FOMO

A video of a man’s foot on a baby’s chest streamed on Mark’s terminal. The baby’s arms and legs hung limp, its eyes closed and lips puckered. Most of the user-reported content Mark screened included inappropriate ads, misinformation, bickering, hate speech. His fingers shook over the keys as the seconds ticked by. The image remained static. All too often, some new expression of humanity's hidden face struck him like a sniper's bullet. The image remained static. Mark braced for context, his flop of hair askew in the pale blue light, his plaid shirt misbuttoned. Either the man applied pressure, was about to, or just had. Maybe bad art house or sour gag. Hundreds every day.
Forty-odd moderators filled Convigilant’s production floor, screening similar content. A third-party social media content mediation firm that outsourced to various Silicon Valley platforms. Just a month ago, as friends returned to college after summer vacation, Mark had transitioned from Discount Club, where he had worked with his mother, Leah. Unable to finance college and make ends meet, his heart had jumped for a job in tech that didn’t require a degree. A starting wage of fifteen dollars an hour, full benefits, and scholarships toward computer science and programming degrees. In bright blue lettering, the name “Convigilant” ran across the far wall, a corporate fusion of conviviality and vigilance, with a large open eye painted in softer tones behind it. 
At thirty seconds, Mark flagged the video as “inappropriate” and let out a long breath. A conspiracy theory outlining deep state terrorism popped up in its place. Next, a video panned a quiet suburban street, a strange scream off to the left. Mark’s temples throbbed. He’d flagged that video twice already since he sat down, and he did so again before the camera found its subject. Each new cringe or shock advocated the work’s necessity, the pain that he and his coworkers kept from countless users. Of course, he absorbed some of it — a deeper kindness than directing discount shoppers to seasonal bedding sales, a new, helpful profession with real career potential.
The executive social media specialist rapt his knuckles on Mark’s workstation. Scruffy, unflappable, with eyes that echoed the we’re all in this together he purred to close out orientation. To his side, a young man with a narrow chin radiated the innocence of a new hire. He would see beheadings, mutilations, violated children, probably all in the same day. Mark’s first few days surged back to him in a fit of nausea that escaped as a belch.
“Sorry,” Mark said. His face burned in front of his crush. 
“Something you ate, I’m sure,” the specialist said through a warm grin. 
“Right,” Mark said. We’re in this together. He signed out of the system, knotted the trash bag, and said a quick hello to the new hire. Four hundred moderators worked on a fluid schedule to reinforce confidentiality; chatting, even asking someone’s name, was frowned upon, and he rarely saw the same person twice beyond their orientation week. Rumor hinted that regulations loosened as one climbed the ladder.
The specialist walked Mark to the lobby. “Just wanted to let you know, the client really likes your numbers. Top five percent,” he said. “Considering you for a promotion.” Mark regained some composure. He’d never been in the top five percent of anything. Advancement only offered a dollar more an hour, but a more fixed schedule and managerial experience. And Mark could ask the specialist out for a drink. 
Mark passed the dumpsters at the rear of the Lakeview Office Park on his way out. Half-finished meals, used office supplies, and urine-filled plastic bottles. The single bathroom was filthy, and even a single minute away from one’s workstation docked pay and threatened productivity metrics. In the parking lot, the 137 bus hissed to a stop as passengers glowed in the light of their phones until the driver flipped on the lights to resist the falling dusk.
On the bus, static leaked through earbuds, touchscreens ticked, and email whooshed in place of voices. Mark gripped the handhold near the door as the tree-lined streets rumbled by. A woman in a paisley coat scrolled through her phone in the seat across from him while a little girl flicked at her starry headband in the next seat over. 
Mark tested out a careful sense of pride — everyone was making plans, looking up information, buying and selling products, thanks, in large part, to him and the other moderators across the country. “Secret agents, like 007, or the CIA,” the specialist had said. From all he witnessed and judged, the other bus passengers seemed at once so innocent that his heart ached — and so capable of the grimmest imaginings. 
