Episode 70 - FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Transcript

David: 0:12

Hello everyone. Welcome to Overthink.

Ellie: 0:15

The best of all possible philosophy podcasts, Leibniz would say, I am your co-host, Professor Ellie Anderson.

David: 0:22

And I'm your co-host, Dr. David Peña-Guzmán.

Ellie: 0:25

Dr. David, do you experience FOMO? Otherwise known as Fear of Missing Out.

David: 0:31

I honestly don't. I don't experience FOMO in my life. Obviously I experience regret, you know, sometimes I choose not to do something and then retroactively I decide that I should have done that because it's something that I would've liked to do.

Ellie: 0:47

Okay.

David: 0:47

But not really FOMO in the way in which I think people who succumb to it think about it, which is this, this constant fear of being left out of the loop. It's like, leave me out of the loop.

Ellie: 1:00

Wow. What an amazing security in your own choices you have, David, although you say that you regret not doing certain things, which I think somebody could say a backward looking FOMO.

David: 1:12

Yeah, somebody could say that regret is a kind of FOMO. Maybe like FOMO weak or FOMO light.

Ellie: 1:18

FOMO weak. I think you mean FOMO light. Yeah.

David: 1:22

FOMO light. Yes. FOMO light. No, but I do think regret is different than FOMO, and the reason is a temporality. When I regret something that's a backwards looking judgment, whereas FOMO is present and forward looking. So people who have FOMO are afraid of what they are missing right now in the present or what they are about to miss often in the near future.

Ellie: 1:49

Mm-hmm.

David: 1:51

Even beyond the temporality. I think there's also a question of constancy perhaps here. My regret is not constant. I don't regret every decision that I make. It is just about those occasional situations where looking back at my choices, I come to the conclusion that I made a mistake and that I, I don't know, maybe I didn't go to a concert that I would've loved to go because I was being lazy and I just gave myself over to inertia. And I think FOMO is much more of a constant emotion or a mental state that pervades those who are victims to it.

Ellie: 2:25

See that I'm not so sure about. I definitely agree with you on the temporality of FOMO. I think you're totally right that FOMO is present and forward looking. I don't think it needs to be constant though. Like I will go through periods where I'm really content with what I'm doing or kind of what I'm not doing right, but then I'll have other moments, usually around particular events where I feel major, major FOMO. My friends in college used to get so annoyed with me because I would constantly second guess the party we were going to anytime we went out or get impatient with my friends because they were pre-gaming in the dorm for too long and we were missing out on exciting activities. There was this feeling that at this very moment, I am missing out on something exciting, or in the next hour I will miss out on the greatest thing that could happen to me in my college partying career. And think like it's, it's feeling for me of wanting to be in the center of things and having this desperate desire, which I've actually felt ever since I was young and it's kind of pathetic, to be like in the heart of it all.

David: 3:31

Yeah, you want to be in the eye of the storm. Spelled literally "I" like, you to be at this, you have to be the storm itself. I mean, I actually remember that aspect of you from grad school that you would impatient around people not being ready. And you know, at the time I used to take my sweet time getting ready.

Ellie: 3:51

I would come over to your house, David, before we went out dancing and you would be just about to put on a face mask of clay that you had personally picked out of like a mountain in Mexico and be like, sorry, I have to mix together my clay and then I'm going eat. You used to make, uh, cactus all the time in grad school. You'd be like, I have to eat my cactus dinner and put on my handmade Mexican clay mask and then we'll leave for the club in two hours.

David: 4:18

Yes, I needed be, uh, ready to have my terracotta warrior look. Now mixing cultural categories here. No, but I mean, even look at the language that you used though, Ellie, because you said that you were constantly frustrated by people being not ready and then you had this desperate desire to be in the eye of the storm.

Ellie: 4:39

Okay.

David: 4:39

Obviously I don't think that people who have FOMO have it at every moment of

Ellie: 4:43

Of their lives.

David: 4:45

You know, it's just like they're reduced to a FOMO subject, but that it is a constant factor in their mental life especially around times of leisure, which is when

Ellie: 4:56

Okay.

David: 4:57

that we need to enjoy our lives. You know, nobody has FOMO about work related stuff for the most part, unless you really enjoy your work.

Ellie: 5:04

Oh, I actually do have FOMO, cause about work related stuff.

David: 5:09

Because you enjoy your work.

Ellie: 5:11

Yeah, but I think for me it's actually more, it's like the borderline between FOMO and jealousy. So I've changed a lot since my days of being impatient to go to the club. I don't know if it's like COVID or being in my thirties, but I see parties, you know, on Instagram. I'm like, oh, whatever. I'm like so happy that I was at home watching Great British Baking Show instead of being out and about. But I do have FOMO around career achievements. Like I have FOMO about publishing a book and I'll see if other friends publish a book, I'm super, super happy for them, including you, David. But I'm also like, oh, I want that.

David: 5:48

Well, I, I, you see, I don't know that I would call that FOMO, your fear of not publishing a book, because when I think of FOMO is fear of missing out on something that is happening objectively you can join. Whereas what you're talking about, it's a fear of not achieving a goal that you have set for yourself. And, and that's slightly different. I, do think there is career related FOMO. So for example, if there is a conference, you know, a philosophy conference where all the big names in the profession are talking and then you see the pictures on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook and you're like, oh my gosh, I totally missed out on that. I would consider that a kind of professionalized FOMO.

Ellie: 6:34

Okay. Okay.

David: 6:35

So, but I mean that, that also is an indicator of the fact that we're adults now and our FOMO has been displaced, from like and being in the eye of the storm to just wanting to be where like our professional colleagues are at. I don't know, it's kind of depressing.

Ellie: 6:52

Aging FOMO. It might not just be us actually, because I have heard that. FOMO is maybe a specifically millennial thing. We'll get into the historical elements of the fear of missing out in the episode, but it seems like Gen Z just experiences less FOMO than we do. And so maybe FOMO is aging, not just with us, but with our generation.

