I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got?
On Forgetting What I Have in a World Designed to Make Me Forget.
The morning after the Tony Awards I got super sad because I realized I’d somehow forgotten to become a Broadway producer.
It didn’t matter that never, not once in my entire life, had I wanted to be a Broadway producer.
What mattered was a person I used to know won a Tony for being a Broadway producer — and I hadn’t.
The morning after the awards, with sleep still in my eyes, I reached for my phone and let my face do the work of unlocking my personal portal to hell (my iPhone). I was careful not to look too closely at my morning reflection in the glass as I navigated directly to Mark Zuckerberg’s internet.
I don’t remember what I was looking for, but that’s pretty normal. I don’t usually know what I’m looking for when I open Instagram. Sometimes it’s some version of “good news” (LOL WUT’S EVEN GOOD NEWS??!), or for a cute cat video (where the cats get tucked in with tiny duvets, in tiny beds). Sometimes I am hoping an influencer will recommend a green juice powder so good, if I buy it, I will never die.
On this particular morning, the first photo that appeared on my feed was posted by a totally lovely person I used to be closer with. They’d won a Tony the night before and were celebrating their spectacular, totally off-the-charts-amazing life accomplishment, but instead of me feeling happy for them, I felt the gut-punch of jealousy. Then, I felt shame for feeling jealous, and then sadness for feeling shame. I would not describe this as the best first five minutes of a day I’ve ever had.
The feeling was sharp, but I sat with it and realized it had shades to it. This wasn’t 100% jealousy. There was another genetic code of darkness woven up inside of it — FOMO.
Luckily, Cambridge Dictionary helped me put words to it:
“A worried feeling…caused by things you see on social media.” Yup. That was it.
At one critical point in my life, the two of us — this newly crowned Tony winner and I — existed inside on a similar timeline. We were colleagues and friends and shared inside jokes and showed up at fancy events together (back when I was more of a fancy event attender). I really like(d) this person! Then, as often happens with friendships over time, our lives forked in different directions. Their life forked in the direction of the Tonys and mine forked in the direction…opposite of that. The moment I saw the photo, I forgot how most days I really love my quieter, simpler, peaceful fork — the fork I needed to choose if I was going to save my life. Still, I couldn’t change the truth of how I felt. I was instantly “worried,” about almost everything. My entire life was suddenly situated in the wrong place and wrong time. Holy Shit. Did I pick the wrong fork???
This post tripped a wire in my reptilian brain. Instantly, I was transported into a fun house of comparison. It was an out of body feeling, like standing at the edge of the ocean during an undertow. I was in the sea, but waving to myself back in bed. Hey, Loser! I shouted over the waves. What the actual fuck (fork?) have you been doing with your life? Immediately, I had so much work to do. I needed to investigate all my mistakes, all the wrong turns I’d made. I mean, I was in my pj’s while my old friend was wearing a tuxedo on national television.
I should have been a different person entirely, I lamented. Oops!
I wrestled with this sticky, jealous feeling a few hours until around lunch, when I finally snapped out of it after glancing up from my sandwich and seeing a literal Emmy award resting on the mantle of my very own fireplace.
Well…what a totally ridiculous and embarrassing person I am! I thought.
I don’t mean this as a brag — humble or otherwise — but I did once randomly win a Daytime Emmy for a commercial I worked on at MTV that was meant to encourage teenagers to use condoms (so it’s not like I won it for writing an episode of The Sopranos or anything).
Still, at that moment, I could see how this award was exactly the kind of thing that would make me jealous of myself if I saw a picture of me winning it on Instagram.
Right then, all the nice and wonderful and warm and beautiful parts of my life came rushing back into focus. I’m not just talking about dumb awards, I’m talking about friendships and family and safety and love — things I’m lucky enough to have in spades. I was laughing at my ridiculousness. Quite obviously, this award I won once DIDN’T SOLVE MY WHOLE LIFE or cure me of my ENDLESS ABUNDANCE OF PERSONAL SHORTCOMINGS. At this point, more than ten years later, it’s mostly just a nice thing that happened once that still impresses my in-laws.
