Do you know Digi Ben? Digi Ben exists, it is a name that is very common. I myself do not know him. Yet we all know a lot of Digi Bens. Maybe you are Digi Ben. The Digi Ben in my story is a nome de plume. Digi Ben, the person who is always online.
I am Digi Ben.
Digi Ben is the evergreen LinkedIn bubble. On WhatsApp, his name always says: online
Do you post something on Facebook? Insta? YouTube? Tumblr? TikTok? Don't be afraid that your contribution will go unseen. Because Digi Ben sees and Digi Ben likes. Digi Ben also knows everything. About politics. About the economy. The euro. Trump. Johnson. Corona. China. Football. Conspiracies.
In terms of news updates, Digi Ben is better informed than the entire editorial staff of Nu.nl.
Digi Ben considers himself a maximizer. A maximizer wants to get the most out of life and be informed about everything. He is a man of the world who knows a lot, and Digi Ben is very proud of that. That he gets his information from the web, that is obvious.
βWe live in an information age,β he says.
What Digi Ben doesn't realize is that he's a regular adept. A slavish follower. A digital eavesdropper. A Clubhouse chatterbox. An online disaster tourist. And... a customer who pays a lot for his addiction. Customer? Yes, because the information comes to DB in exchange for 'footprints in the never-melting snow' or data. Information, that is. Someone somewhere is reaping the benefits of DB's internet behavior.
The driver of his behavior is fear. Hidden fear, that is. If Digi Ben checks his phone seventeen times during a meeting, that is not a sign of independence.
DB suffers from Fear Of Missing Out.
Fomo is not a new term. The psychology behind it is as old as humanity. But since digitalization, that fear has increased, just like almost everything has increased since digitalization.
'I become I in the face of the other', and 'it is not you who gives the world a place, but the other who gives you a place in the world', said the philosopher Levinas in the previous century. That other, that could now be the whole of humanity.
I myself suspect that individuals can no longer see themselves separately from everything and everyone.
I am a digitalization veteran. There are very good things about digitalization. But Fear Of Missing Out is the contraindication. The Fear in FOMO is simply not healthy.
Digi Ben is afraid of missing out. He consumes out of fear. That fear, that makes him move. That's right.
But that fear does not improve the quality of his life.
So-called independent men and women spend hours and hours on nothing but fear. When in reality, it doesnβt matter a damn. That news story. That update. The opinion about that update. The online opinions. That shocking photo. That beautiful image. The YouTube posting. The Clubhouse stage.
It doesn't matter a fuck whether you see it or not. That you read it, understand it, see it and process it in your brain. That you think something about it and that you tell what you think about it. It has zero effect.
Zero. Oh. Zero.
Okay, you need to be informed. So that you can prepare for changes. But that's it. Rest assured, the important things will reach you anyway.
We humans prefer to choose the easiest way. Seemingly easy. What seems easy now, will create a more difficult life in the long run. The other way around: what takes effort now, will make life more valuable later.
Your physical life should get more attention than your digital existence. From Fear Of Missing Out there should be only one letter left. The O. From Outsider. From Outbreak. From Offline. You can train yourself in that.
I predict a repercussion. There will be a trend where that O will matter. Where offline becomes the norm. Free, unnoticed, under the radar. I think that is an inevitable development. Let's start with it now.
Living? You do that with all your senses.
Hans Ruinemans, boardroom monk