I’m pretty sure that our generation, and the plus minus one, will be referred in history books for two things FOMO and Fake News. Of course, books also have to be there, in the far future.
Not surprisingly, both contribute and encourage each other.
For the uninitiated, FOMO refers to ‘Fear of Missing Out’. Yes, an abbreviation. The fear that we might not get to do what others are doing or it might be too late. Perhaps it was prevalent since ages, but we got time to nomenclate even this syndrome.
Fake news, of course, is the favorite brainchild of propaganda machinery. And thanks to the mighty Internet, is everywhere.
Reports by NASA suggest that in every 100-meter radius, 3 out of 5 people read a fake news!
Can you believe that ?!
Well, if you did. Then you read another fake news. You see, how EASY it is?
Coming back to, how FOMO and Fake News go together about their business of making us restless. And Fools. Yes.
Fake news is exciting, controversial and prone to sound urgent. It lights up bulbs in your heads, adds or pushes you to share it as well. I mean, don’t you want to be that ‘helpful’ ‘cool’ and ‘smart’ person who shares it?
And you have to be the first one. At least in your circle. Right ?
There’s your FOMO.
And wow, ‘jab mil baithe do yaar, FOMO, fake news aur ek idiot behind a smartphone‘. Just as real as Bagpiper Club Sodas and Music cassettes. Come on, we all beloved they were just that ?!
The lack of a filter in our brain and no sense of journalistic standards in publishing stories in an age where every WhatsApp group and Facebook page with a few likes can become the ‘Source of the news’ and when opinions become facts, yes, we live in that age.
So now when we think of people who believed in the earth is flat as stupid. We should remember that generations later, our ‘documented’ history will reveal a lot more insight about us.