The Fear of Missing Out
In this personal essay, Brian Buchanan reflects on creativity, community, and the strange ache of FOMO.Set against the backdrop of a collaborative music project, the piece explores what it means to witness something beautiful from a distance—and how that tension can fuel both envy and inspiration.
part I: the bomb
Local comedian and ever-rising star Eric D’Alessandro once joked in his stand-up routine about self-awareness—or people’s lack thereof—on social media. Everyone around my age was familiar with the scenario he cued up: first, before heading down the Jersey Shore for a night of clubbing, someone posted a lecherous thirst trap and captioned it with their raw, hedonistic intent for the evening. Then, the post accumulated likes and comments… including tone-deaf helloes from grandparents and well-wishes from aunts and uncles. The point was that some people, and older folks in particular, never read the digital room. They can’t. When I saw Eric perform this bit, he said something—almost as a passing afterthought—that has stuck with me ever since: “We know how to handle the bomb.” Put another way: millennials know how to navigate the social internet.
Eric was, of course, making sweeping generalizations and playing on preconceived notions. A more judicious—and decidedly unfunny—framing of Eric’s take might be that millennials are a touch more aware of how the “bomb” ought to be handled. We have better metacognition, or: more than just using social media, we think about how we use it. That does NOT mean that we possess superheroic immunity from all the internet’s dangers and pitfalls. We might not make the same faux pas as our boomer relatives, sure, but we definitely engage in our own uniquely destructive habits. We catch ourselves doom scrolling and know that it’s bad for us, but we scroll on. And why not? The doom these days is exquisite.
I handle the bomb OK. When I’m approaching my limits, I can apply the brakes and decelerate. I touch grass. Over the years, I’ve abandoned certain social media platforms altogether, and my notifications are disabled. All I post anymore are quirky music sketches and hardly anyone interacts with them. Don’t get me wrong: that’s exactly how I want it. Social media is a rat race, and I wasn’t built for it. The people I envy most are the mysterious rare posters, those mole people that emerge from digital hibernation every six months to share something vague and tantalizing only to disappear again, back into their self-imposed exile. Those people are my idols.
So I handle the bomb OK… mostly. The only way to truly avoid the bomb is to make a clean break from all social media. Until that day comes, however, I’ll inevitably contend with the bomb again. Every time I pick up my phone, it’s like I’m playing thermo nuclear Russian roulette: this could be the hour I see something that kicks off an endless spiral. Most times I can pull myself out, but because I’m only mostly OK at handling it and not perfect, I don’t always defuse the bomb. Like an overzealous cosmonaut studying a black hole, by the time I realize I’ve crossed the event horizon, it’s too late; the ensuing suck will be inescapable.
Each social media platform has issues, but the worst offender is also the app most relevant to my peers: Instagram. I forget where I heard it, but someone made the point recently that, “the only way to engage on Instagram is to create,” and for me, that’s the problem. If you want to engage, you have to make something. If you don’t, you don’t exist. Now, it is not difficult to engage on Instagram—posting a photo, story, or a reel couldn’t be any easier. What I am saying is: while this act of creation does not need to be thorough, it ain’t nothing, neither. Those forms of media exist in a higher dimensional creative space than an ephemeral, text-based tweet or a Facebook status update. Just consider all of the creative decisions that go into the photo-based platform: there’s shot composition, color, contrast, filters, touch-ups, music, text, captions, hashtags, and on and on. Even people that only share other people’s content, that still constitutes the creative act of curation. The result is that the creativity poured into a post, or a story, or a reel elevates them, and the evidence is in the time, energy, and money poured into their creation. I know I’m only the billionth person to lament the negative externalities of social media generally/Instagram specifically. Namely, if you’re going to put time, effort, and money into what you share, why not make it good? Why not make it the best? Deliberate, low-effort shitposting aside, the result is that users self-select what they share, editorializing their lives until it’s unrecognizable fiction. There’s a modern adage that goes, “No one posts their L’s,” or their losses. By whittling away all the bad we experience, perfection becomes synonymous with genuine. We have all these creative tools at our disposal, but use them to be artists of our facades.
