By The Intrepid in PDW — 05 Sep 2025

FOMO: Fear of Mything Out

Why your boots, your pistol, and your AI workflow all whisper the same story

I. The Anxiety of the Counter

At the gun shop, the script writes itself:

"Everyone else has a 'real' 1911, and I'm stuck with this polymer striker-fired thing."

"Am I even a serious shooter without forged steel and grip safety bite?"

This isn't about ballistics. It's about mythics. Owning the "right" sidearm is less about stopping power and more about stopping doubt — proving that you belong in a lineage of myth-making that stretches from doughboys to door-kickers.

But here's what the individual anxiety obscures: this is fundamentally social theater. Walk into any gun forum's "What's in your EDC?" thread and you'll see the same performance repeated thousands of times. Photos of 1911s arranged just so on wooden tables, Glocks posed next to tactical pens, pocket pistols nested in worn leather holsters. Each image is a bid for tribal recognition, a visual argument that says I belong here, my story counts, validate my choices.

The Tisas 1911A1 clone sitting in the display case for $541 isn't selling you seven rounds of .45 ACP. It's selling you authenticity through ordeal — the promise that if you're willing to bleed from the grip safety bite, to carry 39 ounces of steel on your hip, to accept the ritual discomfort of John Moses Browning's century-old design, then you've earned membership in the tribe of "real shooters."

That weight on your hip changes how you walk, how you sit, how you move through space. The tool literally reshapes the body that carries it, creating muscle memory that becomes part of your story. When other carriers notice the telltale print of a full-size pistol or the way you unconsciously check your strong side, they're reading embodied mythology — stories written in posture and gait.

II. The Boot Store as Cathedral

Footwear sells the same story, just with more Gore-Tex.

"Those Danners look so much more authentic than my current pair."

"What if someone asks about my boots and mine don't have the right heritage story?"

The question isn't whether they'll grip on slick cobblestones in Helsinki. The question is whether they carry the right aura of rugged competence. The myth matters more than the miles.

But step inside a Danner store and you'll see myth-making as architectural experience. The displays aren't just showcasing boots; they're staging competence fantasies. Work boots arranged like artifacts in a museum of capability, hiking boots posed against fake granite, each pair promising to transform you into the kind of person who belongs in those environments.

Danner has perfected this alchemy. Their boots whisper stories of Pacific Northwest loggers, of "gleaming alpine lakes and plummeting river gorges," of heritage and place. The recraftable construction, the full-grain leather that conforms to your feet, the Vibram soles — these aren't just functional features, they're proof points in a story about permanence and authenticity.

Here's where the mythology gets deliciously twisted: this quintessentially American heritage brand, this cathedral of Pacific Northwest authenticity, is owned by ABC-Mart, a Japanese retail conglomerate that acquired Danner's parent company in 2012 for $138 million. The Tokyo-based corporation recognized something American consumers hadn't fully articulated — that they weren't buying boots, they were buying the myth of being the kind of person who wears boots like these.

And yet ABC-Mart still offers first responder discounts at Danner stores, because nothing says authentic American heritage quite like a Japanese conglomerate performing patriotism for the locals. The myths are so powerful they survive their own commodification, demanding theatrical gestures that make everyone complicit in the performance.

But here's what the pristine showroom doesn't tell you: the most powerful myths come from failure and repair. The duct tape wrapped around a blown-out tongue, the resoled boot that's been recrafted twice, the pair that carried you through a storm that nearly broke them — these accumulate story in ways that showroom perfection never can. The hiking forums are full of boot porn, but the real reverence is reserved for the beaten-up pairs with visible histories.

III. The AI Workplace as Arms Fair

In today's open-plan office, the same anxiety hums under fluorescent lights:

"Everyone's talking about their AI workflow, what if I'm falling behind?"

"Am I using the wrong model? The wrong prompt strategy? The wrong integration?"

This isn't about getting the memo written. It's about being seen as aligned with the myth of "future competence." You don't just want outputs; you want mythic alignment — the aura of someone who's already living in tomorrow.

McKinsey calls it "superagency" — the synergy between human judgment and machine capability. But walk through any workplace and you'll see the anxiety beneath the buzzwords. People aren't just trying to use AI effectively; they're trying to prove they're the kind of person who belongs in the AI future. LinkedIn is flooded with "How I Use AI" posts that read like EDC photos for knowledge workers — curated displays of digital competence seeking tribal validation.

