{"id":36944,"date":"2026-08-10T18:23:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T13:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36944"},"modified":"2026-08-10T18:23:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T13:23:34","slug":"its-time-to-get-out-of-line-queue-culture-has-gotten-out-of-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36944","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Time to Get Out of Line: Queue Culture Has Gotten Out of Control"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div xmlns:default=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\">\n<p class=\"has-dropcap body dropcap\">What are you waiting for?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a serious question. Because unless you need an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2016\/01\/celebrity-surgeon-nbc-news-producer-scam\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">organ transplant<\/a> or are trying to vote in a Southern state, there is basically no good reason to join the end of a very lengthy queue\u2014to slowly shuffle forward, sandwiched between a pair of strangers, for more than a few moments of your one wild and precious life. This truth is self-evident no matter what might be promised at the end of that inessential line: a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/style\/2022\/06\/rhode-hailey-bieber-skin-care-interview\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">new rhode bronzer<\/a>; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/style\/story\/inside-the-rise-of-labubu-trend-pop-mart\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">cache of rare Labubus<\/a>; a four-ounce cup of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2012\/03\/goldman-sachs-quit-parody-pinkberry\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">whimsically flavored status yogurt<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Yes, gratification cannot and should not be instant in every scenario. (This is why <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/story\/dario-amodei-anthropic-ai\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">LLMs are destroying<\/a> all we hold sacred.) At the same time, line culture has gotten out of control. As anyone who lives in a big city knows, it\u2019s frighteningly easy to fritter away the bulk of our waking hours moving from one line to another: waiting for single-origin coffee, for rush tickets, for sneakers, for bar seating at the Michelin-starred restaurant that maddeningly doesn\u2019t take reservations. And those are just the <em>normal<\/em> lines\u2014not the special-occasion ones that require more serious temporal investment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">As <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/06\/16\/magazine\/frozen-yogurt-lines-myka.html\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/06\/16\/magazine\/frozen-yogurt-lines-myka.html&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/06\/16\/magazine\/frozen-yogurt-lines-myka.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">trend story<\/a> after <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.curbed.com\/article\/why-are-there-so-many-lines-in-new-york.html\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.curbed.com\/article\/why-are-there-so-many-lines-in-new-york.html&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.curbed.com\/article\/why-are-there-so-many-lines-in-new-york.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">trend story<\/a> after <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/07\/15\/travel\/how-to-wait-in-line.html\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/07\/15\/travel\/how-to-wait-in-line.html&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/07\/15\/travel\/how-to-wait-in-line.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">trend story<\/a> published this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/07\/06\/herding-the-fro-yo-sheep\" class=\"text link\">summer<\/a> <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.interviewmagazine.com\/culture\/alia-shawkat-reviews-new-yorks-viral-frozen-yogurts\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.interviewmagazine.com\/culture\/alia-shawkat-reviews-new-yorks-viral-frozen-yogurts&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.interviewmagazine.com\/culture\/alia-shawkat-reviews-new-yorks-viral-frozen-yogurts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">implies<\/a>, the lines are particularly pervasive in New York\u2014which must be called the city that never sleeps because it\u2019s impossible to sleep standing up. Unless you\u2019re a horse. And in New York, even the horses have to stand in\u2014or as they\u2019d say, \u201con\u201d\u2014line. Ever seen the southern edge of Central Park at hansom cab rush hour?<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">I think we\u2019d all do well to adopt an edict I just invented called the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/hollywood\/2021\/12\/30-rock-tina-fey-race-blackface\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\"><em>30 Rock<\/em> rule<\/a>. A wait in line should last no more than 22 minutes. If it goes on longer than that\u2014the length of one episode of Tina Fey\u2019s canonical sitcom\u2014whatever\u2019s at the end of that rainbow simply does not deserve you.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Big Line, of course, would have you thinking otherwise. Line culture feeds on and is fed by a DSM\u2019s worth of modern-day maladies: FOMO, herd mentality, the sunk-cost fallacy. Most insidiously, line culture lures its practitioners into a false sense of democracy. Sure, I\u2019ve been standing here forever, a line lingerer might think\u2014but so have all these other people. And eventually, each of us will have our eternal reward. Waiting among a group of the like-minded can induce a sense of camaraderie, of community; there\u2019s a reason that the Park Slope Food Coop\u2019s official newsletter is called the <em>Linewaiters\u2019 Gazette.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What are you waiting for? It\u2019s a serious question. Because unless you need an organ transplant or are trying to vote in a Southern state, there is basically no good reason to join the end of a very lengthy queue\u2014to slowly shuffle forward, sandwiched between a pair of strangers, for more than a few moments&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a74de5c36aaaa03d59b7864\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/city.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}