David: 7:11

Oh no. Is our discussion of FOMO passe?

Ellie: 7:14

Honestly, no, no, no. There's, there is so much we can still learn about the fear of missing out, even if it began as a millennial panic and changed quite a bit during quarantine.

David: 7:24

Well, yes. I think that's an important point because COVID did really change the nature of the game, and we can talk about COVID changing a lot of things, but I think in particular in relation to our desires and our fear of missing things,

Ellie: 7:36

Yeah.

David: 7:37

it really is a central player. Because one could say that COVID gave us all FOMO, of course, but it's even more complicated than that because during COVID, there was nothing to miss out on things to miss out on themselves. So it was like FOMO without an object.

Ellie: 7:56

Yeah, like when there was no more stuff to miss out on, we were afraid of no longer having things to miss out on. We had FOMO about FOMO.

David: 8:08

Yeah. Now we can talk about FOMO squared. Today we are talking about missing out.

Ellie: 8:17

How has social media given rise to FOMO or the fear of missing out?

David: 8:22

What does FOMO tell us about our desire to connect with others, especially in an age of consumer capitalism?

Ellie: 8:28

And does JOMO, the joy of missing out, provide a viable solution?

David: 8:33

If there is one thing that I learned about this term, FOMO, is that nobody knows where it comes from. the literature on this is an absolute mess. Some sources trace it all the way back to 1985, literally a year before I was born. Uh, when Kelly Watson and Diane Meyer described FOMO as, and this is a quote, label for the sadness one feels when knowing he or she is missing a good time with friends or loved ones. The worry one feels that memories are being made that he or she will not have, or the anxiety one feels when deciding between equally fun sounding events." That's the end of the quote.

Ellie: 9:24

Yeah. Yeah.

David: 9:25

Now, the issue is that there is no locatable record of this mention and of this source so maybe it's apocryphal that it came from 1985 when Watson and Meyer said this. Who knows?

Ellie: 9:39

I know I also read that the term was coined in 2004, but then the footnote for it was to a San Francisco gate article from 2010. So what is going on? Like when we're, we're professional researchers, David, and we could not actually find when FOMO was coined. In any case, whether it was 2004, 2010, or 1985, it seems like a very 2010s phenomenon. This is definitely when the term exploded and people started to discuss FOMO as a motivating factor for doing things. For instance, I want to quote from the San Francisco Gate article in 2010 about FOMO because the author states that they feel FOMO "when I peruse the local foodie blogs, reading about the latest and greatest San Francisco bars and cafes, boutique coffee joints and tasty underground layers, gourmet pig butchering classes, and DIY absinthe workshops, any thousand funky foodie trucks, stopping by innumerable hipster brew pubs to serve up Dimsum, crabcakes, and pho from a tiny shiny kitchen tucked inside a large shiny Ford." So blogs, food trucks, hipster brew pubs, and van life. This quote is giving 2010 for sure.

David: 10:56

Yeah, I, sure. I mean, the blogs is definitely very 2010. Some other things may be a little bit less, but together definitely.

Ellie: 11:04

Food trucks.

David: 11:05

They still exist.

Ellie: 11:07

I know, but the whole constellation is just like so of a moment.

David: 11:11

Yes. Well, and so this location of the term to 2010 or the 2010s, I think really speaks to the rise of social media during the early 2000s and the 2010s. And I think that needs to be factored in as a pretty central component of our thinking about FOMO.

Ellie: 11:30

Of course, the anxiety about social status that gives rise to FOMO, I think is because you can see what your friends are doing. You have this sense everybody else out there doing cool things that you are not cool enough to be doing, or even to get invited to. It's like, what are you doing while you watch an Instagram story of a friend sipping spritzes in Greece or ice skating Rockefeller Center? You're sitting on couch in goblin mode with absolutely nothing to do except watch Selling Sunset.

David: 12:01

Selling Sunset. Yeah. A good show. Or maybe you're just that person who is at the club and then you start looking at your social media and you see an even better club with an even better party. And now by comparison, your club looks like crap. Um, and so I think FOMO really feeds the beast of nothing is ever good enough, which in general is related to the rise of social media. That's what social media does. It dampens the present.

Ellie: 12:30

And of course this, nothing is ever good enough mentality and its relation to social media is very bourgeois. FOMO is probably a fundamentally middle class and upper middle class phenomenon. This is something that comes up in some of the articles about FOMO. It's like the poor don't have the luxury to care about whether what they're doing is the best possible thing and the super wealthy trust that they are doing the best

David: 12:51

Hmm.

Ellie: 12:52

possible thing. So it's, those are sort of who are sort of more in the middle who have the social freedom and the financial mobility to be doing different things and have that class anxiety or that status anxiety about doing the right thing, being in the center of it all.

David: 13:07

Being in the center of it all. And I mean, now that makes me wonder whether FOMO would be a symptom for what Nietzsche would call ressentiment, because for Nietzsche, let's say the, the nobles just which here would be a stand in for the upper class.

Ellie: 13:21

Yeah.

David: 13:21

They don't care about what other people are doing. They know that they're doing well and they affirm what they're doing almost with a healthy naivete. According to Nietzsche, they're just like having the best time. But then those with less privilege, like the middle class, for example, would find themselves obsessing over what the nobles are doing and how evil they are, and how they have everything they want, and we don't have anything. And so they end up looking at others with suspicion, or as Nietzsche says, they start squinting in the direction of the other party, which is a really great convention. You know, just like the squinting person full of ressentiment.

Ellie: 13:57

And I really like that connection to Nietzsche here. I, I think we should think about it for a moment because ressentiment for Nietzsche is a fundamentally reactive emotion that involves resentment or hostility to what is outside of you. So it often involves the sense that other people think they're better than you and you need to put them in their place. I feel like this is true of FOMO, right?

David: 14:20

Yeah, I think so. In the sense. I mean, for Nietzsche, ressentiment is a self-defeating attitude because it ends up giving others power,

Ellie: 14:28

yeah.