Of course! I remembered. This whole FOMO/comparison /jealousy/doom thing is the way the internet works — by design!
Lots of the people who’ve signed up to receive this letter have worked in advertising or media for a long time, so apologies for explaining this idea in crayon if you happen to be an expert. For those who may need a refresher, here’s a little overview about how “content” (ie: my friend’s photo) and “advertising” (ie: the way these social media platforms make their money) work together:
All media platforms (ie: newspaper, TV, radio, social) exist to make money.
These media platforms make money when advertisers pay money to reach people who spend their time consuming the media the platform hosts.
Content can sometimes seem like it’s separate from the ads, but if no one engages with the content, no money from advertisers can be made.
Even though my friend’s photo of their amazing night wasn’t an ad per se, it was definitely content. So now, the stats about my “engagement” with their post will be factored into a pie chart that will be used to convince advertisers that if they want to reach insecure people like me with anxieties that can be alleviated through purchase, Instagram’s a terrific place to do it.
In other words: my shame spiral helped Instagram’s bottom line.
According to an article about FOMO’s relationship to social media from Social Media Victims Law Center, a law firm that represents victims of social media that “works to hold social media companies legally accountable for the harm they inflict on vulnerable users”:
Social media platforms make their profits from advertising revenue. The longer users stay on the platforms and the more often they check back, the more ads they see and the more revenue the platforms generate.
I don’t want to tell you how many times I returned to the post that morning — both in my mind and on the app. In this way, my darkest, most embarrassing human traits were supporting Meta’s stock price.
In this article: How Marketers Use Social Media FOMO to Sell You Things and How You Can Keep Your Money (A+++ headline BTW), Adam Alter, associate professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business says:
Instagram is a FOMO engine. It shows you that other people are leading incredible lives and doing incredible things that you aren't doing.
I’m quoting Adam because he’s from a fancy school, but let’s be honest, you definitely don’t need to be a professor at NYU to know that FOMO is a central element to social media, where FOMO is a feature — not a bug. My shitty response to my friend’s post is how it’s designed to work.
Only after I was able to remember how Zuck and Co. were profiting from my deepest insecurities was I finally able to remember: Oh wait! I actually quite like my life a lot. That was also when the appropriate level of happiness for my old friend rushed in (if you see this, old friend, I’m genuinely so happy for you) and I was able to feel some forgiveness for the shadowy, sour parts of myself that had taken the wheel of my no-good-very-bad morning.
So, why am I sharing this story that probably makes me seem pretty terrible? Mostly because I’m positive I’m not the only one who struggles with this.
All this month, it seemed like so many friends I talked to were sure everyone else is doing better at being a person than they are — sharing what they’ve been seeing on social media as evidence:
One friend, an incredibly talented writer and chef, told me she wished she hadn’t left San Francisco for NY in the early 2000’s. “If I’d stayed there, I’d be a tech millionaire. I’d definitely own a house like all those people I see online I used to know do. Maybe I’d even own two.”
Another genius artist I know, lamented: “All those other artists I see on Instagram? I know they just wake up and get right to work and make great things all day. They never wake up doubting themselves like me.”
Another friend shared how her former high school friend, now a big-time yoga influencer, has her questioning her appearance every day. Still, she doesn’t unfollow her. “She makes me think it’s time to get Botox,” she said.
It wasn’t just my friends letting me know I wasn’t alone struggling with all these icky feelings of missing out and getting life all wrong. Apparently, this is a thing happening to enough people, a company made an ad about it — TO SELL STUFF.
