The New FOMO: Gen Zs in Southeast Asia Are Living for the Performance
For Gen Z in Southeast Asia, the real FOMO isn’t about showing up—it’s about showing off. This insight forms the foundation of a new study authored by Dentsu’s regional strategy leaders: Vanitha Selvathurai, Partner & Client Head (Malaysia); Lo Hong Linh, Strategic Planning Director (Vietnam); and March Eusebio, Senior Brand Strategist (Philippines).
From café corners and fashion drops to weekend trips and music festivals, life is lived not just for the moment but for the lens. Social media trends now shape what feels relevant, while aesthetics and algorithms quietly influence how people dress, talk, and even think. The result is a generation fluent in performance, treating life itself as a form of storytelling.
Dentsu’s Fragment Forward 2025 report calls this shift “Algorithms and Blues” capturing the emotional paradox of a generation chasing connection in spaces ruled by code. According to Dentsu’s APAC Consumer Navigator Q2 2025 , more than 60 percent of Southeast Asian Gen Zs admit to feeling pressured to keep up with online trends even when those trends don’t resonate personally. This is the new FOMO; not missing out on the moment itself, but on the visibility and validation that comes with it.
Gen Zs as the ‘Performative’ Driving Force
Southeast Asia’s Gen Zs are growing up in two overlapping worlds: Every offline experience carries an online afterlife. Going for coffee, running a marathon, attending a festival, these are opportunities for expression.
The result is a life that feels spontaneous but is often rehearsed. Algorithms quietly choreograph how people move, what they buy, and even how they express themselves. To be seen is to publish.
Three Shifts Defining the New FOMO
1. Life is content first, experience second
Across Southeast Asia, experiences have become photo backdrops, while the feed has become the main stage. Participation is increasingly driven by how shareable the moment is.
Boutique gyms, artisanal cafés, and pickleball courts in Malaysia are designed for the camera, while along Hanoi’s West Lake, a casual walk can turn into a cinematic shoot. And in Manila, social media showcases fiestas and pageants as a display of prosperity to a wider audience.
Each reflects a different motivation, from self-expression, and culture to enforcing a language of belonging and identity. Yet collectively, all point to the same truth that participation now carries a performance.
2. Authenticity is now a performance
Gen Zs prize authenticity, but even the photo dump that looks like an afterthought is all crafted to feel spontaneous.
The casual looking #GRWM precision of Malaysia creators, the vulnerable honesty of Filipino content framed in burnout confessions or an athlete’s unguarded outburst, and the experimental playfulness of Vietnamese youth, all show us that what is genuine is now a visual language, where curating the self becomes a form of creative freedom.
This reflects a generation redefining what “real” means in a world built on performance.
3. Trends are the new timetable
The traditional calendar no longer defines Southeast Asia’s cultural rhythm. What trends online quickly spills into real life, shaping what people wear, eat, and aspire to. Here is where culture moves to the speed of the scroll, where trends are driven by inspiration, and move at their own rhythm, often much faster than inventory itself.
A single Coachella performance by Jennie can turn cherry red into the Philippines’ color of the year, while a dance trend can travel from Seoul to Saigon in hours, reinterpreted through local humour and sound. In Malaysia, the algorithm now acts as the country’s unofficial tastemaker: a baju kurung moden can go viral and sell out in days as a trending food stall turns into a weekend landmark.
Brands Dancing with the Algorithm
For brands, performance culture opens endless entry points for engagement, with every moment — a café visit, a workout, a festival — holding potential for brand connection, if it fits the rhythm of Gen Z expression.
Yet, visibility alone no longer guarantees relevance as Gen Z attention is fleeting, trends are cyclical, and the half-life of hype can be measured in hours.
To thrive in this environment, brands need to design experiences, products, and campaigns that are “worth performing”; moments that invite participation, creativity, and personalization across cultures.
Take for example, in Malaysia, where beauty and belonging drive visibility, brands that respect the aesthetic instinct while offering substance resonate deeper, like Carlsberg’s Look East 2025, which brought local music, culture, and community together through a “By Local, For Local” Spotify playlist celebrating Malaysia’s creative pulse.
In the Philippines, brands that empower self-expression and community will earn their place in the spotlight, from Yamaha Fazzio’s #StartYOUniqueness movement that celebrated individuality, to Maya Black’s bold redefinition of the black card as a symbol of confidence and creative freedom.
And in Vietnam, where creativity meets curiosity, brands that enable exploration and experimentation will become part of identity itself – as seen in Mirinda’s AI-powered “Superpower Generator” that invited Gen Z to unleash their inner hero, and Biti’s “A Step Forward”, which turned 40 years of heritage into a platform for artistic expression.
In that language of light and motion, brands have a choice: to interrupt, or to accompany. And the ones that move with the rhythm of next-generation culture, rather than chase the algorithm, will find themselves at the center of Southeast Asia’s creative pulse.
FOMO, Rewritten
Across Southeast Asia, the new FOMO reveals a generation that is distinct, diverse and deeply connected. The fear of missing out has evolved into the art of being part – of shaping, of sharing, and of showing life in motion. Each market expresses performance culture in its own way, yet all are bound by the same digital heartbeat. In this rewritten FOMO, the most powerful brands will not be the ones who chase the spotlight, but those who will help our generations of tomorrow step into it.