder of Think Short, a company specializing in marketing methods that generate immediate enthusiasm and lasting addictions, immediately conceptualized this new FOMO behavior and sold it to his clients to strengthen brand loyalty and their new products. Since then, the FOMO syndrome has thrived, progressing at the pace of the exponential expansion of social networks, new addictions of the digital society.

Frances Haugen, former Facebook engineer, revealed that Zuckerberg’s company knowingly favored content that polarizes, divides, or incites hatred because it generates more interest and engagement. She even claims that Instagram is accountable for the suicidal intentions of 10% of young American women.

Originally, FOMO was only the compulsive checking of phones, “the nagging worry of missing out on something,” in the words of Daniel Cohen in La taylorisation de l’affect, a revealing chapter on the subject in his latest book Une brève histoire de l’économie. This compulsive behavior now largely exceeds its original technological object. It has become a symptom of a cognitive disruption that embodies one of the great ills of our time. It is the anxiety of missing out that prevails over the object missed: the subject, wanting to catch everything, no longer takes the time to measure the value of what they might miss. Everything that is released or posted is, in their eyes, credited with equivalent value, and extrinsic value prevails over intrinsic value. Information, a promotion, a commercial exclusivity, a party, a show preview, a funny or hurtful quote, an intimate or scandalous revelation must be immediately appropriated. Trivial goods of which the subject does not necessarily enjoy, except through knowledge of them and the narcissistic valorization they can derive from their dissemination.

It is the infinite and pathological extension of mimetic desire: unable to afford missing what others will necessarily have learned or spotted, I must be much more vigilant than them to remain competitive in the hunt for novelties. Even if it cuts into my sleep time and mental health. Remaining thus vigilant 24/7, I become incapable of paying attention to anything because I lose all capacity for real attention, real attention being made of differentiation and concentration.

The Wild West had its bounty hunters; the digital Deep West has its novelty hunters. Nothing must escape me, says the FOMO subject. For if the slightest thing escapes me, I am nothing, even less than nothing. I no longer choose, I like; I am no longer an initiator but a follower. The discernment that allows prioritizing objects of desire gives way to permanent impulsivity; the slow construction of self is replaced by the escalation toward immediate singularization, which relies on the appropriation and enjoyment of what passes and circulates continuously on social networks.

Convinced that what has just been released necessarily has higher value than what has already been released, the Homo FOMO lives in permanent anxiety of their own obsolescence and in the phobia of their deprogramming. Their psychic life becomes an alternation of euphoria and prostration: euphoria when they imagine belonging to the elite of influencers, sentinel of the infotainment empire on which the sun never sets; prostration when they feel excluded from the circulation of goods they consider so rare, although they are actually so trivial. The entire affective life of Homo FOMO is thus disrupted: they share with their peers only an endless series of micro-experiences which, because they are disconnected from each other in a time where nothing ever sediments, do not allow weaving the fabric of a personal life or projecting a common horizon of humanity.

A recent Stanford study calculated what a total disconnection from Facebook for a small group of individuals over one month would save per person in health and social security costs dedicated to treating anxiety and depressive episodes. It would be interesting to project this over the population of an entire country.

“I am looking for a man,” said Diogenes the Cynic, walking through the streets of Greek cities, illuminating the faces of passersby in broad daylight with his lantern. If Homo FOMO is indeed an avatar of our time, one can legitimately hope that it is not the future of our species.

References

Frances Haugen / The Facebook Files
Bruno Patino / Submersion
Michel Desmurget / La fabrique du crétin digital
Théodore Schaarschmidt / L’angoisse de l’occasion manquée
Bernard Stiegler / Economie de l’hypermatériel et psychopouvoir
Eva Illouz / La fin de l’amour
Daniel Cohen / Une brève histoire de l’économie