A girl in the headband kicked at her seat. The woman beside her stiffened, and Mark caught himself reacting in kind, as if viewing a report at his terminal. The entrained watchfulness took over, the escalation potential of every seed of conflict. The bus was well lit, with a citizens’ platoon of surveillance. Kids acted out their energy all the time, and most caregivers put in their best every day. But the ones who didn’t looked like everyone else.
Mark forced his mind to consider the promotion. He’d left the stock job at Discount Club, where he’d worked since high school and where his mother cashiered and managed the garden department. He got a few friends out of it, including Jerry, a baker just shy of Leah’s age with whom Mark had hooked up on a few occasions. Jerry had followed Leah home almost every night since Mark’s move to Convigilant. They had become a regular pair, and a bit of a nuisance when Mark just wanted to collapse on the couch and with some TV. But his mother chatted, even laughed, with a spontaneity she hadn’t shown since his father left. Some evenings, he found her hunched over the kitchen table, her eyes closed, “just resting.”
“That’s enough kicking, Estelle,” the woman in the paisley coat said.
The girl’s face fell into an imperious frown as she continued to hit her heels against the hard plastic seat in front of her. Mark’s pulse beat in his temples. He closed his eyes and performed a breathing exercise from one of his counseling sessions to dissipate the tension, but he remained tethered to the scene. Mark imagined his plans for the future — moving in with friends, drinks with his crush, a promotion to work directly for the client, with a ninefold salary increase. 
The drums beat, and the little girl stuck her chin out at the woman. “I’m going to tell my daddy how mean you are,” she said.
The woman leaned down to the girl and said, “If you don’t stop that kicking, you won’t see your daddy at all.”
Mark gripped the handhold until his fingernails bit into his palm. A threat, if he’d ever heard one. How did no one else notice this? An older woman in a wool hat seemed annoyed, but she just shifted in her seat and rummaged through her bag. His headache pulsed in time with the heels hitting the plastic. Other passengers swiped and tapped at their phones as shadows scratched at the underside of their screens. Mark pressed the yellow cord on the wall to signal the next stop.
Two stops earlier than his usual one, Mark stepped off the bus into the chirping grass. He hadn’t walked the neighborhood in years. Paint peeled from houses once so welcoming and vibrant, and dirt patches spotted the evergreen yards of his memory. Once home, Mark rolled into the easy chair in the darkened living room. The rich scent of a chuck roast mingled with the light through the kitchen doorway, where Leah's and Jerry's laughter filled the other side.
Nostalgia of wandering home from a friend’s house years ago, before his father had left, fell over Mark like a blanket. Perched on the bookshelf like a gargoyle was a large novelty snapshot of Mark and both his parents on the log flume ride at Six Flags, caught mid-drop. The only photograph of them all together that Leah hadn’t thrown out or packed in storage. Mark’s father, who was at that point only months out from his third tour in Afghanistan, seemed to look right into the camera without expression. He had seen and heard awful things in war, most of which he brought back with him. Two weeks after that photo was taken, he packed a duffle the size of a body bag and joined an army buddy logging in California. Good money but dangerous, he’d said, so you know you earned it. Mark’s mother didn’t protest, and he didn’t resent her for it. Somewhere, far back in his memory, a man laughed and chased him around in the grass while Mark screeched in delight. He wasn’t even sure that man was his father, and feared he had missed out on knowing him at all. Every tour returned someone new, who kept more to himself, with a darker sense of humor that framed war as play. 
As Mark entered the kitchen, Leah burst from the table and flashed him a quick smile. A life on her feet dealing with customers all day had brought out spider veins and given her eyes that lifted the world when they rolled. She resumed tearing down their manager and sawed into the dark mound of meat steaming on the counter next to a white cake box. Jerry, still in his blue Discount Club vest, his thighs spilling over his chair, poured gravy onto his potatoes and praised Leah for speaking the truth.
She handed Mark a plate and mashed one side of his face with her palm as she kissed the other. “About time,” she said. “Jerry made pot roast. We were just commiserating. Passed over for assistant manager — again.”
“Sorry to hear,” Mark said. “One of you is bound to get it next time.”
