Austin 360 Dorothy Garbe sat in her South Austin home in 2019 watching the New Orleans Mardi Gras parade online with her toddler, thinking of all of her friends and family who were joyfully caught up in the annual celebration. The Fear of Missing Out on her favorite time of the year took over. She jumped online; found the algorithm mystically working in her favor; bought an airline ticket for the price of a decent bottle of wine; and within a few hours, she was standing alongside the parade route that she’d just been watching from 500 miles away. A native of Mobile, Alabama, the birthplace of Mardi Gras in the United States, Garbe in years past has celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans with her family, who’ve operated a restaurant in the French Quarter for nearly 200 years.