This month, as we marked one year of a global pandemic, FOMO (fear of missing out) was replaced by something else: DONEWCHB (dread over not experiencing what could have been).
And the real truth is most of us had a good pandemic.
21 March 2021 (Zurich, Switzerland) – For almost everybody this past year has been heartbreaking, depressing, and paralyzing in almost every way. But some things about it have also been liberating, and we need to figure out how to cling to those things in a vaccinated future — even when many expect we will need to return to a *normal* life. The historian Yuval Noah Harari wrote a long, definitive essay commenting that the most enduring consequence of the COVID-19 crisis has been the somewhat delayed, but decisive shift to a digital society. Everything and everyone will need to to adapt, but not equally, echoing William Gibson’s famous quote about the future. We’ll need to deal with the distribution of future digital inequalities similar to those that exist in the present.
This weekend, in the midst of this dark, pandemic winter, I was able to do something truly extraordinary: I attended one of my annual high-level conferences – in person. Three days in Zurich discussing some new, pretty cool high-tech, plus some deep-thinking on our future digital societies.
The event in brief: we looked at such things as Adobe’s new tool which enhances the resolution of any image using sophisticated machine learning (“Computer, enhance!”) and technology from Chrome and Rev and Youtube that can now caption and translate video automatically in any language. Soon, we’ll just take this all for granted. On the deep-think side we discussed the increasing critical tech writing that is parasitic upon and even inflates technology hype, the dramatic claims that this or that will lead to massive societal shifts in the near-future. Always bad shifts. Criticism that both feeds, and feeds on, hype. Call it “criti-hype”. We have such an increasingly complex and complicated relationship with technology — what it brings and subtracts from our society and ourselves. More to come next week in a post reviewing the conference.
Ok, this event may not be everybody’s idea of a good time, but I found it a delight. The organizer doubled down on precautions: the number of usual attendees halved to 30; a negative COVID test result to be submitted no longer than 72 hours in advance of arrival, and tested again upon arrival; the meeting room with enforced social distancing; everyone wearing masks but the speaker, etc., etc. Pulling this event off safely took significant resources and added to costs but the message was refreshing: life doesn’t have to stop entirely because of the virus.
And I was struck by how sharing a physical space contributed to a sense of community, and how we all just missed this. The agenda lasted from early morning to late afternoon. But we all hung around until late in the evening – starved, I think, for socialization. I do not think any of us appreciated just what we’d been missing until we were dropped back into *relative* normality. Before Covid-19, a conference of 30 people would have appeared small and intimate. Now it seemed huge, but I felt energised in a way I hadn’t in almost a year. The monotony of working at home was instantly replaced by the pure excitement of seeing familiar and new faces.
Plus a big surprise: how much I’d lacked intellectually without exposure to people IRL who are necessary in my tribe. Zoom chats and Linkedin threads are fine but I had underestimated how much I was missing people I wouldn’t necessarily encounter unless we were brought together. I had forgotten that, as usual at such gatherings, the best debates and chats always happen outside the organized sessions and are always spontaneous and unruly – something that rarely (if ever) happens over Zoom or any virtual event. These informal chats were the most illuminating of the conference.
How and where we work may forever be changed, and maybe there will be a permanent shift for many of us towards working from home or maybe a 50/50 time split with an actual *office*. And if Noah Smith is correct, working-from-home might just increase efficiency in the broader economy.
But spontaneity in conversations is gold dust in industries reliant on ideas, and that happens most seamlessly in person. Even when you’re pulling at the mask elastics around your ears after wearing them for 12+ hours.
It also reminded me of what Sophie Bernett, a tech writer for Wired magazine, talked about on a Zoom chat a few weeks ago – that the ever present FOMO has changed versions. In just months, it evolved from a simple person-to-person comparison into a juxtaposition of the present with the past, leaving millions worried about missing out on what would have been in a world not utterly altered by coronavirus quarantines. There was little opportunity for recourse. When you missed out on things in the past, there were always opportunities to make up for it. Didn’t snag tickets to your favorite artist’s concert? No problem, wait for the next one. Didn’t make that tech conference? No worry. There is another coming up. Now, there is no next one. Everything came to a sudden halt, and by the looks of it, a full social reboot remains pretty far away.
FOMO certainly hasn’t disappeared, but rather, it’s shape-shifted. The most complicated part is how we handle each respective FOMO. The old FOMO was curable, or at least soothable. There was a certain “flexibility” to it, because where you missed out on one experience, there was another waiting for you. But how can anyone cope with missing out on invaluable experiences and the opportunity to make up for it in the future? That’s what FOMO has morphed into. Not anxiety over missed events. Not envy over others living the life you want. But the fear that you’ve missed out on something that you’re never going to get back. Missing out on something when there is no tangible future compensation in store.
Worse, when I talk to the *kids* around me, in addition to FOMO, many are experiencing grief over missing out on celebrating milestones and spending time with each other, especially during the holidays. Whether that’s a teenager missing prom, a college student missing the opportunity to play in a sports championship, and anyone who missed out on the usual celebration of a graduation. And all the weddings and baptisms missed or postponed.
On the broad scale of FOMO, it’s just one of many lost opportunities. When I hear “FOMO,” the first words that come to mind are still “fear of missing out.” But, as we all accustom ourselves to a new life and a new FOMO, it’s not just worry over lost experiences that brings out those feelings of despair. It’s the fear of not knowing how to replace what’s missing.
There is also another truth, that many of us have had a *good* pandemic. At least those of us who aren’t homeschooling or working in intensive care or who are in a service industry keeping the rest of us fat and happy.
Let’s be clear: the focus during the pandemic has rightly been on people who have suffered: the dead, the bereaved, the lonely, the depressed, the newly unemployed, the impoverished, women beaten by partners, parents stuck in endless home school and the young watching their youth tick away unused.
But as Simon Kuper noted in his Financial Times column last week, there’s a guilty truth that rarely dares speak its name: many of us became happier during the pandemic. Now, as vaccines promise an eventual return to *normal* life, we aren’t so sure we want it. For many of us, the pandemic had simplified our busy, complicated lives. Some people realized they probably didn’t live the life they liked, and then spent more time at home with their families – so there was some stress relief. Though many are not saying so given that admitting to contentment during a pandemic is socially inappropriate.
The biggest “happy effect”? All those freed from living to somebody else’s schedule. Especially the victims of an underrated source of mass misery: the commute. Holding all else equal, commuters have lower life satisfaction, a lower sense that their daily activities are worthwhile, lower levels of happiness and higher anxiety on average than non-commuters. Or so say two almost identical studies: one by Britain’s Office for National Statistics and one by Gallup’s “State of the U.S. Workplace”. Although the Gallup study notes one happy group: those who continued to commute during the pandemic because they enjoyed emptier roads and trains.
Because for those of us who aren’t home schooling or working in intensive care or in critical service industries we received an enormous gift – the gift of time. Life in society can be unnatural, complicated and overstimulating. For the first time, an almost fully virtual alternative is there: virtual work, socializing, entertainment, shopping, food deliveries – oh, and sex.
Some people will never want to go back.