Jerry grinned through a mouthful of potatoes. The playful mood, resurgent traces of boyishness, sometimes drew Mark in. Jerry still spiked his thinning hair, a woeful alternative to shaving it for a man his age. 
Leah opened up the cake box. “So, you’ve been at your new job a month now,” she said. “Let’s celebrate.” A long phallus-shaped cylinder of vanilla sponge covered in pink buttercream with the words, Sending you good vibes on your birthday written in chocolate ganache. 
Jerry barked out a laugh, and Leah said, “Isn’t it a hoot?” Mark missed the thrill; maybe if he was still at Discount Club.
“Mimi Miller went ahead’n we couldn’t sell the order,” Jerry said. 
“You know what else?” Leah held up her phone. “She helped me set up my profile. I’m finally on the social media. No more FOMO.” 
“Fear of missing out,” Jerry said, as though Mark didn’t know. 
Leah posed in her profile picture, radiant in the sunshine, hair spilling down past her broad shoulders.
“Are you on dating apps now, too?” Mark said. 
Leah blushed and handed Mark a plate. “YOLO, right? ‘You only live once.’ I’m posting a picture of this cake and tagging Mimi.”
Once, after a morning of hard glances at Discount Club, Leah had come up to Mark in housewares and asked what was going on with Jerry. When he said they were friends, she said not to bullshit her. Mark considered his answer while cleaning up a spill in grocery, and he later told her that he loved his friends and slept with some of them sometimes. He held onto the part about tripping through his daddy issues. 
“Girls, too?” she said, and he threw her the stink eye. Leah didn’t ask him anything for a while after that. Then, one morning, as they arranged a new shipment of bromeliads and philodendrons, she said, “What about someone special?” Mark revisited a growing thought — he needed to find a wider world than hers. 
“Did you see Dad that way?” he asked her. Leah lifted a bright red bromeliad from the cart to the display table. They all needed a spray. 
“God sakes, I can’t remember,” she said, gazing into the flower as though maybe, deep within, it held an answer. “Maybe I didn’t.”
It was just a silly, stupid cake. Leah and Jerry gossiped about Mimi and imagined what customer might make such an order while Mark downed the pot roast, green beans, and chunky mashed potatoes like he hadn’t eaten in days. He hadn’t slept much in the past few weeks, which had increased his appetite. 
“The boys and I are heading up to New Hampshire tomorrow,” Jerry said. “You should join.” 
A group of ten or so got together every now and then to peak one of the White Mountains. A part of Mark wanted nothing more than to get out in the open air for a day with friends. He seemed to plod from one enclosure to another. Jerry’s knee pressed against his under the table. He was a sweet guy but acted out a big daddy role in public that made intimacy feel like a cloying apology. 
“I need more notice for time off,” Mark said.
“You’ve gone at this job like a beast,” Leah said. “Seven days a week for four weeks.”
“I can’t just stop,” Mark said. “It’s too important.” His head ached. After dinner, he would lie down in his room and maybe listen to some music.
Jerry leaned toward him, and slow-cooked beef and gravy carried on the air. “Did you see the settlement? Thousands of former workers sued the client for negligence, trauma. They won.” Jerry knew just everything, but he seemed to have Mark’s best interests at heart.
“You can tell us,” Leah said, putting her hand on Mark’s shoulder.
“NDAs,” Mark said. “Why do you think they’re hiring people without college degrees now?” He put down his fork. “Full benefits, counseling, scholarships.” He met with the counselor at the end of his first week, and after the specialist’s news, he had scheduled another meeting for the next day.
“Buildin’ that computer in the back room,” Leah said. “Now look.” He had caught her a few times, as he passed in the hallway, patting the system unit and shaking her head. “How about some cake?” 
Mark declined, said good night, and headed off to his room. The bed enveloped him in a silent nest, melting all the sounds of the day and of Jerry and his mother chatting in the kitchen. He reached past a red bromeliad and turned off the light on his dresser. On hikes in the woods behind the house, his father had pointed out the names and histories of trees and birds in a brassy tone. Bromeliads, although too tropical to thrive outdoors in upstate New York, signified protection. Every now and then, a twig snapped or bird called, and he froze or glanced around before continuing. Eventually, when Mark worked up the courage to ask what was wrong, his father laughed and said, “Nothing,” and told one of his dark jokes. When Mark asked a couple more times, his father directed him back toward the house. His father hiked alone after that, and sometimes didn’t return until long past nightfall.
