The Poverty of Infinite Choice

An Exploration of the FOMO Syndrome

In an age where everything is available, nothing feels quite right. The modern individual stands before an endless buffet of options—career paths, romantic prospects, streaming content, social identities—yet the more we are given, the more we seem to drift. This paradox, that abundance leads not to joy but to disorientation, is one of the defining ailments of our era. Never has humanity enjoyed so much autonomy, yet never has it felt so enslaved by it.

Freedom, once fought for, now overwhelms. With every decision, we face the phantom of a better alternative—the job not taken, the partner not chosen, the life not lived. Each selection feels like a potential mistake, shadowed by the infinite others we could have made. This form of existential ambivalence was once the burden of kings and philosophers; today, it is the psychological norm for any user with a smartphone.

Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once observed, “Man is condemned to be free.” In today’s world, that condemnation manifests in endless scrolling, in curated lists of twenty-five best films you haven’t seen, and dating apps that transform love into a numbers game. Freedom has become oppressive not because it is absent, but because it is excessive. A surfeit of possibilities renders choice inert and satisfaction elusive.