Just as a comedian oversimplifies to make a joke, I’m using the same rhetorical tactic to make a point. Naturally, social media—like any technology—is not a force for good or ill in and of itself. Still, nobody I talk to likes Instagram. We’re all well aware how bad it is for us, but we blow it off with sarcastic jokes and nervous laughs. The truth is, we're not looking for collective action, alternatives, or solutions. It’s a non-starter, because we’ve grown to love the bomb. Our bomb.
When I see people’s posts, stories, and reels, it does something to my monkey brain. My humanity is activated: I feel loved; I laugh; I get upset; I’m mad. The most potent of these emotions is a noxious mixture of dread and jealousy, and it gets aroused whenever I see someone posting something I wish I was experiencing for myself. In fact, this feeling is so ubiquitous it’s become abbreviated into an acronym: FOMO. It stands for: the Fear Of Missing Out. And when it comes to handling the bomb, this is my Achilles Heel. Whenever I try to fight FOMO, I lose. I never cut the wires right, I fumble the defusing, and as a result? The timer ticks down, and then… well, what do bombs do?
They detonate.
part II: mt bethel
Abrasive, active crickets kick off the live EP Mt Bethel, a joint venture from the local powerhouses Modern-Day Machines and King Like Mom. From the natural, ambient white noise comes a more sonically stable acoustic guitar, gentle and probing. This song Arrival is the first of three interstitials that become fully realized in the EP’s accompanying short film of the same name, capturing open roads at sunrise on a hazy mountainside. Picking gives way to confident strums as a car pulls up to a rented house in Mount Bethel, PA, where the two bands trekked to write, record, and film. No one person is ever quite the focus of the camera’s eye; instead, the space becomes its own character with its own details: morning dew on the windowsill, stacked solo cups on a barn table, shadows cast from a balcony.
A running theme throughout Mt Bethel is that something is not quite right. What this something is exactly is only ever hinted at. It’s nebulous—an ever present, yet ever fleeting, feeling. The first song proper on the EP—a solo joint from MDM called God Bless, God Damn—highlights this instability from the jump, with accents on the first measure’s offbeats. Drummer Jomar Vargas pulls off his most technical fireworks before the husband/wife duo of Patrick Wakie and local scream queen Rose Couchon harmonize: “All we have is now.” Being present in a moment, they offer, is a dichotomous experience, echoing the sentiment of the song’s title. The anguish from what one struggles with has a Newtonian opposite—the presence of those that bring you aid and love. Later, they sing, “All it takes is a little faith,” and it rings like an anthemic rally until the cold comfort of, “they say,” is tacked on, flattening the words into a simple platitude. Modern-Day Machines continue to leap acrobatically between time signatures throughout what might be their quintessential song, always teetering on the edge of a precipice, culminating in the ricocheting cry: “Fall asleep dreaming, wake up screaming.”
Dream Sequence, the second interstitial, sets a decidedly darker tone than Arrival. In the short film, the moody piece soundtracks quiet, mundane moments between performances. Smiles are shared. Patriotic hats are donned. Guitars are tuned. Places are set for the first blended piece between MDM and KLM. The song that wakes up screaming from the Dream Sequence is the EP’s crowning jewel: Stems.
Visually, Stems is at once both economical and dazzling: a never ending carousel that cleverly gives each performer their own moments of showcase. This song requires the full force of each band, and KLM drummer Alexandra Gonzalez sings the lead vocals, delivering the EP’s catchiest—and therefore most accessible—melodies. A descending guitar arpeggio counters and duets, provided by former MDM guitarist Tom Mulvaney. Building off God Bless, God Damn, there’s an idea that the present moment is a terrible trap. Gonzalez sings, “[Life] used to be so easy,” and that these days, it’s difficult trying to stay afloat and catch up on sleep. What’s worse, perhaps, is that the notion that better days are behind them has become entrenched: ”I’m used to this.” The battlefield of these physical challenges takes place—ironically—in the mind, and temporary relief comes at the end of each day, home and unconscious.