Recently, I was listening to POD SAVE AMERICA because it sometimes makes me feel more sane about the state of the world (SPOILER: not this week). Here’s a transcript of an ad they read in the latest episode:
Do you tend to compare your life to others? Does social media play a part in that? What do you do when you get caught up wishing your life looked like someone else’s? Comparison is the thief of joy, and it’s easy to envy other people’s lives that might look like they have it all together on their Instagram, but in reality they probably don’t. THERAPY CAN HELP YOU FOCUS ON WHAT YOU WANT INSTEAD OF WHAT OTHERS HAVE, SO YOU CAN START LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE. Stop comparing and start focusing with BETTER HELP.
The relief! I was definitely not alone! And better yet — THERE WAS SOMETHING I COULD BUY TO MAKE ME LESS UGLY INSIDE. Like all good ads, this one made me feel like after I opened my wallet, I’d finally be fixed. Also, as someone who knows how ads get made, this one for sure would not exist unless there was a pile of research proving this FOMO angle would resonate with listeners and sell more subscriptions.
(I should say, I’m super-pro therapy and tending to your mental health in any way that’s accessible and right for you is critical, but it wasn’t lost on me how the solution to the problem I’d been encountering all month was served up to me in the form of an ad.)
Back when I was at Craigardan in May, I met an incredible writer — now a friend — Sonya Huber. Sonya is working on editing an upcoming essay collection about Sinéad O’Connor which, when she told me about it, was like one of the top ten most badass things a person has ever told me they are doing. Since meeting Sonya and commiserating about our Gen-X roots, I’ve been playing Sinéad’s 1990 album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” on repeat — and since THE GREAT NO-TONY-FOR-ME-INCIDENT-OF-2024, the title track has become a sort of meditation for me.
I'm walking through the desert.
And I am not frightened although it's hot.
I have all that I requested.
And I do not want what I haven't got.
I remember being 17, listening to this song for the first time, my whole life ahead of me. There were so many things I wanted for myself, so many worlds I wanted to break into and break through. None of it could come fast enough. I didn’t know then how I’d move through so many versions of myself over the years — that one day, I’d grow up and be fortunate to have so many of the things I wanted.
I hate how a social media algorithm that was invented to monetize my fears and anxieties can make me forget who I am and all I have. I hate how it can, in a split second, make me feel like I’ve taken some irreparable wrong turn or made some grand mistake. I hate, most of all, how it can make me ugly with jealousy when good things happen to good people.
The next time I feel jealous or left-out or scared I’m living all wrong (and since this is how the internet is designed to work, I’m sure this will happen soon enough), I’m going to try and remember what Sinéad said:
I will take this road much further.
Though I know not where it takes me.
I have water for my journey.
I have bread and I have wine.
No longer will I be hungry.
For the bread of life is mine.
I’m going to try to remember how the things I do not have, I do not want — or even need.
Oh, hi.
Thanks so much for being here and thank you for reading. Just to say — this is still a new experiment and although I’m having fun (and hope you are too?), I’m continuing to explore how often I’ll post and what kinds of things I’ll be writing about. Although I give a lot of fucks about the toxic nature of advertising, I care about other things too — and I may be playing around with sharing more about other things in time. I appreciate you reading as I try to work out my relationship to this platform and to the whole, ridiculous world.
Here’s one other thing about creative, artistic, professional FOMO that flavored my month — this book, “We Play Ourselves,” by Jen Silverman, was unhinged and glorious in every way. I felt like a model of stability and mental health after reading it. High reco for a beach-y, fun, wild read and for (maybe?) feeling a little less alone when it comes to how we measure our worth against the successes of others.
Thanks for tuning in. This post has been sponsored by: FOMO, the shadow self and radical vulnerability,
xoLu
V. resonant and relatable - who among us hasn't been a terrible, jealous person for a few minutes? On that note, I've been thinking about posting about Instagram accounts that bring joy vs. jealousy. A few: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Grace Kuhlenschmidt, jeffreymixed, Amy Sedaris (who often re-posts jeffreymixed). It reminds me of what's good about social media (sometimes).
keep experimenting, we are all here & lusting for more. & i love when you prompt us with questions.