FOMO & The Social Media Mean Girls

My friend-slash-coworker and I were nattering on Facebook about social media, and she introduced me to a fabulous new wordcronym (word + acronym): FOMO. Have you heard of this term? I may be the last person in the English-speaking world to have learned about this, but it stands for Fear Of Missing Out. Isn’t that a fantastic term??

FOMO came up in conversation because we were discussing (lamenting? whining about?) the incessant barrage of new social media sites that are touted as “must knows” and “must participates” and “you’re a loser if you’re not on this one.” I may be calling myself out as a big losey-loser, but when Google+ was introduced, I kind of had a 3-year-old, shoulder slumpy, mouth-turny-downy, “aw, Mom do I HAVE TO learn this one, too??” moment. There, I said it.

"I have to learn ANOTHER social media site?? For realz??"

Look, I’m all about new technologies and communication tools that help us all stay in touch and re-establish social bonds and gain a country’s worth of sympathy when we have freaky airplane seatmates and show off photos of our dogs or kids or fancy pedicures. I get it. It is good. But this idea that we all have to be on every social site imaginable, continuously monitoring the state of each other’s nose hair and constantly making profound statements and observations to prove our excessive expertise… frankly, it’s laughable.

Yes, there are (virtual) piles of tools to help us share our fabulousness with the socialverse with a few easy clicks, but that doesn’t equate to being social or even really communicating. That’s referred to either as a piecemeal monologue or simply spouting. Do you know people who do this sort of thing in person? You do? And… how much do you enjoy hanging out with them? Just sayin’…

As for all of these sites being required participation, it’s just silliness. It’s becoming a competition, and a ludicrous one at that. It’s bordering on teenage clique-ish peer pressure. Think back to the time before the advent of social media. On what planet were any of us “expected” by all of our friends to purchase and read every single newspaper in the county and to simultaneously monitor every single TV station available? “Oh my gosh, did you notice that Janie still hasn’t subscribed to the latest newspaper, Smalltown’s Weekly Wag?? She gets the Bigville Daily Tribune and the Smalltown Daily Citizen and the Big-n-Small County News, so I can’t imagine what’s holding her up with this new paper. She’s so behind the times. At least she can work a remote like a fiend and run the full set of channels twenty times an hour.”

If you need further proof as to the lunacy behind all of this, think about people who already manage multiple pages on Facebook (personal page, company pages, client pages, etc.) and LinkedIn profiles and YouTube channels and accounts on Twitter – only four of the growing roster of social media Mean Girls enforced sites. And as of last week they now have to learn to work and keep straight yet another site we’re all expected to flock to. Seriously? I mean, just this past week, I’ve seen three tweets from people who manage multiple Twitter accounts apologizing for becoming confused and cross-pollinating their tweets, citing Twitter schizophrenia. Twitterphrenia.  Twitterphrenia’s not included in the latest version of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM, but keep your eyes open for the next edition.

Think we'll select YOU for one of our Circles? Do you even know what a Circle is?

Either way, we can probably bet we’ll see these poor, over-social-media’d Friends and Connections and Tweeps appear on Google+ very soon as well. It’s that darn FOMO that keeps rearing its ugly head. FOMO and peer pressure and fear of the social media Mean Girls. Are you afraid?

Go Ahead. Call Me Normal. I Dare You.

Today I tweeted a question (that always sounds weird to me) asking why some folks think it’s an insult to call someone “weird.” It started me thinking about this whole weirdness thing, and I figured I’d share my thoughts. I’m a giver.

This whole topic came to mind because of a recent reconnection with an old friend. Said old friend – let’s just call him the Pilot – and I have known each other long enough to have birthed a theoretical love child who would, in theoretical world, be of drinking age. However, our friendship is like a donut, in that there's this big hole in the middle (long, odd story to that).

Anyway, the Pilot and I have spent some quality beer time catching up on life and all that happened during our 12-year hiatus, and I’ve noticed that after several of my stories, the Pilot will respond with, “You’re such a dork” or “You are really odd.”  He’s not saying that in an endearing way, either. It has a sneery, cliquey, Mean Girls quality to it. I can almost picture him in a plaid mini-skirt, knee-high socks and flats ala "Glee" when he says it; even if he's not a bad looking guy, that's not a mental photo anyone wants.

Fortunately, I am quite agéd, “seasoned” if you will, and such comments don’t really bug me. Instead, they just surprise me, in that I have this Pollyanna belief in my head that people of my age should be beyond such petty high schoolishness. You know?  I mean, seriously, who at my age cares about being a dork anymore? We have bigger things to think about, like wrinkles, white hairs, spider veins, odd aches and pains or trying to sort out if we can pretend that any of the latest clothing trends are appropriate for our age. In other words, we’re all dorks, just because that’s what our age makes us.

Hat = Didn't want to "do" my hair. Sunglasses = Way to avoid make-up.

Embracing my inner geek has freed me up to enjoy life immensely. Some of the most fun and memorable experiences of my life came about because I disregarded doing what others considered appropriate or cool or safe. I moved to L.A. after college, with almost no support system to speak of, because I’d never been there. I hiked across a lava flow in Hawaii. I started running marathons at the age of 27… in fact, I started running at the age of 27. I participated in a flash mob. I worked on a TV show just because. I introduced myself to Brendan Frasier, twice! I lost a bet at trivia and had to (got to?) sing karaoke to a bar of strangers. I can boast an amazingly diverse set of friends – diverse in more ways than you can imagine – who make life interesting every day.

And I quit a lucrative career to pursue this teaching degree thing, after which, if I’m lucky, I’ll make close to one third of my most recent pre-grad-school salary. Let me repeat that… One. Third. Why the heck am I doing this then, you ask? Because it’s a passion and a dream, and I want to make a difference. That decision, with that rationale, is the definition of dorky and odd.

So bring it on. Try to call me normal. I dare you.