Is Everyone in a Zoom Party Without Me?
FOMO is still real, even when everyone is missing out on things together
We talk about this time as, well, “this time.” A “new normal.” These euphemisms capture our collective, existential adjustment to forced confinement. But they don’t quite convey the novel humiliations that have, like those first crocuses of spring or Google Hangout links in everyone else’s group texts, now burst onto the scene.
Once upon a time, in that distant epoch called “February,” the people had social lives. They would don their finest block-heeled, square-toed footwear and high-necked designer prairie dresses — or, if straight and male, a “shirt” — and congregate among others.
They would gather at commercial establishments and private residences. In restaurants, where the people at that time ate in situ, groups of friends raised their voices to be heard through the din of so much camaraderie and natural wine. Each table would identify which of its respective members had the least-shitty iPhone. A server would materialize and possibly inquire as to whether the diners “know how our menu works.”
And sometime between 10:07 and 10:15 pm, as you’d come to make peace with your “decision” to stay in on that particular Friday night because, damn it, you’re tired and that is nothing…