David: 14:28

weakens your own power as a living subject because it's not self-affirming. So I think Nietzsche would say, if we were to drag him to this level, the club where you're at and affirm the, the moment that you're in, and stop obsessing with jealousy and envy about what others are doing. But I think at some point, the analogy breaks down in the sense that for Nietzsche, ressentiment ultimately leads to a vengeful desire. And I'm not sure that I see a vengeful element in, in FOMO, per se.

Ellie: 15:02

Yeah. Yeah. True.

David: 15:03

It's too, it's too passive for vengeance. But maybe there is an element of it. Because one of the things that I noticed in, in the research on FOMO is that one of the most common side effects of FOMO, especially the more intense cases of people who feel it all the time in relation to a lot of things, is that it really leads to this phenomenon known as cognitive distortion, is when you start thinking thoughts that deep down, you know, don't make sense, but that you can't make go away. So for example, you start thinking, oh, well my friends didn't invite me to this party that I'm seeing on Snapchat because they hate me. And they secretly had a meeting where they cut me out of the circle without telling me. And once you have that thought, then maybe it triggers another thought, which is maybe I should cut them off and stop talking to them before they can fully cut me off. So you do become vengeful potentially through FOMO.

Ellie: 16:00

I can kind of relate to this idea, not the vengeance specifically, LOL, but

David: 16:06

You cut me off, we'll know why it was.

Ellie: 16:09

No, like I said, I've, changed quite a bit in recent years, but the idea that FOMO builds up resentment and can enhance your sense of self superiority, I feel like, was part of my younger experiences of FOMO. So I was never very cool growing up. And even though I definitely had friends, I was in high school, Christian and prudish, so I wouldn't always get invited to the parties that my friends went to. And in retrospect, like, I get it, but at the time I was really sad about it and I felt really excluded, and my reaction was just to like watch old movies alone at my house and read Ballsack and try and convince myself that I was just more sophisticated, even though I was just like less cool.

David: 16:53

Yeah. No, I mean, that is the squinting subject of resentment, right? Like the person who's just like, I'm better than you. You just don't know

Ellie: 17:00

I know.

David: 17:01

that you're like, I get it. You know? I would've bullied myself. Like I wouldn't, I wouldn't have invited myself.

Ellie: 17:07

I didn't want to drink. I was like into staying celibate until marriage. Like I wouldn't have wanted me at a high school party either. This was also during the time of Facebook. It was long before Instagram, Snapchat, even smartphones. And so I would actually never know while I was home on a Friday night, if there was a party that I hadn't been invited to at most, I might have a vague sense that something might be going on. Like, oh, usually on Friday nights we'd be going to a movie theater to watch a movie, but nobody said anything. So maybe they're all secretly hanging out without me and going to some cool party. And then this suspicion would be verified if one of my friends uploaded a Facebook album the next day.

David: 17:47

Yeah. Um, and I think that would be an interesting distinction to keep in mind because nowadays young people can see the things that they've been left out on left out from the parties while they are happening. It's a live reaction, which forecloses the possibility that you did have back in the day, which is that, no, maybe I'm wrong, maybe they are not meeting behind my back.

Ellie: 18:11

Do you think that makes FOMO better or worse?

David: 18:14

I think it makes it better. One idea here is that FOMO can be a motivator for people to break isolationist tendencies in the moment. I, I read some articles that talked about how FOMO can lead to enhanced social connectivity. So you know that vengeful, squinting subject can be enough to be motivated to send a petty text message like, Hey, what are you doing now? You know. Want to hang out?

Ellie: 18:43

Does it have to be petty? Can they just be like, oh, maybe my friend like didn't think about inviting me. I'm going to see they're up to. You know? It could just benign.

David: 18:52

It can be benign, it can be petty, but it does increase social connectivity it could be that it's a friend that you haven't seen in a while. You see that they're at a bar, you know, not too far from your place, then you just say, Hey, I just thought that you're at this bar. What are you up to? Do you want to hang out later tonight since you're in the neighborhood? And so having that kind of immediate access in the moment can have this social side effect. But then again, a lot of this would depend on the that you get back from that friend. Because if then they respond to you without knowing that you have that knowledge by saying, oh, I'm just taking care of my grandma tonight, can't talk, talk to you later, then you not only know that they didn't invite you,

Ellie: 19:36

Yeah.

David: 19:36

they actually don't want you there.

Ellie: 19:38

Yeah, yeah. Well that, that is true. But I also think that there's something about this experience that can lead to just you kind of knowing what the center of things is to begin with even if it's your friend that you're not that close to who's posting at the bar near your house, even if you don't end up texting them, you know, like, oh, that bar is popping on Friday nights. Maybe I'll go there right now with you know, the friend I'm watching a movie with inside. Or maybe I'll go there next week.

David: 20:01

Yeah. No, I think that's right. And so that could be one benefit of experiencing FOMO in an age in which you have that access to the present as it's unfolding. And so maybe we are moving from a culture of FOMO to a culture of Know-MO and get it, uh, where you know that you're missing out and you're

Ellie: 20:22

Oh.

David: 20:22

Not afraid. Come on, give me that. Give me that, Ellie.

Ellie: 20:26

Well, Know-MO, it sounds like N O M O. So I was then, it's K N O W M O. I see.

David: 20:31

But, but also NOMO, because they told you, no, we don't want to hang out with you. So it's actually a double meaning.

Ellie: 20:37

But Know-MO is what I didn't have, I guess, in high school. Although sometimes people will still like wait until the next day to upload their Instagram pics, but I do think that FOMO itself is a very millennial thing, not only in the sense that it's tied to perhaps like a different age of social media, at least in its more traditional form, but I think it's also related to burnout and to hustle culture, right? This idea that you need to like be doing the most. The girl bosses are filled with FOMO. Gen Z like doesn't give a shit.

