I heard an acronym on the news the other day that I never heard before.
It's an acronym that explains much of what is going on in the world--much of what has always gone on, I suppose.
It's FOMO.
Fear Of Missing Out.
It's like a fat guy at an all you can eat buffet who piles his tray to the rafters lest they run out of food before he gets all you can eat.
It's the South Seas bubble.
The tulip bubble.
The housing bubble.
The tech bubble.
The social media bubble.
We backwards baseball cap bubble.
The bubble bubble.
I'm late to the FOMO-bashing party, like I'm late to most parties.
The Ad Contrarian has been saying things like this for years:
"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."
"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."
"Marketers always overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."
In other words, FU FOMO.
George, My wife is Singaporean and years before I heard the expression FOMO I heard a Chinese expression "Kia Soo" which meant the same thing.
ReplyDeleteThey have a short poem to describe man's lot which goes "Kia Soo, Kia Si, Kia Kuwi, Kia Bo".
Which translates as "Fear of missing out, Fear of death, Fear of ghosts, Fear of your wife".