One of the plain joys of a performance film such as Mt Bethel is in capturing visually what cannot be heard on an audio recording. For example, in Not Surrendering, Amanda Gonzalez is clearly giving this song its energy and groove before they even begin playing their bass. Julia Simoniello and Patrick Wakie co-pilot the vocals, giving listeners a treat to some of the best voices—alone or blended—that Staten Island has to offer. Hearing them sing together taps a magic vein that must be heard live to be believed (this performance on Not Surrendering does come close, though). One wonders why a warning label was not adorned on the physical vinyl release of this EP, as they may find themselves melting to Julia’s switch to falsetto in the first verse. Where in Stems, sleep was suggested to be a respite, here it is anything but: “In my dreams, you’re dumb and blind.” Mt Bethel’s final statements on time are also delivered: “Today is just a day,” is repeated over and over to close out the track, oscillating its meaning with each utterance. Heard one way, today is temporary and soon over, gone and in the past. Heard another way, today is a prison that offers a baiting look to the future and the past, but they are always out of reach beyond a clear, barred window.
The EP ends with a final interstitial as film credits roll. Rice Pudding retains the signature sounds of both bands—reductively: somber chords and forlorn melodies—but the cackles and giggles throughout expose it to be a light outtake, perhaps whipped together between takes of another song. Its placement and inclusion raises the question: is it merely self-parody, or is this—the act of taking-the-piss with your friends—a cure to all Mt Bethel’s ills? What initially comes off as a joke—taking seriously the, “yummy,” food that is “for dessert, for breakfast”—might be an encapsulation of the EP’s call to action first sung in God Blass, God Damn: “Stay with me, through the joy and grief and pain.” There’s real risk in reading too deeply into what’s clearly an inside joke, but I’ll take my chances.
All told, Mt Bethel is a bold experiment conducted by two of Staten Island’s leading bands. Thematically, the specter of something nefarious lingers in the shadows, but practically, the end result could not be clearer. These two groups have joined together and accomplished a mathematical impossibility: the whole is greater than the sum of parts.
part III: the fear of missing out
I vividly remember the weekend Modern-Day Machines and King Like Mom took their trip to record Mt Bethel. Not only do I follow both band accounts on Instagram, I follow their individual members, too. For all my geriatric readers, Instagram has this super nifty feature for tagging your friends in stories and posts: you simply enter their username as text. This allows you to identify who might be in a picture or a video, and—importantly—it allows the tagged entity to reshare that content on their own feed. In the parlance of nerds, we call this cross-posting. You could imagine, then, between about ten accounts, members of MDM and KLM were posting, sharing, and re-sharing content all weekend. Over and over again I would see the same stories crop up, watching them all goofing around, writing, relaxing. I was drinking content from a firehose for over two days, so much so it felt like I was there with them.
Of course, I was not there with them and I was instead, as the phrase goes, fearing I was missing out. A retreat with friends to a remote destination to write and record music? That sounds like a dream! Growing up, I heard story after story about bands like Led Zeppelin hightailing it to some haunted shack in the countryside to find solitude. Far from the modern amenities of civilization, they’d escape all their troubles and responsibilities. By sojourning to some fantastical, bucolic location, the stress of life would slip away, and they’d inspire themselves to write purely, perform authentically, and be true to their hearts (…and fucking rock). Who doesn’t want to get lost to find themselves? I’ve never been a part of something like that, and I doubt I ever will at this point, but MDM and KLM pulled it off.
There’s also the live video component of Mt Bethel—that felt like another gut-punch. Music performance videos have been a pivotal, foundational cornerstone to my music identity. When I was in my first-ever band back in 8th grade, we took a break one rehearsal and, on a fateful whim, turned on the concert film The Song Remains the Same. For the next few hours we did not pick up our instruments again—we were simply transfixed by what we saw. During high school, the world saw the explosion of online music programs such as KEXP and NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts. Some artists made their break or had their defining moments on these programs, such as the Shakey Graves set on Audiotree. My favorite of these types of shows was From the Basement, created by legendary producer Nigel Godrich. Specifically, the Radiohead In Rainbows From the Basement performance is, without hyperbole, one of my most cherished pieces of media I’ve ever consumed. I was so inspired by this one set that, when I was a senior in high school, I created my own version for local musicians. The Chokey Sessions, as I called them, provided me with skills that I use to this day. One of my bands turned to Twitch live-streaming as we made our way out of the pandemic, for example.
