Not long ago, I was with friends laughing about a video I had never seen. “You haven’t seen that?” someone asked. I laughed it off, but on my way home, I opened my phone to see what I had missed. It was trivial. Another video would soon replace it. Still, I felt one beat behind the world. Trends once gave people a common language. Missing a popular TV show might leave you out of a conversation, but it rarely felt like falling behind in life. That has changed. Our phones now show each of us different videos, music and news. In the same cafe, one person watches financial commentary, another a travel vlog, while someone else scrolls through short clips. We may think we are seeing what matters now, but we are often looking at different worlds. As we have become more connected, our common ground has shrunk. Algorithms create personalized streams of attention. We live in the same era, yet experience different versions of it. And still, we fear missing out. We feel it when everyone else understands a meme we do not, or when a day away from social media makes the conversation seem to have mov