Emma Teitel: FOMO is dead, and the social media influencers are sputtering

It’s hard to believe that anybody is currently overcome with FOMO — “Fear of Missing Out” — because there’s nothing in the world to miss out on.

There are still many things to fear (I don’t need to write you a list) but missing out on that big weekend event isn’t one of them, when a) you don’t even know what day it is and b) that event is cancelled.

Even when it comes to the few events that aren’t cancelled — for example protests that defy physical distancing laws — you probably don’t want to be there anyway, if you value your life. Where you do want to be (or where you already are if you’re lucky) is at home. In other words, FOMO is dead.

But what happens when your career is FOMO-dependent — if prior to the pandemic you weren’t overcome with Fear of Missing Out on a Friday night: you were, rather, the source of it.

COVID-19 has turned a lot of brick-and-mortar businesses upside down, but it’s upending virtual occupations, too. Suddenly social media influencers — i.e. professional jet-setters who, pre-COVID, chronicled their lives from tropical beaches and elite parties — have nothing to do but sit around at home and wait out the plague like the rest of us.

According to a Business Insider Intelligence report from last year, “brands are set to spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022.” Something tells me their plans have changed.

It’s unlikely, for example, that a luxury hotel owner is about to put up a 26-year-old Instagrammer in his honeymoon suite in the middle of a pandemic to advertise non-essential travel that is illegal. Nor are event promoters jumping to offer Instagram models VIP tickets to concerts that are cancelled indefinitely.

If you’re a social media professional in the world of bread baking, this is your time to shine. But if lifestyle travel is your claim to online fame you might want to seek out a new one.

Or you can try to make do at home. According to York University digital marketing instructor Mangala Rao-D’Sa, “influencers have now pivoted to more of a community focus and they’re sharing how they are leading their best COVID-19 life indoors — doing workout videos, cooking meals at home and giving back to their communities.”

It’s true. Browse the pages of some of the world’s most popular travel and lifestyle accounts and it’s clear that influencers are trying to produce fresh content from their homes. The result is that much of their social media posts — previously escapist and jealousy-provoking — look a lot like our own: boring.