While millions of people recover from the morning wakeup call of a 4.8-magnitude earthquake rocking the East Coast, a small group of people are feeling seriously left out.
That's because some people said they completely missed the earthquake that rocked apartment buildings and shook homes. Posts flooded onto X with people declaring they had earthquake FOMO (fear of missing out).
Sara Lind, 41, who lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side, was in her 17th floor apartment when her boyfriend got a notification on his phone about the earthquake.
Lind's first thought: "What earthquake?"
"He was like, 'I think I felt that. I thought it was construction,' and I was like, 'I felt nothing,'" Lind, who runs a nonprofit group and works from home on Fridays, told NBC News roughly three hours after the quake.
Lind isn't alone. On social media, many lamented that they were feeling left out after missing the quake.
Some posted on X and said their group chats were blowing up with texts about an earthquake that they had missed. Some who were on trains or in the shower also said they completely missed the earthquake. Many simply said they felt left out. On TikTok, some walked around the city while explaining that they, too, had missed out on Friday's biggest topic of conversation.
Veronica Phillips, 26, was chatting with her mother on their 8th floor apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side when her group chat began to go off with texts from friends around the city and in outer boroughs who said they had just felt the tremor. Phillips, a graduate student at New York University who does not have an account on X, said she had no idea what they were talking about.
"They're all talking about how crazy it was and I was like, 'I'm sad I didn't feel it.' Like, I feel so left out right now about what's happening," Phillips said with a laugh.
Lind said missing out on the earthquake will likely motivate her to take her two children upstate to see the total solar eclipse next week. She said she doesn’t want to miss out on what she described as “history-making events.”
“I’m so close to them, but somehow not experiencing them so I’m actually — it’s making me feel more, like, maybe I should just go up, you know, and see the eclipse,” Lind said.
Phillips and Lind both acknowledged the earthquake was likely frightening for those who felt it, but said they wanted to be able to join in on the memes, jokes and conversations happening around the tremor and felt like they couldn't.
"It's just like this collective moment when everyone in New York is experienced — almost everyone — is experiencing the same thing," Lind said. "And to miss that, I think it's just FOMO. I missed out."