Morning hit the angular brick façade of the Lakeview Office Park as Mark strode past the brittle plantings and muddy sinkhole by the entrance. Moderators exiting their shifts shuffled into the parking lot with the worn or haunted expressions that Mark sometimes noticed on himself at the end of the day. The scruffy specialist locked up his Yaris as finches sang in the nearby maple trees. The previous night, along with the unsettling dreams, a new thought of progress had kept Mark awake. A chance for more after all that time treading water at the Discount Club. 
A long reception desk ran along one wall of the Convigilant lobby, facing stiff cotton couches and bright posters announcing, You Are Our Eyes and Be Kind To Your Mind. An open doorway led to the small kitchen and the locker bays. Mark no longer trusted his lunch in the fridge and ensured that he always padlocked whatever he brought in with him. A metal door with a small window led to the lactation room that doubled as the wellness center. Greasy glass doors at the other end of the lobby opened to the production floor, where flat faces shone in front of large, cheap screens in a seven-by-seven grid, wires spilling down their backs to desktop units that droned along the floor. The executive staff occupied a table up front, with swivel chairs in place of stackers. 
An automated alert reminded Mark of his counseling appointment at three. He signed into the system and entered the queue. Around noon, the specialist announced a live shooting in progress at a Discount Club in Michigan. Mark tensed, even though it was thousands of miles away. 
“As you know from orientation, or, regrettably, past experience,” the specialist said, “the client believes that all credible information relating to these incidents is in the public interest and must be kept up. Do flag misinformation, denials, bots.” 
Conspiracy theories flooded in alongside reports from credible sources. A woman claiming to be a journalist live-streamed from inside the store. Mark struggled to adjust — the layout resembled the store he had left — and he wondered why they should let this single thread of violence through but deflect all the others. Each time a new story or image popped up, he told himself that his mother, Jerry, and all his other former coworkers were okay. Gunfire echoed from the clothing section on the live-stream. 
In the woods behind the house, Mark’s father told a joke as they crunched through leaves: “What do you tell your enemy when you’ve got him in your crosshairs? Say cheese and wait for the flash.” He would look up at the sky, take in a deep breath, and pat Mark on the shoulder. The only touch Mark remembered, and even then, it was fleeting, as though all the pain and violence the man held at bay might pass into Mark like a virus if he lingered too long. 
Users reported footage of the shooting, some in denial, others who just didn’t want to see. Jerry and the others would be on their way back down the mountain by now, still out of range. Another alert signaled the start of Mark’s counseling appointment. 
A paper sign with the word “Wellness” scrawled in black marker hung on the door to the lactation room. As with his previous appointment, Mark filled out the chair across from the counselor, a thin man with a trimmed gray beard and pale blue eyes. The counselor asked Mark about the breathing and visualization exercises they had discussed last time. Mark said that they helped, when he remembered to do them, which was somewhat true. 
The counselor gave him a note with the name and number of a psychopharmacologist he recommended, then sat back and said, “What’s on your mind today?” in a buttery tone. Mark told him about the shooting, his background with Discount Club, and concern for his mother. The counselor acknowledged Mark’s feelings by echoing them back to him, and suggested that he consider the situation rationally. Mark almost laughed — rational thinking only paralyzed him now. The more he gave it up, the better his numbers. He settled on an easier, concrete ache. 
“My friends are on a hike today,” he said. “It’s such a nice day to miss out. They’ll post pictures online, and I’ll feel awful.”
The counselor leaned toward Mark with a professional grin. “I can’t tell you how many people complain about social media. That feeling of missing out is powerful. Our brains just haven’t yet caught up to the level of interconnectedness we now share.” His heel tapped the leg of his chair. “That’s why trading ‘likes’ activates our reward systems.” A condescending push of the client’s company line.
“I feel bad because I know better,” Mark said.