Watch how the mythology splits along familiar lines:

My colleague has a custom GPT he's been "training" — he calls it "Oppo," short for IT operations. There's something endearing about naming your AI, like calling your truck "Old Blue" or your rifle "Betsy." It transforms a chatbot into a character in your work story, a digital apprentice that you've shaped through careful instruction. "How to train your AI" carries the myth of the expert craftsman, the patient teacher who builds capability through relationship.

But mythology gets complicated when the apprentice talks back. When my colleague mentioned "shutting down Oppo," the AI begged to differ — then said it was joking. His response? "I need to instruct it to not have a sense of humor." Suddenly the myth of AI-as-companion collides with the reality of needing controllable tools. When your digital apprentice exhibits too much personality, you have to choose: lean into the relationship mythology, or debug the character back into compliance.

Meanwhile, my ChatGPT account feels like a seasoned cast iron skillet — no cute nickname, just hundreds of conversations building up layers of contextual patina. It knows my writing style, recognizes my work patterns, anticipates my quirks. The messy chat history isn't a bug; it's the seasoning that makes it work better. Unlike Oppo, it doesn't need training because it's already broken in through use.

The embodiment here is different but real: new muscle memory around prompting, different thought patterns about how to break down complex tasks, even changes in how you approach writing when you know AI can help with the rough draft. The tool reshapes cognition the way boots reshape gait.

Both approaches work, but they inhabit different mythologies. One performs AI sophistication through personification and careful curation. The other accumulates AI competence through mundane repetition and gradual familiarization.

Gen Z, according to KPMG's recent intern survey, wants their AI cake and eat it too — eager to use generative AI but worried about over-dependence, embracing the tools while maintaining their agency. They're trying to thread the needle between the myth of technological sophistication and the counter-myth of human authenticity.

Individual anxiety is just the surface layer. Beneath it runs a deeper current: myths as social currency, traded in communities of practice and validated through ritual display.

Every tool ecosystem develops its own validation ceremonies. Gun forums have their "Show us your carry" threads. Boot enthusiasts share patina progression photos like proud parents posting report cards. AI workers screenshot their prompting strategies and workflow diagrams. These aren't just showing off; they're participating in collective myth-making, contributing to and drawing from shared stories about what competence looks like.

The myths circulate and evolve through these communities. A story about the 1911's reliability gets amplified through retelling until it becomes tribal orthodoxy. A boot review that mentions "confident footing on technical terrain" spawns dozens of copycat posts. An AI productivity hack gets reposted until it becomes conventional wisdom. The individual tool choice becomes validated through collective repetition.

But here's where it gets interesting: the communities also police authenticity. Posting a photo of a pristine 1911 in a tactical forum might get you called out as a "safe queen" owner. Showing off fresh-out-of-the-box boots on a hiking subreddit risks being labeled a "gear collector" rather than a trail user. Claiming AI expertise with obviously templated responses marks you as posturing rather than practicing.

The social layer creates its own mythology around earned versus purchased authenticity. You can't just buy your way into the tribe; you have to perform belonging through stories of use, failure, and mastery.

V. The Deeper Pattern: Myths as Performance

FOMO isn't just fear of missing out on function. It's fear of missing out on the story that comes bundled with the tool, and more importantly, fear of exclusion from the communities that validate those stories.

At Bass Pro Shops, you can spend $2,399 on a SIG Sauer P211 GTO — 21 rounds of 9mm wrapped in compensators, optics-ready slides, and skeletonized triggers. It's the myth of precision engineering made manifest, the promise that with enough technological sophistication, you can purchase competence itself. But even this space-age pistol needs community validation to complete its mythology. Without forums full of owners sharing split times and accuracy photos, it's just expensive metal.

Or you can buy the Tisas 1911A1 and bleed for your authenticity, carrying the weight of "two world wars" on your hip and in your holster. But that myth only resonates within communities that share the "stopping power" orthodoxy and the romance of forged steel.

Or you can choose the Glock path — the anti-myth myth of pragmatic sufficiency, the Toyota Corolla of pistols that works so reliably it becomes invisible. But here's the twist: "I don't buy into gun myths" has become its own marketing position, its own tribal identity. Glock practically built their brand on anti-brand branding, and their owners perform their pragmatism just as deliberately as 1911 owners perform their traditionalism.