David: 21:11

Well and and beyond the who is affected by it. We should also talk about that, how it comes about. And I think that's where social media kicks in because most of the research out there on FOMO is research about the social effects and the psychological effects of social media, suggesting that FOMO is a digitally constructed or at least a digitally triggered psychological experience. if we think about it as an emotional state, then we would say that it's an emotional state that we are put into by external factors, you know, by you seeing something on your Facebook post or by you seeing somebody having fun on Instagram without you. And that would mean that it's not a natural human emotion, right? It's not as if we can think about FOMO as being one of those core motivating forces in human life. It is a product of forces larger than ourselves that are tied to a particular historical moment into a certain organization of society that is digital in nature.

Ellie: 22:14

Hmm. But I wonder there, David, whether we could say that to the extent that we can call any emotion quote natural, we could say that the fear of missing out boils down to fear, right? Which is like a more, I don't know if we want to say natural human emotion, but like a more core human emotion, right? What is specifically social media-y about the fear itself rather than just fear being applied to this case of missing out, which has to do with human sociality.

David: 22:40

Well, I would say that it is the irrationality of the fear, right? Because FOMO is fear of missing out in general of things happening. But that's not a rational fear to have because you always will miss out on things since you can't be everywhere at once. And so I, think the object of the FOMO makes it particularly historical and sheds light on the intersection between our psyche and the technologies that mediated in the present, in the, in the age of, of digitality.

Ellie: 23:12

So, so it's not that fear of missing out can boil down to a fear that then is applied to missing out. It's that the concept itself is more unified and fundamentally related to social media?

David: 23:22

I think so. I think I would say FOMO is a social media phenomenon that maybe wouldn't have existed before 2010 in spite of that, or people tracing it to 1985.

Ellie: 23:35

I want to remain agnostic about whether it existed in 1985. I will say though, that I wonder if FOMO is getting actually mitigated quite a lot by more recent forms of social media. So going back to what we said about how, you know, you, you said that you think FOMO might be a little bit better now that we can see what's going on in real time as opposed to when I was in high school, like seeing the Facebook album the next day. And I think I agree with that and I'm thinking about my experiences, not just with like seeing that something's happening in the time that it's happening, but also with the fact that social media allows me to sort of go into experiences, especially travel experiences, with a kind of arsenal of interesting activities and locations I know I want to hit so that I am avoiding FOMO before it arises. So for instance, when I started abroad in Paris in 2009, I did not have a smartphone. There were barely even any travel blogs, let alone Google Maps that told you this is a hot location. You know how Google Maps now literally tells you where the center of things are? I fucking love that feature. That appeals so much to my FOMO uh, you know, like tendencies. We had none of that. All I had was this printed out map of Paris. I had a few Parisian friends, but not enough to like actually really tell me where the hotspots were. And so I was just like wandering around Paris, wondering what am I doing here? Where are all the cool people? Where are all the hot French dudes? Where is all the good shopping that I could afford as like a 19 year old student or whatever? Yeah. Good luck And, um, I just felt so out of the mix. And now I can go to a place that I know way less well than Paris, where I don't speak the language and I can arrive with like a fully plotted Google Map of things that I've seen online are cool to do. And I love that it really, really mitigates FOMO for me.

David: 25:32

I can see how it mitigates FOMO for some people. But I would also say that then the expectation that your travel should rise to, to that level or to that standard of not missing any of the great things is itself something that is created by social media and by advertisement. I don't think people previously travel thinking, oh yeah, I can definitely go to a city and in a weekend hit all the great spots where all the things are happening. And so I think it, you know, I see the mitigation factor, but I also see the construction happening by these forces.

Ellie: 26:07

Actually that's an interesting point, David, because I think when we're thinking about France, for instance, like I would obsess over where are the cool bars, and like most French people don't really care that much about where the cool bars are. It's like, oh, we go to the brasserie that's like downstairs from our apartment.

David: 26:22

In the corner. Yes. Even though we have talked about FOMO as something that we are into by outside forces, it's important to realize it is ultimately also an inner reality for the experiencing subject that opens up to psychological investigation.

Ellie: 27:02

Well, yeah, it's a fear.

David: 27:04

Yeah. And I mean, that's how we talked about it a few minutes ago, right? As a fear that maybe has a weird object and in fact it's just built into the acronym, F O M O. But now I'm wondering whether we might want to change our view about it a little bit

Ellie: 27:19

Hmm.

David: 27:20

could be that the term fear for this phenomenon is a misnomer. And I, I think we could describe it as something else. Something like a phobia rather than a fear.

Ellie: 27:31

Okay. That's a lot more extreme than anticipated. Phobias are big deals.

David: 27:38

Yes. They are big deals. And so is FOMO. Um, well, let me be clear that I'm here thinking about more extreme versions of FOMO. You know, maybe it includes you back in 2019. Maybe it doesn't.

Ellie: 27:52

Wait, in 2000 you mean 2009?

David: 27:54

Yeah. In 2009.

Ellie: 27:55

Yeah, girl. I studied abroad in 2009.

David: 27:58

I don't know how long your condition lasted. Ellie

Ellie: 28:00

Okay. I was, I was probably experiencing a little FOMO still in 2019.

David: 28:04

Yeah, I mean, and then we experienced, what was it? Um, FOMO square during COVID?

Ellie: 28:08

Yeah. Yeah.

David: 28:09

Now in the psychological literature, there's often a distinction between fears and phobias, where fears are defined as natural and rational reactions against a threatening stimulus, right? You see a dog that is showing its teeth and salivating at the mouth and running towards you, and you are afraid, whereas phobias are irrational or disproportionate fears that over time can become so overwhelming for the person that they get in the way of the person living a normal life. And so cynophobia, the fear of dogs would be being afraid of dogs at all times, even when there is no good reason being afraid. You know, very basic distinction here.

Ellie: 28:54

Okay.

