The Return Of Everything – The Return of FOMO

The pandemic forced us to simplify our lives and look inward. Now it’s time to have fun again. That should be easy, right?

- By Matthew Schneier. Photographs by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet

Something happened in May. Or rather, a bunch of things started happening. Again. After spending much of the past year on the sofa, my social life reduced to a few close friends and family members, I suddenly had something to do every night of the week—maskless, outside my apartment—whether I wanted to or not. I was thrilled and afraid to say no to any of it: dinners with people I had not seen in person in months, which could be indoors or out; the opening of a new shop selling trompe l’oeil ceramics and vintage glass (“To release!” two guests toasted, clanking together their White Claws); another friend’s comedy show; a Park Slope afterparty; a fancy daylong picnic upstate.

But there were also the things I wasn’t invited to that clogged my phone’s interminable scroll: the rooftop pandemic-baby showers; delayed multi-person makeup birthday parties; and sweaty, hundredstrong club nights. Any conversation might reveal that the couchlock of 2020–21 was no longer in effect. New York City is becoming itself again: crowded, busy, and competitive. “Over the course of the game, texting friends,” a Knicks fanatic I hadn’t seen in a year told me when we ran into each other during playoff season,“it became clear that everyone was at Madison Square Garden but me.”