Right Now

With Mark McGuire

Promoting self hardly out of line


The line outside the Fifth Avenue Apple store in Manhattan awaiting the arrival of the new iPhone 5. (Don Emmert/AFP/Gettyimage)

The website Gizmodo had a story with the headline “Sitting in Line for an iPhone Has Somehow Gotten Even Sadder.” The writer laments that some of the people waiting in line for the new iPhone outside the Apple flagship store in Manhattan were there for marketing purposes, including two from a social media startup and a pair of musicians.

“Again, there’s no such thing as the sanctity of line-sitting,” the writer states. He concludes: “This? This is just a marketing symbiote. Apple gets hype because people are in line, line-sitters get hype because they’re… there. And the worst part is, it’s going to work.”

First off, there is nothing sadder than waiting outside in the elements solely for the right to be the first to purchase a smartphone.

(Insert your sadder-to-wait-for counterargument here.)

We are talking weeks. What is worth the price of waiting in line that long?

Coveted ticket to a concert or sporting event?

The impossible-to-find Christmas gift for your kid?

The ladies room at SPAC?


But what is there to mourn? That is good business — and far less pathetic than waiting on line just for something you can pre-order … online.

What would you wait outside in a line for over several days?

Categories: General
Mark McGuire