FOMO? That’s Cute. Meet FOFO: The Fear of F*cking Off
Addressing FOMO’s black sheep sibling. The one nobody either talks about or to — not even during the Hoildays. FO-HO-FO.
Much to my chagrin, I’ve suffered from the Fear of Fucking Off™ (FOFO) my entire life. I have a love-hate relationship with it as it’s part of my own personality, and one that I’m trying to reconcile.
To begin, I’ve been classified as a “Millennial” (persons born between 1981 to 1996 C.E.) by the fine folks at the Pew Research Center, and thus grew up during the cusp of the Internet.
For greater context, I was that nerd who reformatted those free AOL floppy disks so that I store my writings on. After AOL caught on to that, I was able to make use of AOL CD’s as drink coasters. Thanks Steve Case.
In concert with AOL’s assault, we were subjected to the patently fallacious ideology of “if you do well in X, you’ll do well in Y.”
It was that simplistic mathematical equation that had been waved in front of us like a carrot. This efficacy of such advice has since been disproven in America, yet the same mistakes continue to be made to future generations. The post-Millennials (often mistaken as Millennials in disparagement) have since been victimized by further failed programs, including the perverse overgrowth of mental abuse exacted by “Common Core” and standardized testing.
In America, the erosion of critical thinking and the reprogramming for the degenerate desires the likes of “FOMO” (initialism for Fear of Missing Out) and the “pursuit of happiness” via instant gratification continues apace, leading to general and steep declines in the areas of decorum, ethics, and governance. It has clearly worsened in breadth, depth, and severity.
Should your cupidity require evidence of this, look no further than the Internet. It’s that insidious.
“That’s probably one of my biggest gripes with the Internet — that it settles for mediocrity and disinformation, which puts all information on the same level. Everything has the same value, whether it’s Albert Einstein speaking, or yoohoo27@msn.com.” —American writer Harlan Ellison, c. 2008
I have laid this context before you as both my generation and myself had been indoctrinated to believe that everyone was created equally, karma exists, and if you work hard you’ll be rewarded with a great life, and… it’s all bullshit, and it’s bad for us. Ergo FOFO.
Authorial Digression: I loathe that term “FOFO” — but that’s the only way I could think to get you to read this. As much as I’d like to apologize, any apology would be ingenuine.
My generation had been buoyed by advances in technology, “interconnectivity” and “knowledge” that fluffed up our egos — all things designed to render us insensate to reality. Humans shall always be humans, and we had not been told that.
Indeed, what occurs both yesterday and today is a reimagining of the story of Babylon and the Tower of Babel, right down to the gestalt of Nimrod.
Riddle me this: If FOMO is a justification for people to fuck off, then how can “Fear of Fucking Off” be a thing?
Fear of Fucking Off is a different anxiety, and the older sibling to “FOMO.” It’s one where people like myself are continually driven to apply ourselves to things as if rabid dogs nipped at our heels. Those dogs being the fear of failure, the fear of disappointment, and those from that depraved litter. Some might merely classify this as the defining characteristic of a workaholic. That is partially the case, but it is a symptom and not the cause.
That cause is the world we had been ill-prepared to enter into. There is a reason why my generation backlashed the previous generations — “OK, Boomer.” — whenever they embellish past due to imperfections of memory. Indeed, the combined generations of both “Baby Boomers” (born 1946–1964 C.E.) and Generation X (born 1965–1980 C.E.) were the ones to sow what is currently being reaped, and certainly not in the ways that were intended.
It is important to note the cause of such things not to cast blame, but as context to understand how events came to be. By knowing the past, one prevents its repetition.
FOFO was caused by the conditioning of social constructs, where were were extolled the virtues of “pursuit of happiness” by quaint sound-bites: “work hard, play hard,” “succeed in school, and you’ll succeed in life,” “go to college, get a degree to achieve success,” etc., etc.
There were also the “flower ‘power’” affectations of “participation awards” and “political correctness,” thus coddling youth with faux truisms that aimed to spitefully deconstruct earlier social norms — the creation of “everyone is special”— on the pretense that kindness was The Way™ the world should be formed. These social experiments lead to further social eugenics, culminating into the sheer absurdity of playing music for fetuses.
Such simplistic falsities, coupled by the aforementioned erosions of critical thinking and control of language vis-à-vis social demagoguery, have caused a generation of Americans to stumble around due to overprotection from harsh truths.
Thankfully, some of my generation were able to seek out knowledge for themselves, and understanding that being hurt and losing are unavoidable parts of life.
“Failure does exist.”
“Success can kill you.”
“No pain, no [possible] gain.”
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.”
FOFO was born from these discomforting truths slamming into our faces and deconstructing our worldview, tearing it asunder akin to a bad acid trip. This brute force deprogramming resulted in either over- or under-compensation, disengaging us from not only our potential but from the world, wherein we isolated ourselves from each other in ways where naturally irreconcilable polarization resulted. With the creation of reactionaries from both sides, often times for the worse and lacking the understanding that middle grounds do exist due to the complexities of life, reaped the whirlwind within which we now exist.
If FOMO (a.k.a. “YOLO”) is the champion of those who have under-compensated, then FOFO is the champion for those of us who have over-compensated — to strive, to seek, and to never yield at any cost.
And like FOMO, FOFO drove — and continues to drive — us to revisit the sins upon our society, our loved ones, and indeed the very fabric of our lives. It is a cycle of abuse where all suffer because we know of no other way. Or, if we do, we learnt it too late and the damage had been already exacted, and we now work towards reparations.
This anxiety convinced us to throw ourselves into our work out of fear of being lesser human beings. It convinced us to throw our lot into the ineffectual belief system of multi-tasking. It convinced us to compare our lives to others, to see how we measured up. It forced us to work for our “survival,” whatever that might mean, at the expense of all other considerations.
And when those experiencing FOFO inevitably broke down, this was considered “fucking off” — a weakness, instead of the failure to adhere to proper work-life balance. We worked while sick. We worked while fatigued. We worked against our best interests, and the fruits of our distracted labor bore both sub-standard work and the mixture of depression and chastisement. Instead of accepting that we are not the fabled strength that in old days moved Earth and heaven, we failed to define boundaries. We failed to understand that we could not save the world, and that some things may not be worth saving. We failed to say “fuck you” at the proper time, believing it both improper in both decorum and time.
While those should lead into deeper conversations, the ultimate point is that FOFO should not be the unspoken of black sheep. As with all things, it needs to be welcomed into the light from its isolation, and discussed openly.
While we may have a love-hate relationship with FOFO, we can at least strive to reconcile it — at least for ourselves, if not for those that we share our brief existence along side.
The last thing you want to say is “Et tu, FOFO?”