I don’t know what it is that I like so much about the live music video or short music film format. Part of it, I imagine, is the “realness” of it all. When musicians enter a studio to record a song, they engage in a kind of fabrication. I’m not even talking about extreme uses of current techniques, such as auto tuning vocals or using drum machines. I’m talking about how The Beatles famously stopped touring and immediately created their magnum opus. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was made by experimenting with recording technology and piecing together songs in ways they literally could not play “live” together as a four piece. Hell, even the mythological blues figure Robert Johnson recorded multiple takes of his songs and chose the best of the bunch for release. Personally, I hold studio recorded albums—with their multiple takes and edits—in higher esteem than live music, in part for their ability to create new worlds and soundscapes that are not strictly possible in “real life.” (If it is not clear, I’ll make it explicit now: recorded music—for its entire history—is not so different from the… dilemmas… faced by social media users and their drive to present impeccable versions of their lives.) But live music will always have its merits, not in spite of but because of the warts and mistakes and imperfections. In the end, shows and concerts are the epitome of being in the moment, because the rawness and the authenticity cannot be experienced any other way. It’s baked in. There’s a natural paradox, then, in trying to capture that, trying to record a live visual EP such as Mt Bethel, but it’s legit, and an all-new form is born as a result. I just wish, in Mt Bethel’s specific case, that I’d been in the room with them.
I talked with my best friend and longtime music collaborator Shaun Gold that weekend about what Modern-Day Machines and King Like Mom were doing. As a prominent member of the music scene, Shaun was also seeing everyone’s stories get endlessly reposted. I told him straight up that I was experiencing some of the worst FOMO in my life, and he concurred. What could we do about it? Not check our phones for an entire weekend? It felt inescapable. Those bands—our friends and peers that we’ve known for over a decade!—were doing the thing! Why couldn’t we? Why didn’t our band have the same kind of bond with another group on the island? I was jealous, and disappointed in myself for feeling envious of people I respected. I wanted to be happy for them and supportive—and I was!—but there was also this other ugly feeling. It sucked. Everyone in Bethel looked like they were having a blast. They were living it up together, and it set off my bomb.
How could their weekend have been anything less than perfect?
part IV: Rose
I’ve known Rose—a member of both Modern-Day Machines and King Like Mom—for years and years. My corner of the Staten Island music scene, when I first got involved back in high school, was overwhelmingly male-dominated among performers; Rose was a bonafide trailblazer. Even though the bands and sounds have changed, Rose continues to stand out today. For one thing, she’s a lefty, so her signature teal telecaster is always pointing the “wrong way” in my mind. For another, her small frame betrays the enormous, menacing scream she’s capable of belting out. But more than anything else, Rose is known by her joy. At shows, she lights up when she spots someone she knows. She’ll make time for you. Basically, she’s the best kind of person you could ever want to know. A music scene is a community, sure, but any community is made up of individuals; I say this to say: even if Rose wasn’t in the two most prominent local bands, she’d still be on the list of our core pillars. I hope every scene everywhere has a Rose.
In mid-October of 2023, Rose was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, an aggressive form of blood cancer. As Rose began treatment, the bat-signal went out and nearly one-thousand people donated over $70,000 to a GoFundMe campaign organized by her friends and bandmates. On December 2nd that year, I and many others attended ROSEFEST at Flagship Brewery, a benefit show held between rounds of chemotherapy. On January 26th, 2024, she received a bone marrow transplant—a crucial step in reclaiming the life she knew: returning to her enviable job as a music educator, hiking to new destinations with Patrick, and playing, writing, and recording with her bands. Mt Bethel’s short liner notes begin by saying, “It started as a hospital bed daydream,” and the implication is right there—this was Rose’s wish. That’s part of why I was ashamed of my own complicated feelings absorbing everyone’s Instagram content that weekend in the spring. I knew it surely must’ve been a victory lap for Rose and everyone close to her, after defeating her cancer.
