By Kevin Brown
Before the pandemic, Richard Malone would spend hours wondering why his friends wouldn’t invite him to the outings and events he would see them post about on Instagram. Nowadays, Richard still does this and damn is it interesting seeing the hoops his brain will jump through to ruin his day.
“I’ll wake up in the morning and instinctively check Instagram. It’s usually the same stuff, but then I’ll see my friend from high school didn’t tag me in this challenge where you have Bill Clinton hold your top four favorite albums. That’ll keep me guessing the validity of my friendships for hours.”
While some may look at Richard’s situation and wonder how someone could be so synchronously insecure and narcissistic that they’d make a dumb social media challenge meant to keep people’s minds off an ongoing public health crisis about them, Richard’s “friends” assure that he has been like this literally always.
“Oh yeah, he’s something else. He literally gets FOMO when he’s in a conversation with people and they start talking about a topic he’s not familiar with. It’s insane.” Said Molly Andrieozzeti, his freshman year lab partner whose Instagram story he manages to always be one of the first to check.
Richard hopes to alleviate the stress associated with FOMO by spendng the majority of his time on his secret Instagram account he uses for softcore pornography.