Missing Link – Frank McNally on the new Fomorians, a race of people who always fear they’re missing out

In Irish mythology, the Fomorians were a race of ferocious monsters who for a time contested power with the more enlightened, magic-making Tuatha Dé Danann.
The most infamous Fomorian was Balor of the Evil Eye, who could destroy his enemies with a mere glance. The quintessential Tuatha Dé Danann leader, meanwhile, was Nuada of the Silver Arm: so called because he lost his original arm in battle before having a new, improved one fitted.
The two races interbred to some extent. And so it was that, although Balor killed Nuada at the second Battle of Mag Tuired, he was himself then killed by his own grandson Lugh, a mixture of both sides. After that, the Fomorians were driven back into the sea, whence they had come.
But in modern Ireland, a new race of Fomorians has now risen, much less ferocious than the original. The latter-day tribe are so called for their defining characteristic of FOMO: Fear of Missing Out.
They have no ocular superpowers, malevolent or otherwise. On the contrary, their chief characteristic is being permanently distracted by competing spectacles and the thought that they should be somewhere else. If they had a leader now, he would be called Balor of the Evil iPhone.
Latter-day Fomorians go nowhere without their phones. They walk along streets, zombie-like, staring at the screens, worried they might miss something important if they look away, and occasionally colliding with lampposts as a result.
They stare at them constantly on public transport too, and sometimes while driving. And of course, new Fomorians also always ignore those announcements in cinemas and theatres asking them to turn phones off completely.
The most they can do is switch their phones to silent. This means they continue to receive important updates from elsewhere, including friends at other, better shows, allowing the Fomorians to regret that they didn’t go there instead.
The same applies to holidays. When the new Fomorians are at home, they are constantly assailed by pictures from friends or colleagues in exotic places. Conversely, when the Fomorians are in exotic places, they are haunted by pictures of friends having more fun at home.
But the quintessential venue for the new Fomorian is the music festival. This is also where the new Tuatha Dé Danann come into their own.
The modern equivalent of Nuada and his Silver Arm is the person at a festival with an “Access All Areas” wristband, or any of the other wristbands that allow entry to parts of a venue not open to everyone.
Thus, even when they find themselves at the hottest event in town, the new Fomorians will be tortured by the notion that they’re not at the best part of it.
I say all this being part-Fomorian myself (there is some interbreeding between the modern tribes too). But at the Electric Picnic recently, as happens occasionally in my line of work, I was also given temporary membership of the new Tuatha Dé Danann.
For a dizzying day, I became Nuada of the Silver Armband – one marked “Mindfield”, where the spoken-word events happen – and of a second armband, yellow in that case, marked “Performer”.
This gave me access to such delights as a back-stage green room, free beer, and a better class of toilet. As always, such was the feeling of specialness conferred that for two days afterwards, back home, I was reluctant to take the wristbands off, wearing them in the shower and to bed.
You can’t slip just them on and off like a watch, anyway. Their magical properties include the fact that, however loose the cunning event organisers may have left them, they are always slightly narrower than even the smallest human hand.
To take them off, you must cut them with a knife or scissors, whereupon they lose their powers forever. As usual, it was with great reluctance I did this eventually, feeling like Oisín when he returned from Tir na nÓg and got off the horse.
Tragically, at an event like the Electric Picnic, thanks to its multiple simultaneous attractions, even Fomorians with access-all-areas armbands will always be haunted by the idea that they should be somewhere else on site.
And then there is another unfortunate aspect of their condition: the need to inflict FOMO on others, as a form of validation. I caught myself doing this, not for the first time, when attending the Sophie Ellis-Bextor concert in the main arena that night.
It wasn’t my kind of music, although fun and clearly being enjoyed by the huge attendance, which sang along as one. So naturally, I took a phone video, panning around the crowd, many in which were doing the same thing.
Then I posted it on social media, as they were doing too, after several minutes editing and thinking about a caption.
And it struck me that this was the ultimate Fomorian affliction: that even when you’re in the place you think you should be these days, you’re often so busy reminding others they’re missing it that you won’t be fully there either.