How to beat FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

Not been shown the Twitter sexy girl ads? You're not missing anything

I used to hate New Year’s Eve as a teenager. I had massive FOMO: it always felt as though literally everyone in the world was going to wild parties and having a much better time than me. I mean, they probably were, unless they too were crying alone in their bedroom.

Fast forward 15 years, and in 2009, I was invited to a celebrity New Year’s Eve party. Derren Brown, Stephen Fry, David Walliams, McFly and the Saturdays were there. And you know what? It was perfectly nice and I was pleased to be invited, but it didn’t change my life. That teenager I used to be had a distorted sense of just how amazing it feels to be in the in-crowd - or, should I say, experience LOMO (Lack of Missing Out). I can promise you that, at least as far as celebrity parties are concerned, it doesn’t feel like anything much.

Celebrity parties are fine, but I’d rather hang out with my mates. Photo by Kelsey Chance on Unsplash.

My modern-day FOMO

I had a mild form of FOMO last week too, because nearly everybody on Twitter was joking about the porn ads they were seeing. These ads, which I’ve still not seen, were pictures of scantily-clad young women, and featured the text, ‘300 metres from you, waiting for you’.

But I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t seen them. Two other women in my feed also posted that they hadn’t seen the ads.

FOMO on memes

Now, this wasn’t about wanting to see naked ladies - the internet is full of them. It was about wanting to be in on the memes and the jokes that ensued. Fear of being excluded from the current ‘in’ thing can be very real. Because Twitter was flooded with witty tweets, and yet those experiencing FOMO were like, “Uh?!”

You definitely don’t want Laurence Fox 300 metres away from you.