“First, it is believed. Then, it is enforced. Finally, it is mocked.”
Every system begins as a foma -a story we tell to survive complexity.
It starts with a need: to explain, to comfort, to make sense of chaos. We believe the story, build institutions around it, and defend it fiercely. For a time, it works. It organizes the world. It offers a map.
But foma are unstable.
They stretch.
They crack.
Eventually, they collapse.
When the contradictions become too great to ignore, we laugh at what we once revered. We name the absurdity, often too late to avoid the damage. What we call an oxymoron is often a foma revealed in hindsight.
The Lifecycle: Foma → System → Collapse → Oxymoron
- Birth: A comforting story fills a need.
- Institutionalization: The story is formalized into systems-rules, roles, rituals.
- Collapse: The system’s contradictions accumulate; reality intrudes.
- Oxymoron Emergence: The phrase becomes a punchline; the once-revered is now ridiculous.
We don’t see it coming. Social proof blinds us. Institutions protect the story. And our own needs keep us invested.
Case Studies: The Absurd Revealed
Once something is seen, it can never be unseen.
- Corporate Social Responsibility - The company that caused the problem, staging photo ops to solve it, while quietly lobbying for tax breaks and deregulation.
- Elite Education - Training the privileged to preserve their privilege, all while selling a story of expanding minds and meritocracy.
- Data-Driven Decision Making - The delusion that more data equals better decisions, while bias, blind spots, and noise quietly drive the bus.
- Personalized Advertising - Surveillance capitalism rebranded as a helpful concierge.
- Work-Life Balance - The lie that you can balance your life against the system that devours it.
- Stakeholder Capitalism - The corporate bedtime story that says everyone wins, while shareholders quietly laugh all the way to the bank.
- Sustainable Fashion - Fast fashion’s greenwashed rebrand: cheap t-shirts made by underpaid workers, now labeled “eco-conscious.”
- The Creator Economy - The myth that anyone can make a living doing what they love, while platforms extract the real value and leave creators chasing pennies.
- The Future of Work - Precarity, gig work, and outsourcing, dressed up as “flexibility” and “freedom.”
Oxymorons-in-Waiting: The Next Absurdities
Let’s call out the future oxymorons now-before they collapse into farce:
- Ethical AI - Algorithms built to maximize engagement, profit, and control… but with a friendly face and a code of conduct nobody enforces.
- Global Community - Billions of strangers connected by profit-driven platforms, pretending we’re one big family, while polarization and manipulation run rampant.
- Sustainable Growth - The fantasy of endless expansion on a finite planet-because this time, we’ll manage it responsibly.
- Data Privacy - The illusion that you control your data, while every click feeds the machine.
- Smart City - A city that tracks your every move, predicts your desires, and sells you back your own life as a subscription service.
- Diversity and Inclusion - A checkbox ritual that lets institutions avoid real change while posting inspiring slogans.
- Authentic Branding - Curated performance art designed to sell you an image of honesty.
- Mindful Productivity - A three-minute meditation before your daily sprint into burnout.
- Digital Detox Retreat - Paying thousands to escape the platforms you eagerly signed up for.
- Conscious Capitalism - Making money while telling yourself a nice story about it.
- Artificial General Intelligence - A mirror of our own desires, fears, and biases, packaged as something beyond us-while corporations quietly embed their interests.
The Agentic Stance: Laugh Before the Collapse
We can’t escape foma. We need stories to survive. But we can learn to see the cracks early. We can name the absurdity while it’s still in bloom. We can hold it lightly, with humor, and choose how much of our life we invest in the farce.
The world is absurd. The choice is when you laugh - before it breaks, or after.