I could not have been more wrong.
“This isn’t something I made public [at the time],” Rose told me on the phone recently in an interview for this article, “I relapsed in late April of last year and I was on a chemo pill to get me back into remission. [While we were recording,] I was in a place where literally anything could happen. I didn’t know if that would be my last summer of shows, I didn’t know if that would be my last big hurrah to jam with my bands.” Rose quickly followed up by saying, as of the time of our conversation, she was two months in complete remission. “The chemo pills that they put me on worked,” she told me, “So it’s a little celebratory news.” I hate to fact-check Rose on this, but she’s wrong—that’s HUGE celebratory news.
Still, Rose’s relapse colored everyone’s experience that weekend. As she explained, “I think that might be why the feeling is so raw and authentic, because everyone was experiencing that rawness in their own personal lives and with me. And it’s like, ‘OK, we only have this weekend.’ All we had was a couple takes and writing what we felt in that moment.” Even Rice Pudding has a backstory: “God forbid it didn’t have lore—everything has lore!
“I left the hospital eighty-eight pounds, so I’ve been on this journey to thicken up. Something that happens after a stem cell transplant: everything kind of tastes like metallic cardboard for like a month. Everything is disgusting, so you’re already losing weight and you need to gain weight, but everything is gross. Like even water is gross. … Once your body gets used to only eating so much, you’re like, ‘I have to just eat garbage just to take in the calories. We ordered from some random diner and I ordered rice pudding. I’m just sitting there, nursing my rice pudding and, you know, [everyone’s] ragging on me for my rice pudding and we start riffing about, ‘Pudding made out of rice.’ … When you’re with a bunch of musicians for a weekend and you’re being silly-goofy and you’re all too tired, you’re bound to write some sort of riffy song. … We got a little rice pudding moment; it’s a hit!” 100% certified.
Even if her cancer is gone, Rose continues to contend not only with the experience of her diagnosis and treatment, but of the support she received, too. RE: bringing her daydream to fruition, Rose profusely deflected all the credit, first to Amanda for booking the location and then to Patrick, who “[booked] everything else. … Patrick made it happen.” While grateful for the support from her husband and bandmates, Rose admitted that all the support from the larger community can feel overwhelming at times: “I don’t want to feel like an imposter. … There are times where I just start crying because I feel guilty for having something that is so magical, and other people don’t have this. … ‘Why do I have this? Do I deserve it?’ Everyone deserves a supporting community, but why do I have this? … It just boils down to: the why’s won’t be answered. And maybe they will be answered in twenty years from now. But right now, I just have to take what I have and use what I have.”
Knowing Rose as I do, it isn’t surprising at all that as she reflects inward, she feels her own responsibility to reach out. “I’m blessed to have these resources and this community, and I just want to give back in any way I can. If that means that someone listens to a silly, goofy song about rice pudding, and it makes their next two hours feel really good? Beautiful. I accomplished something.”
I can testify: mission accomplished.
part V: the goddess of democracy
I obviously feel like a big, dumb idiot for the intense FOMO I felt the weekend Modern-Day Machines and King Like Mom were away recording Mt Bethel. Seriously—where do I get off talking about the fear of missing out in the face of a friend who battled a life-threatening illness? Beyond my initial feelings of being spoiled and ungrateful, I felt like I ought to have known better. Rose’s relapse wasn’t public knowledge; I didn’t know, so I try to give myself some grace in that regard. But I was still aware of the bomb. I knew that everything I consume on social media needs to be taken with a grain of salt at best. I was well aware what was happening to me when I kept clicking on their stories, one after the next. It would be easy to blame other people and say Instagram sucks (it does), but the true culprit resides in my mirror.
