fomo

noun

1. (abbreviation, acronym, alt-of, uncountable)Acronym of fear of missing out.

   “In this state of social flux, FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out, weighs heavily on the psyche. ... Notice that as a person becomes more and more FOMO, the energy needed to maintain such an active social life is tremendous.”

   “Often, because of FOMO, they are reluctant to do these things on their own, but if you can get their friends involved as well, the resistance disappears.”

   “On those occasions, she said, her knee-jerk reaction is often to post an account of a cool thing she has done, or to upload a particularly fun picture from her weekend. This may make her feel better — but it can generate FOMO in another unsuspecting person.”

   “In a Huffington Post write-up last spring, a Georgetown University student confirmed FOMO "is a widespread problem on college campuses … Even when we'd rather catch up on sleep or melt our brain with some reality television, we feel compelled to seek bigger and better things from our weekend. We fear that if we don't partake in every Saturday night's fever, something truly amazing will happen, leaving us hopelessly behind."”

2. (alt-of, alternative, uncountable)Alternative form of FOMO.

verb

1. (intransitive)To experience FOMO (“the fear of missing out”); to act on one's FOMO, often impulsively [(often) with into].

   “Within hours of selling out, AfroDroids NFTs started getting flipped on OpenSea for thousands of dollars, with new investors FOMO-ing into the project in case it became the newest PFP project to go to the moon.”