
The Joy of Missing Out - jqcoffey
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/style/joy-of-missing-out-summer.html
======
BadassFractal
I've regained a lot of mental peace once I quit Instagram. When you have
hundreds of friends and follow random influencers, you get the impression that
every single person is always on a beach in Bali, eating at Michelin star
restaurants, riding Lambos and partying with attractive, successful people in
the most exclusive venues in exotic locations. In the meanwhile you're a
corporate drone stuck in traffic to get to your grey cubicle, dealing with a
shitty boss, trying to figure out how to pay rent.

The reality is that those people who FOMO you, don't have that lifestyle.
They're simply marketers, but our brains aren't super good at seeing past
that. And your friends? Sure, they go to a cool place once in a while
individually, but you're just being exposed to hundreds of them all signaling
at the same time. Statistically speaking you WILL see your extended social
circle doing something cool multiple times a day. This used to be manageable
in the 150 person village age. Bob got a new goat, son of a bitch.. oh well.
But at social media scale our brains simply can't handle it.

It's analogous to how regular people don't realize just how much Photoshop and
photographic skill goes into making someone look as good as they do in
magazines and on their IG feed. We look at them and immediately conclude that
we're some kind of a sub-human degenerate species compared to them, whereas in
reality it's all bullshit.

It feels SO much better to swim in one's lane (basically JOMO), not looking
around to see how everybody else is doing, especially when it's not real.

I'm not a religious person, but there's something really powerful in the
admonition not to covet your neighbor's spouse, house, animals... which is
what I sense my brain doing on social media.

The genius of IG is that it makes people willingly subscribe to hours of
marketing every day. Zuckerberg got one hell of a deal on that company, 1 bil
for it has to be the greatest deal of the century.

~~~
closeparen
Growing up in a Midwestern suburb where obesity was normal, I found the
messaging about how our beauty standards are unrealistic and manufactured by
Photoshop to be at least sort of plausible. Now I’m quite certain it’s not
true. Walking down the street in San Francisco, a majority of the young adults
I encounter _really are_ slim, muscular, well groomed, and sharply dressed,
embodying the “unrealistic, unhealthy” ideals of my adolescence. I wondered if
this was just wealth, but it even extends to people in the service sector.

If Instagram lives are unrealistic, they’re unrealistic in much the same way
as coastal megacities. It’s true that most Americans will never live like
that. But those people really exist and their numbers are not small.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Ask about beauty routines for these people and you'll learn the difference.
The urban elite spend a lot of time on exercising, creating food habits, and
fashion.

~~~
astura
We're calling randos walking down the street in San Francisco the "urban
elite" now?

The vast majority of people I know who are attractive do not spend a lot of
time on beauty regimes and are not gym rats.

------
mattlondon
> Know that you likely have a problem.

> Do you own a smartphone?

> That's it.

I disagree.

I think a better question might be "Do you own a smartphone _and use social
media_?"

A lot of the comments I see around this - especially on the comments here on
this page - is around feeds from Instagram and Facebook and the like.

Yep - groomed social media posts are an unrealistic view of society. Just like
movies and magazines are an unrealistic view of society too. "Man, everyone
else is running around blowing up cars and shooting bad guys, but I am just a
loser sitting here in the movie theatre." I guess people need to get a literal
reality check.

Personally I just turn notifications from email off (and I dont use social
media), and have the Do Not Disturb feature in Android on so that only calls &
messages from starred contacts (wife etc) makes a noise. Zero issues about
feeling like I am being disturbed by my phone. I dont think I am in denial
about this...

~~~
princekolt
> and use social media?

I'd argue it is not that straight cut. Just like you can tune do not disturb
to allow important people to reach you, most social media sites allow fine
tuning of notifications (except facebook, they don't give a shit[1]). For
example, I use twitter to interact with other developers from around the
world, and after configuring twitter to only notify me about interactions with
people I follow, I'm never bothered by notifications from it either.

[1]: Perfectly satirised by The Onion: [https://www.theonion.com/new-facebook-
notifications-alert-us...](https://www.theonion.com/new-facebook-
notifications-alert-users-when-they-not-cu-1819577354)

~~~
ehsankia
You have a problem if, multiple times per day, you open the feed and just
scroll through not looking for anything in particular.

As you mention, it seems like your workflow is very action oriented. You use
it to communicate with people. But if you ever find yourself just scrolling
through the feed for more than 10-15m per day, then you probably have a
problem.