I’ve spent a lot of time working on this article, thinking about what I actually want to say and what I hope people will get out of it. There are some outcomes that are basic and straightforward. I definitely want you to listen to Mt Bethel. Then, I want you to watch the accompanying short film and then go see these bands live. I hope you take my lesson and remember for yourself that what you see on social media is a fraction of a fraction of the real story (please reject the bomb). But I worry about the efficacy of my own writing. I’m not a writer, not really. I don’t write music reviews and I want to be sensitive and respectful of my friend’s harrowing ordeal. This EP and its story feels worthy of documentation, but this isn’t a term paper—it feels too big, too important to screw up.
In that vein, I’ve wondered if any of the things I make are worth creating, especially when I’m not sure I can stick the landing. All the stuff I create—do they sufficiently challenge the status quo? Am I speaking truth to power? Recently, I watched a documentary on the Tiananmen Square Massacre and learned about a statue erected by local Beijing art college students. They called it the Goddess of Democracy. Made of foam and papier-mâché, the statue was ten meters tall—an unavoidable F.U. to the Chinese government officials (c’mon, how badass is that???). The idea of such a statue existing in China today is unthinkable, and even at the time the students knew it wouldn’t last long. An inscription on a banner near the statue read: “The statue of the Goddess of Democracy is made of plaster, and of course cannot stand here forever. … On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent.” As predicted, the statue did not last—after five days, Chinese tanks crushed it into dust. A new statue has yet to be erected in Tiananmen Square. I cannot reflect on this without getting chills, because that… is real, meaningful, worthy art. On the contrary, I have a hard time believing any of my “art” has ever made anyone feel anything at all.
I voiced this concern a few weeks ago at a 4th of July barbeque. I was upstate visiting a friend, but I was surrounded by strangers mostly. I had been asking everyone what the most rebellious thing they’d ever done was and what rebellion meant to them. Eventually my own question was turned on me and, after having a think, I said, “This. Rebellion is talking with peers about big ideas.” That’s when I said my wish was for my art to be the most rebellious thing I do, but inevitably, it always feels inadequate. My friend Nikki quickly shot me down, saying, “Hang on, you’ve made this and this and this,” listing off the litany of my projects. I shrugged Nikki off at the time, but after sitting with it for a few days, what they said finally made sense. It’s not about what I’ve made, it’s that I make things.
I try.
Going over my notes for this piece, I realized I had a quote from Rose that espoused the same thing, essentially. She said, in reference to seeing and hearing Mt Bethel for the first time, “It’s still like: woah! This is the thing that we did! It’s crazy!” Rose didn’t say, “Oh! What a great EP and short film we put together,” (even though they are great). Instead, for her, it was about what they experienced, what they accomplished together as two bands in a shared scene. That’s what’s crazy. That’s what’s so amazing. I realized that’s why my favorite moments of Mt Bethel the film are the interstitials, the moments of love and living before and after the music. I love the music, too, but it’s the doing that matters, regardless of the result.
I think that’s the point™. I’m (mercifully, thankfully) not in control of what anyone might take away from this article, but I hope you’re inspired to go make something. And gosh, I hope you make something real. And when you create that something, make it with your friends and share it with your community. Tell me about it! I firmly believe that everyone should make stuff—it’s imperative. You might make the art someone else needs, the art that speaks to their soul in ways that words alone will fail. If they don’t have your art, they’ll have to settle for something else, something less. You’re needed. I might not have the confidence I wish for my own writing or anything else I make, but I’m trying. I hope you try, too.
And you cannot wait. I hate to be the bearer of this news, but you must—you must!—start now. Whatever your thing is—painting, singing, dancing, sculpting, writing—don’t wait! If you don’t want to take my word for it, take Rose’s.
“Don’t do the thing later. Do the thing now. If you can.”
Brian Buchanan is a physics teacher by day and, by night, a masked vigilante versatile artist. His passions span the realms of football, guitar pedals, & the law of large numbers. Brian finds beauty in the patterns of the universe, and his artistic soul is reflected in both his music and writing, where he weaves melodies and stories that touch the heart. At home, he finds inspiration and comfort in the company of two pups: Boo & Jem. Brian's gentle spirit and insights leave an enduring mark on everyone he meets (hopefully!!), making Shaolin a more beautiful place through his diverse talents.