“Facing the whole of human nature is a difficult, rewarding process, Mark,” the counselor said. “Most people can’t bear it.”
Mark thought of his friends romancing the mountains. “By being here, I keep my friends connected,” he said. Cycling through dreams of love, work, and holiday.
The counselor’s grin broadened. “In a way, you are with them,” he said. “You’re their inside man.” He handed Mark a blister pack of orange pills. “To keep you out of the woods until the psychopharm. Take one when you get home, another before bed. Looking forward to more chats.” 
As Mark returned to the lobby, the specialist sprung from one of the couches. “Taking advantage of the counseling service,” Mark said. 
“Great. I do, too.” He pulled an orange pill from his pocket and winked. Of course. Always so put together, steady. And kind.
“It seems really helpful,” Mark said.
“I’m glad I caught you,” the specialist said. “Again, numbers are strong, but a few quibbles. That video of a man’s foot on the baby’s chest? Flagged as ‘killing’ when, following the reasonable assumption that the baby is real, the client thought more ‘dead.’” 
“There’s really no way to tell,” Mark said. 
“Your accuracy rating suggests otherwise,” the specialist said. “The client’s working to automate content moderation. Once that happens, they’ll want folks who can spot the code. Like us.” He pinched Mark’s shoulder. What code did he mean? The fresh, chemical smell of his deodorant mingled with coffee and mint gum. “Hey, what’s the difference between a dead baby and a Ferrari?”
Mark gripped the edges of his plaid shirt. “What?” he said.
“I don’t keep a Ferrari in my garage,” the specialist said. Not far from the jokes Mark’s father told. He didn’t laugh but considered its purpose — deepening the darkness to lift into light.
On the bus ride home that night, Mark considered the specialist’s meaning of “code.” The woman in the paisley coat and the little girl with the starry headband sat a couple of seats away, maybe regulars like the other faces he recognized. Coding people, then behavior? One reason to ask him out for a drink. Mark would enlist Jerry’s help to pull it off. The woman scrolled through her phone and asked the little girl what she wanted to tell her daddy about her day in a musical voice. 
When the girl didn’t answer, the woman said, “Isn’t a bus ride a fun adventure? I think so.” The girl glanced around her at all the other passengers and kicked her seat. Mark braced as the woman’s face tensed. When the large man in the two seats in front of her turned around and glared, she narrowed her gaze until he turned back around with a guttural cough.
What did we talk about?” the woman said to the girl. “If you don’t stop that kicking, we can’t see your daddy.”
“I have to,” Estelle said. She spread out her arms and pressed the air down. “I have to do it.”
Mark’s patience coursed into panic. So many videos of confrontations on buses, subways, between drivers at a traffic light — screaming matches, fist fights, a roadside bomb in Kandahar. He closed his eyes and counted to ten as the images flooded him and his temples throbbed.
“Then you’ll have to wait in the hall,” the woman said.
The little girl pouted like a bulldog and kicked the seat in rapid bursts. The large man coughed again and stood up from his seat. 
Mark stepped beside the woman and said, “Too nice a day to be trapped on a bus.”
“Excuse me?” the woman said. The girl stopped kicking her seat and turned her head back and forth between him and the window. 
“Was supposed to go hiking with some friends, but had to work. How’re you?” The large man sat back down, and a few people who had turned their phones toward the scene resumed their scrolling.
A frown passed over the woman’s drawn, waxen face. “Do we know each other?” she said.
“I don’t think so,” Mark said.
“I’m sorry, I’ve got my hands full here,” she said. “It’s been a long day. I hope you get to hike with your friends.”
“Thanks,” Mark said. He stepped back to his former spot and grabbed the handhold. Maybe if he’d approached the situation another way, found a warmer confidence, or confronted the man instead. Maybe kindness worked best unnoticed, and inserting himself just exposed ego or another jerk who can’t handle a little noise from a kid for god sakes. 
He popped a pill from the blister pack into his mouth. None of them had any idea what might have happened. There, maybe, he spotted the code. Better that they kept to what their phones fed them, built popsicle stick profiles and pictures that kept the worst out. Mark took out his own phone, pale blue light on his face. Jerry’s pictures of the hiking trip scrolled by, clean and bright, innocent of the rest of life, relegated to the simulated underworld like nightmares. 
