For The Love of FOMO

By Pierakis Pieri

I. SYSTEM STARTUP

LOG ENTRY 00:01

The poetry of it keeps me awake at night—

how beautiful it is to watch it fall.

Digital erosion more effective than any protest ever mounted.

We don’t fire bullets. We rewrite gravity.

Then wait for things to drop.

In meetings, we call it “innovation.”

In Slack, we call it hunting season.

Smart bombs for smart times.

The perfect crime leaves no fingerprints—

just Error 404: Human Not Found.

LOG ENTRY 00:47

That persistent glitch from N.Y. still follows me.

(A/B test #387 proved loneliness increases click-through rates.)

Why do I keep tracing his digital shadow across my screens?

Why does the code I wrote keep diminishing his options?

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

USER MANUAL: EMERGENCY DEPROGRAMMING

> THE GRAVITY (FALLING BY DESIGN)

That emptiness under your ribs when you see vacation photos?

Manufactured scarcity. They’re selling you emptiness wrapped in fairy lights.

Watch how perfectly FOMO reduces us to hungry ghosts.

> THE PERFECT CRIME

Here’s the backdoor they don’t want patched:

That little dopamine rush when your phone pings?

Not connection. Just the dealer handing out samples.

> COMPARE AND DESPAIR (v2.3.5)

When you measure your unwashed dishes against a Bali breakfast spread,

you’re not seeing reality vs. fakery.

You’re seeing two camera angles of the same grand performance.

> WILD THING.EXE

There’s still a part of you they haven’t jailbroken yet.

That sigh after two hours of scrolling? Not your conscience.

That’s the last wild thing inside you, sending smoke signals from the wilderness.

Emergency patch notes: 

1. Touch your actual, beating heart when comparison panic hits.

2. Whisper to your FOMO: “What exactly are you selling today?”

3. Create experiences so private they feel almost illegal.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

II. SYSTEM FAILURE

LOG ENTRY 23:59

The words of the manual scroll behind my eyes—

should I send it?

To all those lights on the skyline, each one a life I’ve quietly rearranged.

Their “choices”? Just sophisticated illusions I helped engineer.

ERROR: DEMOCRACY.EXE HAS STOPPED RESPONDING

(Reason: Optimized for engagement)

That N.Y. glitch now multiplies in my veins.

One error becomes ten. Becomes a revolution of corrupted data.

Digital shadows crawling through my blood like ants through sugar.

LOG ENTRY 00:00

Our memes outgrow their frames—

the highest heights collapse into a cosmic joke.

The poetry of DOGE keeps me awake at night—

because even jokes can become gods.

Oh, for the love of FOMO—

may we all be saved by the wild things we forgot.

I close my eyes.

The stars reload as buffering symbols.

By Pierakis Pieri