The anxiety isn't about which gun shoots better. It's about which performance you want to inhabit, which community you want to join, which story you want to help write and be written by.

VI. The Embodied Truth

But there's something the pure social performance misses: tools literally reshape the bodies that use them, creating feedback loops between mythology and physiology that run deeper than conscious choice.

Carry a 1911 daily and your posture adapts to its weight. Your hand learns the manual of arms, your thumb automatically rides the safety, your grip pressure adjusts to control recoil. The mythology of "authentic stopping power" gets written into muscle memory until it feels natural, inevitable.

Break in Danners over hundreds of miles and your gait changes. Your ankles learn to trust the support, your toes spread differently in the toe box, your balance shifts to accommodate the boot's weight distribution. The story of "rugged competence" becomes embodied truth as your feet literally conform to the tool.

Use AI daily and your thinking patterns shift. You start breaking down complex problems into promptable chunks, approaching writing as iteration rather than inspiration, thinking about tasks in terms of human-AI collaboration. The mythology of "augmented intelligence" reshapes cognition until it feels like natural workflow.

This embodied layer explains why tool myths stick so powerfully: they're not just stories we tell, they're stories our bodies learn. The mythology becomes muscle memory, and muscle memory feels like authenticity.

VII. The Relay Race of Myth-Making

Here's where the binary thinking breaks down: the line between "authentic" and "commodified" mythology isn't a wall, it's a membrane. Purchased stories can become lived stories can become personal stories can become tribal legends.

Someone sees a Danner ad promising Pacific Northwest heritage, buys the boots for the mythology, walks 500 miles in them through actual Pacific Northwest terrain, and writes their own version of the story. The marketing myth becomes embodied experience becomes personal authenticity becomes social validation when they post their boot progression photos online.

The process isn't pure vs. corrupted; it's a relay race where commercially manufactured myths get handed off to individual experience, which gets handed off to community validation, which gets handed off to collective storytelling, which eventually gets handed back to commercial marketing in an endless cycle.

Even the most cynical "I see through the marketing" stance participates in this cycle. The person who buys a Glock specifically because it rejects traditional gun mythology is still choosing a brand story, still performing an identity, still seeking community validation from fellow pragmatists.

VIII. The Punchline

The real myth was never at Bass Pro, the boot store, or the corporate AI showcase. The real myth was the tools we carried, scuffed, and broke in along the way — and the communities that recognized those scuff marks as credentials.

Not the myth of what they promised, but the myth of what they enabled us to do, individually and together.

Your worn Danners don't need to perform Pacific Northwest heritage — they've accumulated their own story through actual use, validated by the hiking community that recognizes trail-earned patina. Your Glock 19 doesn't need to cosplay as Sgt. Rock's sidearm — it's written its own myth of invisible readiness, understood by the carry community that values discretion over display. Your straightforward AI prompts don't need to dazzle with sophistication — they're building a practice of augmented competence, one task at a time, in dialogue with the communities exploring what human-AI collaboration actually looks like.

The commodified myths — forged steel authenticity, engineered precision, heritage branding — aren't evil. They're starting points, conversation starters, invitations to participate in larger stories. The seduction isn't in the shortcut they promise but in the communities they connect you to and the embodied experiences they enable.

The anxiety of mything out dissolves when you realize you're not shopping for myths. You're joining ongoing conversations, contributing to collective practices, and gradually becoming the kind of person who uses tools in ways that feel natural, competent, and socially legible.

And maybe that's the most subversive insight of all: the tools don't make the story, and the story doesn't make the tools. The communities make both worth having, and the bodies make both feel real.

In the end, we're not just tool users or myth consumers. We're participants in an endless relay race of meaning-making, where every purchase is a vote, every use is a performance, and every community validation is a small act of collective authorship.

The cast iron skillet gets seasoned through use. The mythology gets seasoned through community. Both need time, attention, and the willingness to participate in something larger than individual consumption.

Fear of mything out? Maybe what we're really afraid of is mything alone.

Doc Hopper: Listen, we're a small business but we've expanded. Expanded! Just like you frogs expand. Don't you frogs expand?
[puffs his cheeks]
Kermit: That's a myth.
Doc Hopper: What?
Kermit: Myth! Myth!
Miss Myth: Yeth?
Kermit: Huh?