David: 28:56

And I think we might be able to describe FOMO at its core as a phobia. And the reason that I say this is because, as I mentioned earlier, I think fear of missing out is fundamentally irrational in the sense that you cannot be everywhere at once. Other people will do things without you inevitably. And that's not a good reason to be thrown into a state of alarm. When we think about the intensity of FOMO for some people, I think it, it gives added justification for us to think about it through this concept of a phobia. Because for some people, it actually gets in the way of them living a normal life that is fulfilling and enriching in the way that, you know, we would hope people's lives are. And I'm here thinking about a particular friend of mine, Ellie.

Ellie: 29:46

Okay. Do I know them?

David: 29:48

No, you do not know them. They are a friend that I made in France and this friend, let's just call them Alex. Alex's FOMO is so intense that he would just not commit to doing anything because he always was afraid that something better would come along.

Ellie: 30:04

No.

David: 30:04

Yes. And over time just end up staying at home waiting for that better thing to come along and ultimately doing nothing.

Ellie: 30:12

Live your life Alex!

David: 30:15

I'm realizing that the term, Alex is kind of weird when you say it because it's a Middle Eastern person. So like it's unlikely that he is they're called Alex. anyways, maybe let's change it to, uh, Mohamed a more culturally appropriate name so that I don't get confused when you say it. So my friend Mohamed, uh, has Mohamed.

Ellie: 30:32

No. Live your life.

David: 30:34

And it extended all the way to food in a really bizarre way. when we would go to a restaurant, he would order his meal, but he would never enjoy it. In fact, he was always deeply dissatisfied with what he ate because the only thing that he experienced at the restaurant was the negative space or the gap of all the things that he could have ordered that probably could have been better than the thing that he actually ended up ordering.

Ellie: 31:05

Alex Mohamed needs some therapy.

David: 31:08

No kidding. And so I think about Mohamed and I'm like, this is phobic.

Ellie: 31:14

Do you think David, if Alex Mohamed, that's my new name for him, um, had enough money to actually just buy like all of the dishes or like a chef's fire it up, sampler platter that he would have been satisfied. Is it just a matter of means or there's something more fundamental to it where even that wouldn't satisfy him?

David: 31:35

So I think there's something much more fundamental to that. So my answer is no. On the one hand, there's going to be a second hand. I, I often begin with on the one hand, and then I always forget about the second not today. Not today, Satan. So on the one hand, I think his FOMO would manifest itself. Otherwise, even if he had all the money to order waiter, give me one of everything on the menu, then the FOMO would manifest itself in terms of all the other restaurants that we could have gone to instead of this one. And the second point, and this is what I really want to talk to you about, Ellie, in connection to FOMO, that I think FOMO, and this is another reason why I think of it as a phobia rather than as a, as a simple fear, is never really a fear of the thing that is presented as the object of the fear. I think it's always fear of something else. And so I think there is a logic of displacement that is at work in these very extreme versions of, FOMO, deep down, I don't think he's afraid of missing out on a good meal. He's afraid of missing out. Which is why it can manifest itself in relation to anything. And I want us to think a little bit about this displacement together, because I'm here going to lean on Freudian psychoanalysis a little bit, Freud's discussion of phobias in his 1895 text Obsessions and Phobias.

Ellie: 33:02

You're literally psychoanalyzing Mohamed on air.

David: 33:05

Uh, yes. Yes. And he will never, he doesn't listen to the podcast. So I, this is like my revenge. And for Freud, phobias often include precisely an element of what he calls displacement. So I'm taking that term from Freud and in short, when people have a phobia of something, it is not because they're really afraid of the thing in question, but because they are afraid of what the thing itself unconsciously represents or stands in for. So what you think is your fear is actually a decoy of sorts,

Ellie: 33:41

Mm-hmm.

David: 33:41

pychologically speaking, that hides from you, your real fear. And you know, after Freud wrote this piece in 1895, a few years later, in 1909, he wrote another piece called Analysis of a Phobia of a Five-Year-Old Boy.

Ellie: 33:58

Little Hans.

David: 34:00

Yes, Little Hans, where he gives a really good example of this displacement. Long story short, this five-year-old is psychoanalyzed by Freud, and the problem that this little boy had is that he was uncontrollably, irrationally, afraid of horses. Now if you're a classic psychologist, you might say, who knows? Maybe the kid saw a horse hit a person and, you know, just became afraid of horses generally. Freud draws the conclusion that this little kid is actually afraid of his father.

Ellie: 34:35

Hmm.

David: 34:35

And the horses that live outside of his house become a stand-in or a placeholder for the father figure. And so I, I think everybody who has FOMO is Little Hans, um, not in the sense that they're afraid of the father, not, not in that sense, but in the sense that the thing that they are afraid of is not the thing that they think they are afraid um, but rather something else.

Ellie: 35:01

And what is that something else?

David: 35:03

Well, I don't think it needs to be just one thing. I think it just needs to be something other than the thing that people think they fear.

Ellie: 35:12

So it would just, it would just depend on the person, is that right?

David: 35:17

Maybe not on the person. I think there might be some fundamental fears that apply to a large number of FOMOers, but I just want to say that maybe it's not just one single fundamental fear. So, for example, I think what people who experience really high level FOMO, really fear in some cases, is coming face to face with the fact that maybe the people that they love don't exclusively love them back, but have plenty of other love investments and love interests and friends, and can lead a perfectly happy life without that one person.

Ellie: 35:58

So FOMO is displacing feelings around compulsory monogamy and jealousy.

David: 36:03

Yeah, I think there's a, I definitely think there is jealousy, and it's a fear of embracing the fact that our friends can be happy without us, which is basically what we're seeing when we're in that club looking at Snapchat and seeing our friends at another bar with other people having the best time of their lives. And so here we would see a logic of displacement at work. And the reason that I say this is because I have met people, and I'm here not even talking about Alex Mohamed anymore, who experienced FOMO about things that they objectively don't even like. Because I'm in the spirit of now roasting my friends on air, I have this other friend here in San Francisco who experiences FOMO if we go to the movies without him, even though we all know that he constantly talks about how he doesn't like going to the movies.