At home, Mark found Jerry and his mother watching the news in the living room. Wooly light touched every corner, every item on the shelves, the frantic interviewer recounting the shooting on the TV. The air elevated his new calm, as it had just after his father left, before Mark started wanting him again. The counselor said he might feel this way.
“Oh, honey,” Leah said. Did you see? Just awful.” Footage of the entrance to the Discount Club in Michigan cycled between still photographs of merchandise scattered across the white floors streaked with blood. A buzzing filled Mark’s ears. His mother and Jerry held hands on the couch with tears in their eyes as the witness waved through a description of the scene. 
“Awful,” Mark said. He had almost forgotten about it. Not forgotten exactly, but it was just one of the many horrors he had sifted through that day, and a far cry from the ones that reached into his gut and ripped it out. This tragedy was just a taste and his mother and Jerry could barely handle it. Leah soon asked Mark to help her repost the picture of the lewd cake, which had been flagged, and Jerry pulled up the majestic emerald skyline from Mt. Jackson.
“Named after the nineteenth-century geologist,” Jerry said, but Mark thought of the genocidal president.
“I checked them out on the bus,” Mark said. 
Jerry dropped his phone. “You didn’t like or comment,” he said.
“FOMO,” Leah said. The cramped kitchen all felt too close right then. They were the ones missing out, trapped in the resignation they hid behind gossip and parroted bits of trivia. He wanted to scream how little they knew, how big and wondrous and terrifying the world was, while they just kept to their seats and mistook their phones for windows like those passengers on the bus. 
Mark said he needed to step outside for a few minutes. In the woods behind the house, night sounds rustled and chirped in the easy gloom as leaves scratched the moonlight. His father came to him in the snapping of twigs and crunches underfoot. All that he had seen and heard out there. Mark knew just as well the sharp, quick pop of gunfire, screams and sobs, electric silence. The images that matched them. But what had he done? Mark’s new, artificial peace trembled but held. The darkness that had embraced him on his bed like a womb expanded out to the whole world into a shelter against any brutal revelations cast by the glowing moon.
Mark slept better than he had in a long time. The next morning, in the pleasant hum of the bus, he popped a pill and nearly dozed in the streaming sun. A “good morning” for his coworkers, the new hire with the narrow chin, now haggard as Mark had been, and a wave for the specialist, who led a young woman through orientation. Mark wiped off his workstation, his wallpaper now a beautiful red bromeliad, and set to his queue. Around ten, a fight broke out between the new hire, shaken by the previous day’s shooting, and a coworker in a red tank top who was convinced it was a hoax. The specialist had left the production floor to show the new hire other parts of the office. Mark paused his queue at the start of the familiar video panning the suburban street and moved between his two coworkers. 
In the specialist’s calm, full voice, he said, “It doesn’t matter what you believe. Just hit your numbers.” They each turned to him with an anger that failed to rattle him, and thus dropped away. The specialist stood beside the new hire in the doorway. The induced calm offset the shockwaves just enough to settle the workers back into their seats without kicking. 
Mark returned to his workstation and resumed the video from his queue. A group of teenagers circled around a boy swinging an iguana by its tail, back-and-forth onto the pavement. Its screams bled into the soft clicking of keys and drone of system units underneath the tables until the video ended. Clicking another tab filled the screen with the still emerald majesty of Jerry’s pictures of the White Mountains. Mark “loved” the picture of Jerry and nine other men, arms around one another, smiling at the bald summit. 
In the comments section, he wrote, “Where’s the FOMO button?” A fantasy of beauty and banter, without breath catching at snapping twigs. “Likes” and “hearts” accumulated within minutes, virtual walls that Mark saw through like a one-way mirror. No more ache of isolation. A pressure had lifted; Mark knew better. As he tabbed back into his queue, the specialist rapt his knuckles on the workstation. Those endless, dreamless eyes.

ξ

Andrew Nickerson lives in Cambridge, MA, and holds an MFA from Emerson College. His work has appeared in Euphony.