For the 0.01 percent of the UC Berkeley population that didn’t attend Cal Day, we all felt the same pain. Having to scroll through the endless stream of Snapchat stories, Instagram pictures and Facebook videos of people dancing among the bubbles or on tables on Cal Day hurt almost as much as when Jared Goff cried during his last press conference. We at the Clog sympathize with those of you out there feeling the sharp pains of FOMO that come from missing UC Berkeley’s finest holiday.
As the first wave of Cal Day pictures came through, most of us who were not there were probably thinking, “Damn, that looks fun.” After that realization, a strong sense FOMO and anger followed as we realized we weren’t able to stumble down Piedmont as well. Then, the pictures of people playing with bubbles began to surface, flooding our feeds in the form of many new profile pictures. For a moment, all we could think about was the fact that there were bubbles and that we were missing out on them.
Following the wave of bubble FOMO was a 30-minute daydream of what could possibly be happening at Memorial Glade at that precise moment, which was accompanied by a severe desire for some Yogurt Park. These feelings probably overcame you around the same time as your group chat exploding while your friends all tried desperately to find each other and failed miserably.
As the day progressed, the pictures got sloppier and definitely more questionable. Then, a long silence in the group chat that made many non-Cal Day participants wonder if their friends were dead, kidnapped and/or being held hostage in Chancellor Nicholas Dirks’ basement.
After everyone woke up from their naps or escaped from Dirks’ basement, Cal Day pictures overtook all social media. This led to agitation and sore thumbs as scrolling through all the pictures took hours, if not decades.
Finally, as the night came to a close and the Cal Dayers put away their Cal bucket hats and said goodbye to their friends from home, across town the non-Cal Day participants desperately refreshed their feeds for updates from the day. Only then did the intense feeling of missing out that had been lingering all day truly hit, and all people that hadn’t participated in Cal Day thought, “I won’t miss it next year even if a dinosaur eats me before then”.
Contact Emilia Malachowski at emalachowski@dailycal.org.