If you happen to be part of the Y Generation, trying to find your Mr. or Mrs. right, I’m sorry to say it, but you’re categorically hooped. If you’re like most yuppies with a 10 second attention span — a penchant for Snap clippings — you can stop here as the statement above is a short but apt, TL;DR description of the article below.
Let’s start with modern day consumerism — a tidal wave of human behaviour competing to have the fastest, newest, and most expensive ‘thing.’ Not to say this behaviour hasn’t always existed… It is human nature to want the best; it’s natural selection.
What has changed in relation to what previously existed, is the speed at which these products become available to en masses; The film industry for example — black and white pictures were produced once a year – now where new blockbuster appears every few months; smartphones — a new model released every year.
You can apply this trend to almost any industry — automotive, entertainment, fashion, technology… venture capitalism… and so on.
This trend has a name: #FOMO. The Fear of Missing Out.
To see how FOMO relates to dating, I start by looking at how FOMO has affected the very fabric of social interaction.
Speaking from experience — back in the 90's, I had the phone numbers for 12 of my best friends memorized. After school, weekends, or the summers, you could count on the phone ringing at one of my friends homes, their mothers picking up the phone, “Hi Mrs. Anderson, is Justin free to play?” “No sorry Nick, he’s just finishing up lunch, I’ll have him give you a call in half an hour.”
And that’s exactly what happened — half an hour went by, and I got a call — we made a plan and chances were that I met him at his house in the next 10–20 minutes.
Fast forward to today. Everyone, and I literally mean Everyone, is stored either on Facebook or in someone’s smartphone. You probably don’t even have your home phone number memorized anymore.
We text instead of call because it’s more “convenient.”
We are the flakiest group of self-righteous, self-centered, self-indulgent people that ever existed.
When we are invited to an event on Facebook, “Going,” means I’ll probably come unless I’m invited to something better, and even if that something better doesn’t come along, I still may not come. “Maybe,” means I’m saying maybe because I don’t want to be a rude, but I’m most likely not coming. “Not attending,” is them figuratively giving you the finger. #FOMO
Now we transpose this to the world of dating. What’s funny is how we gripe and groan about the trials of today’s hook-up culture when, in reality, we were the ones who invented it. The hook-up solution is the actual perfect response to FOMO and our displayed behaviours of consumerism.
One of the issues is that we’re ‘non-commital.’ This is partly due to the effect that when we’re dating an 8, we fear that we could be dating a 9 or 10. Even when we’re dating that perfect 10, we fear that we could be dating a better 10… Paradoxical isn’t it? I suppose one could always dream of becoming Mr. Gal Gadot. So what happens is we sleep around — bouncing from one person to the next — pun intended.
And why shouldn’t you sleep around? Look at all the tools we have at our disposal to find and acquire new conquests. Tinder, PoF, Bumble, Hinge, E-Harmony, not to mention being bombarded with beautiful women one after another on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, etc.
What goes through someone’s head when they see images of people on these mediums is the notion of ‘obtain-ability.’ What I mean by obtainable is even though he/she may be located in LA and you’re in NY, there’s a feeling that maybe… Just maybe, one day, you may cross paths and moments later he/she may be lying half naked on your kitchen table. Tell me I’m wrong.
Society has collectively agreed to make social interaction synonymous with social media. Where we add people left and right in an attempt to expand those social circles — casting nets far and wide hoping to catch the next best thing. We not only want the newest model of iPhone, we want the newest relationship, the hottest thing and we want it now.
So the next time someone doesn’t text you back after hooking up or dumped you for no apparent reason, don’t worry — it’s not your fault. Just blame #FOMO.