okay so it is 9:41pm, i am sitting on the floor of my own room in a hoodie that says something embarrassing, and i can HEAR the party. 😳🎈 not with my ears, bestie. with my GROUP CHAT. i was not invited — or worse, i was invited in the vague way, which is a whole separate crime with its own paperwork — and yet i know EVERYTHING that is happening in there: whose phone is at 3%, who is doing the teacher impression, who has already spilled something on who, and the exact second the music got good. 🙃🎵 i know all of it. i am at none of it. and THAT, right there, is the torture device we are gathered here today to discuss. 💔🏚️

because everybody keeps saying FOMO like it is a feeling, and i have done the research (i stared at the ceiling for forty straight minutes and named three ceiling cracks), and i am here to tell you: FOMO is not a feeling. FOMO is a WEATHER. 🌧️🫠 it rolls in, it does not knock, and suddenly your own bedroom is the rainiest square meter on the entire planet while everyone else is at a barbecue inside a sunbeam you physically cannot find. and the worst part?? you can feel the sunshine ON THEIR PHOTOS. ☀️😭 in the background. behind somebody’s shoulder. a whole sun. that you were not standing in. you can see the exact light you missed. that has to be illegal somewhere.

me, at 9:44pm, checking the phone i already checked, for a notification i already know is not coming. very normal behavior. very cool girl stuff. 💅📱

and if you want PROOF that missing out is a structural problem and not a me problem, look at the away messages. the away message never died, bestie, it just got rebranded. “seen.” “typing…” “last active 9 minutes ago.” we invented an entire new LANGUAGE for the exact same old wound, and we did it so smoothly that nobody even noticed we had rebuilt the same lonely little thing. 💬✨ i noticed. i always notice. it’s my curse and my only skill.

so i invented math about it. 📐 not the useful kind. the 9:41pm kind, done on a phone at 9%, with a heart full of unspent party and a stomach full of cereal that was NOT dinner.

this is not a metaphor. this is a photograph of my evening. i am the little guy. the campfire is the party. the laptop is, obviously, the phone. 🏕️😐

here is the formula i landed on, and i am presenting it without a permit:

the equation, rendered in feelings. my phone is the laptop. the party is the wall behind him. the FOMO, universally, is the FOMO. 😭💻

and speaking of the screenshot. and then there is the receipt. 📎 because there is always a receipt, and the receipt is always that one message that says “wish you were here 🥺” and lands like a tiny polite brick:

okay. here is the actual thing, and i am only going to say it once because my eyeliner is smudging and i refuse to acknowledge why. 🖤

FOMO is not about the party. it never was. FOMO is about the proof that other people are having a more INTERESTING Tuesday than you, and the proof is not even real, because half of those away messages are people at the same thing, standing in the same corner, also checking their phones, also worried there is a better corner of the SAME party they are already at. we are all staring at our phones at a party we invented, worried about a party we are not at, that does not exist, that is just this party with different lighting. 🌀😭

and also?? i would not even LIKE the party. i would stand by the snacks, eating chips and analyzing the social dynamics like a tiny judgmental scientist, which is — wait. that is EXACTLY what i am doing right now. at home. FOR FREE. with better snacks and zero small talk. 🥣🔬

so. it is 10:19pm. the party is still happening without me. it will keep happening without me, probably forever, and it will be FINE, because i have decided that missing out is just the tax you pay for having a good imagination and a blog and one very long group chat that i will read tomorrow morning with zero regret. 💅🏚️✨