Ellie: 36:56

Man after my own heart. I don't like going to the movies that much either, although maybe I just got out of the habit in COVID and maybe I'll get back into it, but I haven't been that into it lately.

David: 37:05

Yeah. But again, if you fear missing out on something that you actually would rather miss out on,

Ellie: 37:12

Don't even want to do it.

David: 37:14

Yeah. Then it's an indicator that you are looking away from the true object of your anxiety.

Ellie: 37:21

I see. And if we think about FOMO as rooted in displacement, then it can displace more fears too. For instance, I could easily imagine specific cases of FOMO as expressions of a displaced fear of death, because the idea that one shouldn't miss a thing is impossible for mortal creatures who live finite lives. So possibly FOMO would be a way of repressing our anxiety about death by allowing this anxiety to still express itself, but in connection to a new object. Not maximizing your life enough, not living it to the fullest.

David: 37:54

Yeah, and I mean, death is the ultimate when it comes to missing out because once you're dead, you only miss out. Right? So the fear of missing out is, would be a fear of death. Thinking here psychoanalytically a little bit more, I think narcissism is also a part of the equation because there are people whose FOMO often expresses itself as fear of missing events and parties that other people have organized because they are afraid that if they don't show up to the party, then the organizers will be upset or somehow the party will not be very fun, like the spirit of the party. And the same friend that I'm talking about in connection to the movies falls into this category because he's afraid that if he doesn't show up, his absence will ruin the party. So he ends up saying yes to everything that he's invited to out of a sense of obligation. But then does them kind of half ass-idly, like he'll show up for 15 minutes because then he has to go.

Ellie: 38:53

Well then he really is ruining the party by showing up for a hot second.

David: 38:57

Yeah. But he's afraid of missing out because he thinks that he is literally the life of the party.

Ellie: 39:02

Well, I know, but what I'm saying is if you are the, literally the life party, then you gotta stay for longer than 15 minutes. It's, it's worse to show up for 15 minutes and then leave than not to show up at all. Cause then people get a little glimmer of your brilliance and then it gets, get gets pulled away and it's even colder than before.

David: 39:17

Yeah, true. And I've always thought that this betrays a really intense form of narcissism on this friend's part because he is afraid of missing out because deep down, you know, like his absence will ruin everything.

Ellie: 39:32

You're just putting your friends on blast in this episode, it's like entire San Francisco gay community has FOMO except for you and are just you're just like shitting on all of their versions of it and calling it a phobia.

David: 39:45

Well, though I've only mentioned two friends, one of whom lives in France and one of whom is a San Francisco gay.

Ellie: 39:50

Okay. Okay.

David: 39:51

Yeah.

Ellie: 39:52

I wonder what my own FOMO is a displacement for? Death seems like candidate but there, there really is something to wanting to be in the center of it all. I, I feel like I have this deep desire to know and be known in the world. It organizes like way too much of my psychic life. But that is a topic for a different episode because this brings me back to, I think what you said earlier about FOMO being a phobia that can get in the way of normal life, because I maybe used to have that, but definitely don't have that anymore. Whereas this friend of yours truly cannot plan a normal evening without saying yes to everything and overcommitting, and that does wreak of displacement, as does Mohamed's opposite approach, which is to say yes to nothing and then just watch a lot of Selling Sunset perhaps.

David: 40:39

Yeah. Um, and this is why I said that I don't think it's just one fear that is at work deep down in cases of FOMO. But we also might want to keep in mind that people may respond to FOMO in very different ways.

Ellie: 40:52

Yeah.

David: 40:52

Some people might react with that feeling of perpetual disappointment, others with a compulsive desire to please others and miss nothing, and maybe others still, which we haven't talked about could respond to the fear of missing out by becoming reclusive and closing themselves in isolation and resentment, right? The case of the person who just stays at home angrily looking at their Facebook posts.

Ellie: 42:36

In the late 2010s, basically the couple years before COVID hit, there was this huge rise in literature that was opposing FOMO. You have Jenny Odell's 2019 book, How to Do Nothing, which is about resisting the attention economy and getting out into nature more or less, suggesting touch grass before touch grass was a meme. And then you also have the explosion of a competing term, JOMO, or the Joy of Missing Out. There's a bestselling book of this title by Danish philosopher Svend Brinkmann in 2017.

David: 43:08

So what's JOMO all about?

Ellie: 43:11

I'll use Brinkmann's book as a reference here because it's the only substantial work to my knowledge on missing out that is specifically written by a philosopher. And we are, after all, a philosophy podcast, even though we love to dabble in other disciplines and have a pretty broad view of what counts as philosophy. But I do think it's an interesting starting point. Brinkmann says that the joy of missing out is all about enjoying the benefits of what you have. And this involves rejecting the capitalist injunction to constantly do more, be more, have more. He actually recommends the value of accepting less than we are due. Linking this to the ancient virtue, which I'd never heard of before, reading this book called meionexia.

David: 43:53

Wait, what is it? Can you, can you say that again?

Ellie: 43:55

Meionexia.

David: 43:57

Never heard it.

Ellie: 43:58

Yeah, neither had I. I think it's because it comes up a lot in just war theory, which is not either of our areas, David, but meionexia is desiring less than you deserve. So it's often referred to in just war theory in the sense that if you are a victor, you don't simply demand all that you're entitled to. You don't rape and pillage. You don't even actually,

David: 44:20

Which you're entitled to

Ellie: 44:21

Well, no, no, no. I no, not actually, but like. Oh god, that's a terrifying thing to say. But like not only do you not rape and pillage, let's say that, but you don't even actually take all that would be your due. You kind of take a little bit less in order to keep the peace. I think it's in order to keep the peace, I'm going to shut up. Anyway. Meionexia related to joy of missing out.

