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Tech

Waiting in Line for iPhones and for Everything Else

Everyone hates waiting in line, 99% of the time. It sucks. It’s boring, it’s frustrating, every impulse in our modern techno-entitlement complex tells us it’s pointless, and sometimes it’s actually dangerous. But inevitably, people will do it to get a...

Everyone hates waiting in line, 99% of the time. It sucks. It’s boring, it’s frustrating, every impulse in our modern techno-entitlement complex tells us it’s pointless, and sometimes it’s actually dangerous. But inevitably, people will do it to get a new Apple product. They’re doing it right now: waiting in line for the new iPhone 5. This is confusing, especially because there is relatively little that is exciting anybody about the latest iDevice.

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Buzzfeed’s Doree Shafrir remarks upon the psychology of waiting in line, noting first that the internet has eliminated some of the physical ones. Then: "Pictures of people waiting in line — like, say, at a job fair …

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… are used to illustrate their powerlessness, and highlight the distinction between waiting in line by choice and waiting in line out of need. Waiting in any kind of line implies that the line has more value than the waiter’s time."

And there are a couple of reasons that those lines might have value—primarily, in sharing an experience of anticipation with like-minded folks, or in obtaining a particular status as one who’s willing to wait in lines. Like, you’re the Early Adopter if you get the iPhone on day one. For Shafrir, that includes waiting in line for brisket at a popular restaurant in Austin,

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but not for Twilight films.

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Those make good examples of the handful of stuff we will still voluntarily wait in line for, for recreational purposes—dining and entertainment events. But lines are still very much a part of our lives; we’re waiting all over the place, and we generally do it orderly and begrudgingly. In airports, for example.

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Or at the post office.

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Or for health care.

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So we’re generally waiting for services that the efficient god Technology cannot yet do himself: doctor visits, security scans — though the days of line-free scanning may soon arrive — or ensuring your mail and parcels are delivered into the proper truckbed. Of course, we wait in line to pay for the goods we would like to purchase from various sellers. Food, for instance. This is waiting in tedium, these are the lines we hate, that add nothing to our lives but an understanding of patience.

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The not-rich, which is most of us, will wait in line for bargain-priced products at sale events.

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Some will be amused, alive to the spark in the air flinted from such strange convergences of humanity. Others will be angry at being crammed up against it, reminded that they must wait for this.

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But there is glory in line-waiting, too, though we forget that. Millions will wait in lines longer than any city block when there is a spiritual purpose to do so. Say, to bathe in the Ganges.

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Or to be healed in Lourdes.

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Or to take a peek at the other side of the wall.

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Technology will never eliminate some kinds of waiting.