------
appleiigs
I was in deep concentration today working on an assignment, but ironically
Apple's Screen Time snapped me out of it. In all their wisdom to get me to use
the iphone less, Screen Time notification popped up, bring me back.

Edit: and can't turn it's notification off, it is not in the Notification
settings area. I had to turn the Screen Time feature completely off so it
doesn't happen again.

~~~
Declanomous
At my last job they replaced the POTS telephone system that had been around
for 30 years with a new POE touchscreen phone. The backlight never dimmed and
it occasionally showed an animation.

I wrote an angry ticket about it after about 2 days of having it, and 3 people
from the IT department and 2 people from the company that sold us the phones
showed up at my desk the next day, trying to figure out if there was something
wrong with my phone, because "it shouldn't be that distracting."

The only person who understood why I was pissed was the mid-level tech support
guy from the phone company.

I hated that phone so much I covered it in a sheet and only uncovered it if it
was ringing.

Similarly, the ringtones were all super obnoxious. When everyone had the same
ring you could just tune out the ones that weren't coming from right beside
you. The new phones had a huge speaker on the back and the ringtones demanded
attention like a klaxon. It was maddening because the phone of someone 3 cubes
behind you could get a call and it would be louder for you than it would be
for them.

Also, the touchscreen took 3 times longer to use than the old design did just
because buttons are faster, you can use them without looking, and the UI was
slow to begin with.

I love using new technology, and I wanted a new phone because the old one was
_huge_ and took up a ton of my desk, but that phone had the worst UX. I just
wanted a phone that did the same thing my old phone could do, maybe with
better audio quality. I didn't want a phone that demanded my attention to do
things.

~~~
chii
> I just wanted a phone that did the same thing my old phone could do

This is what happens when the buyer (or cheque signer!) is not a user.

To make a sale, the phone vendors has to bid or propose, and for them to stand
out, phone needs features. Whether those features make sense or not probably
matters less than whether they "beat" the competitors' feature list.

I wonder if there's a way to delegate to the actual users of tools and
equipment, the responsibility of evaluating said tool?

~~~
Nasrudith
Yes there is trivially - give the end user the budget to buy their own.
However there are some real logistical disadvantages to that approach as well
and frankly many workplaces are far too hierarchally minded to the point of
being insulted at the concept of asking the employees what they think.

~~~
selestify
What are the logistical disadvantages? Can't the buyer also take care of
logistics?

~~~
chii
> What are the logistical disadvantages?

if each user chose their own model, then the problem of integrating all the
phones into the network and/or calendar system etc may be intractably hard.

------
foobarbecue
I idly went to Hacker News, scanned through this article, got to the part
about doing things with intention rather than just floating along... which
made me realize I was wasting time and so I closed the article. Except then I
commented... ok to important things now.

~~~
moretai
You are conditioned. Don't feel bad. Just be aware, and that awareness will
hopefully prevent you from doing things you don't want to do in the future.
Good Day.

------
wallflower
"I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to
on a monitor in my bedroom."

-Andy Warhol

------
fabatka
I'm a bit confused by the CEO of Google preaching for spending less time
staring at your screen. Doesn't their company's value depend strongly on this
metric? My guess would be that its only for show, but shouldn't the
shareholders be angry about a move like this?

~~~
simongray
I would classify it under Corporate Social Responsibility. Any shareholders
who would get angry at such a thing must suffer from serious short-termism.

------
technobabble
It's amazing how tightly our brains can hold onto other peoples' expectations
for you.

For the longest time, I couldn't get over my ex. Last time I blocked her out
of my life, she was doing these cool internships and immediatly had a "bounce
back" relationship and people cheering her career on.

 _Years_ after blocking her out of all forms of communication, and my brain
still concocts this idealized, super-successful version of her that I had to
triumph over like some twisted video game.

------
gasull
The Internet used to be something you had to reach out to, with a dial-up
connection, in order to connect to it. Now the Internet is in our pockets,
follows us everywhere and nags us with nonstopping alerts.

Alerts is what creates addiction. They are rewarding/interesting only
sometimes, like a slot machine.

Just disable most or all alerts. Every time you get an alert, consider if you
want a similar alert in the future. If the answer is no, disable it.