David: 44:43

So just war theory, not my thing, not my cup of tea, not my forte, but the notion of accepting less than you are due, now thinking about it psychologically in connection to individuals rather than war does sound kind of interesting and maybe even great to me, it seems like a pretty good alternative to hustle culture and to capitalism because it, it seems to be about resisting the capitalist impulse to accumulate. And I would say maybe more importantly, and correct me if this is wrong, about living in the present joyfully rather than being resentful about what other people have done in the past or plan to do in the future. So I think of it as a slowing down in a world that rewards speed for the sake of speed.

Ellie: 45:31

Yeah, that's absolutely right. And when you think about comparing yourself to other people and obsessing about whether you're doing better or worse than they are, that is a pretty capitalist notion, right? It's linked to that advertising around FOMO that you mentioned earlier in the episode. So a lot of what Brinkmann is talking about is closely huge to some of the critiques of capitalism and the leftist politics that you and I might have, David. And in this regard, one of the people that I think is sort of a JOMO hero is Bartleby, the Scrivener who is that Melville character who is a clerk?

David: 46:06

Bartleby.

Ellie: 46:07

I know everybody on the left loves Bartleby. I actually hate Bartleby. Maybe will get into that.

David: 46:11

You, you hate Bartleby. You hate him?

Ellie: 46:13

Yeah. Bartleby is I think a really ineffectual and bad icon for the left. I don't think he really does anything, but before I say what my critique of Bartleby let's actually just say who Bartleby is for those who might not be familiar or a refresher for those who are. Bartleby is a character in Hermann Melville's text, Bartleby, the Scrivener and he's a law clerk and he just like rolls into work and refuses to do anything, but his refusal isn't particularly active. All he says whenever anybody asks him to do something is I would prefer not to, so I was like, hey Bartleby, can you copy down this brief for me? I would prefer not to. Hey, Bartleby, is an anachronistic example, can you get coffee from the coffee machine for me? I would prefer not to. And then Bartleby just like ends up literally doing nothing and it doesn't, he like die in a debtor's prison or something. I kind of forget the ending.

David: 47:08

I do not know.

Ellie: 47:09

Listeners remind us. The point is he's just a JOMO dude. He literally wants to miss out on everything. He doesn't do anything.

David: 47:17

I kind of like Bartleby. And yes, I think you're right that he's considered a hero of the do nothing movement because his preferences are purely negative. He never says what he would prefer. He only says what he would prefer not to do. But I don't really see him as a representative of JOMO, the joy of missing out, because I, I don't remember him being particularly joyful either from the text.

Ellie: 47:48

Yeah. Well that's a good point. And I think that actually hits on something that I noticed in not only the Brinkmann, but in some of the other JOMO literature, most of which is like super cheesy and just like on the internet, like experience JOMO.com and stuff like that, which is that there's not a conceptualization really of joy. It's more about contentment, the value of moderation and letting go of being so connected to our devices and sure, like that's all well and good. Like I said, I think the Brinkmann has a lot of similarity with, you know, our own political and social views, but I'm actually really critical of the concept of JOMO or perhaps the movement of JOMO. I like the Brinkmann book. I think it's a fun and light philosophy read, but I'm glad you bring up the, I don't know, sort of lack of joy in Bartleby because I do think it's symptomatic of a lack of joy in the JOMO movement all together. I was actually working on article critiquing the notion of JOMO in early 2020, and I was like, yes, this is going to be so timely, it's going to reject hustle culture and JOMO as the adverse of that. And all of this is going to be like really cutting social critique. And then COVID hit before I finished the article, and suddenly my argument was totally moot because there was no FOMO or JOMO anymore. There was just people at home trying survive.

David: 49:13

There was only NOMO. We all knew that there was nothing to do.

Ellie: 49:17

I know, but not in the KNOW sense. So anyway, I'm really excited to be able to finally have a chance to talk about this, you know, years later.

David: 49:25

This critique of JOMO.

Ellie: 49:27

I still have some thoughts on the JOMO movement, even if it feels a little bit of a previous time at this point. Maybe it's time for us now to return to JOMO.

David: 49:36

I want to know why you're a JOMO hater because I suspect we might actually disagree on this. I don't know, but I think we might.

Ellie: 49:42

Well for one, JOMO commodifies self-care for profit, I don't think Brinkmann would say this at all, right, pretty anti-capitalist. But I actually think that given the society that we live in, JOMO ends up sort of becoming just like a passive consumerist type of activity. Sure, you're not going out and buying drinks, but what are you doing when you're missing out and enjoying doing so you're probably scrolling Instagram, you're binge watching nostalgic sitcoms on Disney Plus. You're getting high, ordering Postmates while doing face masks and

David: 50:15

That's weirdly specific.

Ellie: 50:18

But like JOMO in that sense is not actually anti consumerist. It actually sustains streaming services, ad pack, social media platforms, athleisure, skincare industries, such that Netflix is profiting off of JOMO, not the individuals who are actually leaning into it. And so I do think that even though this isn't the type of thing that Brinkmann has in mind, maybe it's not meionexia, the way that capitalism shapes our desires is such that kind of similarly to the way we talked about the opposite of productivity as laziness in the laziness episode there ends up being this reversion to capitalist consumerism in the home that doesn't offer actually a sustained challenge at all. It's just passive.

David: 51:01

Well, I can agree with you that JOMO can be consumerist because you end up staying at home and consuming things in the domestic space rather than in bars or concerts or whatever. But I wonder whether that's a fair critique of the JOMO movement. So sure, somebody can do that. Somebody can, you know, whatever the Disney Plus and the ordering on Postmates. But you can also do a lot of things in the context of JOMO that don't necessarily involve that, right? You can stay at home and read a book while having a cup of tea.

Ellie: 51:34

Mm-hmm.

David: 51:34

You can stay at home and nap because you feel tired and you want to feel better. You can go for a walk, you know, sure, these could be described as consumerist activities anyways, but they seem less consumerist than the alternative. Now, beyond that point about the intensity of consumerism, I mean, I think the point about FOMO versus JOMO is not really about capitalist versus not capitalist. I don't think that's really the, the, the issue

Ellie: 52:02

Mm-hmm.

