It may seem counterintuitive, but staying connected through Twitter definitely exacerbates the condition known as FOMO.
FOMO, which stands for the Fear of Missing Out, is a phenomenon that has taken hold in various ad campaigns over the last few years, and is pretty straightforward. It’s about the feeling you get when you know that somewhere, something great is happening without you. Thanks to Twitter, you always know when something is happening these days.
I took a rare mini-vacation over the weekend, a trip back to my alma mater to see some old friends. It was great spending time with good people, and there was some compelling NFL playoff action on the tube, so the last thing that I should have been doing was compulsively checking my phone. But alas, FOMO struck again.
On Saturday night, Mamaroneck and Rye squared off in the finals of the annual Tiger basketball tournament. The results were epic; a double-overtime thriller that, when combined with a packed weekend house, is a pretty clear frontrunner for the game of the year in Section I.
And I wasn’t there.
Now, had this game taken place a decade ago, my feelings on the matter would have been different. I would have come back to Westchester on Monday, talked to coaches, maybe read a game story or two, and realized that I missed a heck of a game. But following the tweets of the fans and journalists who were actually in the building on Saturday, in real time, was a lot tougher.
The five-minute stretch of tweets I read on my phone when Emerson Genovese scored a 3-point play to send the game into overtime was absolutely phenomenal. News 12 anchor Greg Thompson took to the Twitter-verse to all but congratulate Rye—and standout Charlie Nagle—when @MHSVarsitySport, the student-run account of Mamaroneck High School, responded with a “Not so fast.”
Sure the Packers and Cardinals were waging an equally terrific battle on the screens of the bar where I spent most of my undergraduate years, but at that moment, the only place I wanted to be was in Mamaroneck’s Palmer Gymnasium.
For as many games as I cover during the school year, very few approach “event status.” For every game I attend that turns out like the 2012 ESPY-winning matchup between New Rochelle and Mount Vernon in the Class AA finals, there are about two dozen that end up more like last Wednesday’s Eastchester/Port Chester girls basketball game, which saw Eastchester hold a 31-point lead at the half.
Part of the fun of my job is that I get to be there when sports rise above the mundane and become transcendent. Only this time, I wasn’t.
Fittingly enough, the way I felt on Saturday night was best summed up in a tweet. At the end of the first overtime, with the score tied 75-75, @MHSVarsitySport really twisted the knife.
“If you’ve missed this game,” it stated. “Seriously re-consider your life choices.”
And boy, did I ever.