~~~
cgs
This is really easy to do now on Android. Just long press the notification and
you can just flip the notification toggle. The real problem though is people
passively accepting their phones defaults. Users need to be educated somehow
that it's in their best interest to actively curate their notifications, or
better yet, put the onus on Apple/Google. What if the default for the first
run of an app was to prompt you if you want notifications or not? That would
certainly get rid of some cruft.

------
agumonkey
I extrapolate this to the need for slow transport.

~~~
btrettel
I do think that slower transportation helps.

Cyclists tend to be more patient than drivers, based on my (biased)
observations. As a transportation cyclist I don't really understand the
mindset of many drivers. Their apparent need for instant transportation seems
to override safety concerns, particularly the safety of others. Often drivers
aren't much faster than I am, particularly given the number of stop lights on
my commute. Many cyclists have pointed out the irony in how a dangerous driver
who nearly runs over a cyclist often sits at the next stop light with the same
cyclist stopped right behind them.

My guess is that cyclists are more patient due to both selection effects (more
patient people are more likely to become cyclists) and driving actively
decreasing patience.

~~~
vitaflo
> Cyclists tend to be more patient than drivers

Given the amount of cyclists I see blow thru red lights and stop signs every
day, I'm not exactly sure I can agree with this.

~~~
kcanini
When you have to generate your own kinetic energy, that's not due to a lack of
patience as much as trying to minimize the amount of exertion you must do.

~~~
Godel_unicode
So breaking the law and endangering pedestrians is ok if it means you don't
have to work as hard? As a pedestrian, I HATE cyclists. At least drivers seem
to understand what a red light means. I've never been hit by a car, but I've
been hit by plenty of bicycles who should have stopped at that pesky red
light.

~~~
btrettel
Let's be clear: you should dislike law breaking cyclists, not all cyclists.

As a cyclist who does not run red lights, I dislike that many people seem to
think I am responsible for and/or should be punished for the actions of
cyclists who do run red lights.

Plus, I suggest paying more attention to cars. The number of times I have seen
drivers run red lights is definitely not zero.

~~~
kaybe
To be honest, some red lights are just pointless for cyclists. One example are
pedestrian crossings with no pedestrian in sight, another are very small
crossings (maybe even at night) where you can see anyone coming half a mile
away, with nobody in sight.

I also hate the one where you're supposed to wait 2 light cycles instead of 1
for turning left. That is a major road so people usually follow the rule, but
it's not good. At the same time the city advocates doing that twice on both
sides of the bridge so you can cross at the proper side on the shared sidewalk
and not ride against the (often non-existent) flow on the other shared
sidewalk. Of course people still do it.

~~~
btrettel
I agree that many red lights don't make sense for cyclists in an ideal world.
But given the double standard being applied to cyclists, I don't want to give
hateful people any more excuses.

In Austin, TX, they added signs to certain intersections saying that cyclists
can use the pedestrian signal. In effect, this means that cyclists can often
legally run a red light. Unfortunately I fear that some drivers don't pay
attention to the signs and will think basically 100% of cyclists are illegally
running the red light at these intersections. So I usually will wait for the
green light, even in this case.

------
scotty79
I enjoy good blackout. Especially in the late evening/early night. Lighting up
candles. Looking out of the window at people doing the same.

Having only limited battery life that I should probably not use up anyways and
having absolutely nothing to do.

------
sridca
I wrote SlowNews[1] in part to deal with the continuous influx of (addictive)
content.

[1] [https://github.com/srid/slownews](https://github.com/srid/slownews)

------
rosstex
>The moments that we’re spending on our computer checking email slowly
accumulate to hours and days, time we’re not spending living our lives.

Well, if I didn't freak the ____out when I read this sentence. Time to do some
journaling and go to sleep.

~~~
skrebbel
But first quickly write a Hacker News comment!

------
hartator
Hum, I don’t think the FOMO is linked to Internet usage, but real life things.
We do social media to kill time, not because we FOMO.

~~~
CharlesW
> _I don’t think the FOMO is linked to Internet usage…_

Evidence suggests otherwise:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235285321...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235285321730007X)

~~~
Nasrudith
That still strikes me as highly silly. I mean people have always been afraid
of missing out. From the tabloids, gossip, to the land-line era complaints
about teenagers and phone bills. It is at most a slight exacerbator with the
information flow in a similar way to group think and selection biases.

~~~
toasterlovin
It's the dose, not the substance, that make the poison.

Because of the smartphone, social media is always with you, everywhere you go,
and there is infinite content. That makes it pretty different from all the
types of media that came before.