David: 52:03

Because you know what is not capitalist in capitalism? I don't Where can we find non-capitalist activities, you know, hard to tell. And so the point is finding things to do other than wallowing in the experience of ressentiment that is brought about by FOMO. Wanna talk about the psychology maybe more so than the economics. And I do think that JOMO can take out that psychological component to some degree, even if it doesn't take out capitalism.

Ellie: 52:32

I think that's a really helpful way of clarifying what is at stake for me in the critique of JOMO. Because even if it's not about the content of what we're doing, you're right that I focused on pretty actively consumerist activities in their passivity, ironically. I think even if we reconceptualize it in terms of an attitude or that psychological component that you were just talking about. For me, the way that JOMO is framed from the beginning is deficient because it is framed as missing out, right? It is the joy of missing out. And so I think we need to move beyond the whole notion of missing out because by using that very term, we're already conceding that there is something that we're missing out on and we're conceiving of it as negative, right? And so rather than just positing our activities as a lack of something, right, missing out on something, I think we just need to reconceptualize them as enjoying our activities. When I'm reading a book or napping at my house, I'm not missing out on the club or the food truck. I'm doing something. I'm just doing one thing rather than another thing.

David: 53:37

Okay. Yes because I think that the characterization that you have a problem with actually sounds pretty great to me to think about JOMO in terms of the joy of missing out, which is essentially an embrace of, of a lack that I take to be a fundamental in a radical element of human existence. So yes, there are always things that we will miss out on again, because of that question of finitude and death. And so I see JOMO as an affirmation of limits, which seems to me existentially in line with my views about the good life, rather than shying away from those limits and thinking that every moment is simply filled with a presence, whether that's the presence of the here and now or the presence of an activity that was planned a long time ago. But I see the point that you're making about the rhetoric around missing out. I kind of like the idea of embracing, yes, there are things that I will miss out on because I'm human and I only have so much time. But beyond that, I think JOMO, aside from the label, is ultimately designed to get us to that more, productive is not the right word here, but maybe fulfilling relationship to time and the present where you can really focus on the book, which you cannot do as long as you're constantly thinking about others. Having that other directed squinting gaze that we talked about in connection to Nietzsche.

Ellie: 55:01

I think maybe you and I just have different conceptions of how we are going to conceive of life activities because I just don't think about them so much in terms of like what I am missing out on. So I read at home alone all the time. In fact, it's one of my favorite activities. And often I do so while day my partner is out with other people or I know that friends are out, but I don't consider that missing out, I just consider it tuning into a different activity. And it's only missing out if I judge my reading against going out. So it's just maybe cognitive shift. But the real core of my issue with JOMO actually is a little bit deeper. And this has to do with how missing out fails to shape the self in adequate ways by preventing our own self transformation. One of the things that Brinkmann talks about is how JOMO can help build character and character for him is about, among other things he says, the ability to resist, to opt out, to say, no, this is because building character involves controlling our impulses and developing self constancy, I don't totally get his point about self constancy, he talks about Ricœur, who's a thinker I worked on, but I didn't feel like it was really adequately spelled out what he meant by it in the book. But I'd countered a Brinkmann in any case, that building character, let's say, is equally, if not more about our ability to say yes than about our ability to say no. Saying yes to things allows me to put myself in the way of self transformation. So if I'm a college student, for instance, trying to decide whether to go to a lecture on campus or stay home and watch Gilmore Girls, I'm deciding between two activities. Sure. But I'm deciding between one activity that is going to put me in the way of something that might shape me in unforeseeable ways and catalyze self transformation and doing another activity that's just going to reinforce the self experience I already have. Right? I don't know who I will become if I go to that lecture, but I do know who I will become if I stay home and watch Gilmore Girls. I'm just going to become more of the same. So I'd like to reconceptualize it away from activity versus missing out on an activity and more in terms of activities that catalyze self transformation and those that just like perpetuate our existing selves.

David: 57:12

This is an interesting way to think about it. My response here has to do with whether or not the distinction that you're drawing between transformative and non transformative activities maps onto the category of behaviors that we associate with FOMO versus JOMO. Because I obviously agree with you that self transformative activities are important in the life of an individual, in the life of a community, but I think that JOMO is precisely meant to bring those activities into the foreground and make them visible rather than letting us and our gaze be distracted constantly towards activities that we are socially pressured into thinking that we ought to say yes to. So for me, the important point here is social pressure. And that's why the distinction that you're drawing between saying yes as an expression of activity and saying no as a purely passive subjective act doesn't hold up for me because I think the act of saying no, and this goes back to our disagreement about Bartleby, the act of saying no can itself be self-affirming in a world in which the subject is being pulled in a particular way by forces larger than, than, than them. Whether that's social media or marketing campaigns, or, you know, just other people in general. So I, I don't know. I think we, we kind of agree about the things that really matter, but then disagree about what JOMO ultimately is because again, it, it has to do with the specifics. When I think about JOMO, I think about those self transformative activities that you're talking about, staying home, reading a book. Whereas when I think about FOMO, what it motivates me to do is do the things that are not going to transform me. Yes, I'm going to go to the same bar with the same friends, just because we live in the kind of culture that people into doing that.

Ellie: 59:08

Well, I don't know because I, I do want to think about how Brinkmann is conceiving of JOMO as accepting less than you deserve. I don't necessarily want that for any of us, but for now I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the status of JOMO, David, since we are out of time. Thank you all.

David: 59:28

We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Ellie: 59:36

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David: 59:42

To reach out to us and find episode info, go to overthinkpodcast.com and connect with us on Twitter and Instagram @overthink_pod

Ellie: 59:51

We'd like to thank our audio editor, Aaron Morgan, our production assistant, Clare A'Hearn, and Samuel PK Smith for the original music.

David: 59:59

And to our listeners, thanks so much for overthinking with us.