A couple of people have linked Lance Arthur‘s interaction with a guy trying to cut in an iPhone line:
…I turn around and find a stranger standing behind me. Certain, he is nothing at all like the young Asian girl I was joking with for precious hours of my life. And the game commences.
“Are you standing in line?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you standing in line behind me outside for three and a half hours.”
“Yeah, I was.” Grin.
He stares at me. I instantly hate him. A lot. I hate everything about his self-congratulatory smart-assed grin and his cheating little heart and his idea of how life should work for him, where he can outsmart us all and get what he wants and get away with it. “No, you weren’t.”
“Yeah, I was.”
I point out to the front of the store. “She was behind me in line. You weren’t.”
“Are you gonna tell on me?” He asks this while still grinning that grin. I want nothing more than to kill him with something sharp.
“I am.” I start looking for someone to tell.
“How does it hurt you?”
It’s a great statement of the problem. These people infuriate us: we want them to suffer for their violation of the rules, even if bringing this about hurts us too. (Read the comments if you want empirical support for that.) But Line Jumper has a point: cutting in doesn’t hurt Lance, who would be better off, absent his rage, if he ignored Line Jumper rather than investing energy in making a scene.
So it looks like a case where anger motivates irrational action– irrational, that is, by the cool calculations of the egoist, or something like this. One game-theoretic justification for patterns of anger responses goes like this: if you’re the kind of guy who gets angry, you might find yourself in situations where you want to sacrifice your interests to hurt the person who hurt you, because that’s what anger motivates you to do– it gets you to value (temporarily) the other person’s suffering over your own coldly-assessed well-being. That’s bad, but, on the other hand, if potential aggressors know that you’re this kind of guy, they won’t aggress against you in cases where they would aggress against those who coldly consider their interests before deciding to retaliate. “Don’t mess with that guy, he’s crazy” is the short version. (In The Strategy of Conflict Thomas Schelling makes a lot of the way in which apparent liabilities, e.g. irrationality, can be assets, and this is a case in that general area. Another good read on the emotions case in particular is Robert Frank’s Passion Within Reason.)
The upshot is that it’s beneficial to have traits that are suboptimal in particular instances, especially if having the trait prevents most of those instances from occurring. (The ‘paradox of deterrence’ works this way: suppose only a sincere intention to counterattack prevents an aggressor from striking first, but a counterattack would be morally unjustified. Thus it looks like there’s a moral reason to adopt an immoral intention. Zing!) The twist here is that Lance himself isn’t the one benefitting in this direct way. If I knew anything about this I’d bet that a willingness to get angry (e.g.) is a way of not being a free-rider, and the best way to signal that is to actually have the relevant anger policy.
The horrible, horrible irony is that I’ve talked myself into being more like my mother. She loves to see aggressive drivers ticketed, for example. “What’s it to you?” I used to ask, because I found it petty. But I endorse norms that prohibit aggressive driving– partly on anti-free-rider grounds, because aggressive drivers are making others do the work of accident-avoidance– and if I do that I have to put my emotional money where my mouth is.
The Edge of the American West 
121 comments
July 18, 2008 at 2:02 pm
ben wolfson
I love the solid history-blogging here at EotAW.
July 18, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Cala
I saw that, and I wanted to comment over at Crooked Timber, but I couldn’t get past the big shrieking harpy in my head saying ‘YOU ARE STANDING IN LINE FOR SOMETHING THAT YOU CAN ORDER ONLINE.’
In more serious contexts, I wonder if something like a rite of passage is doing the work here. I saw this a lot on boards when we were applying for shivbunny’s visa; different service centers move more quickly, and we sailed through because we happened to hit at a fast time.* Usually, people weren’t happy as much as they were sniffing that they had to wait longer.
Or when a new proposal that would streamline the process was proposed, the biggest detractors would often be people who had gone through it, could see the benefits, but figured everyone else could put up with it.
Or academic committees. Back in my day, we didn’t have X, and we hated it, but we don’t want to put it in now. Shared purpose? Moral character? I don’t know.
*Where fast here means five months from sending in the paperwork to being granted the visa.
July 18, 2008 at 2:07 pm
New Kid on the Hallway
You want to see concern about line-jumping, try waiting at the INS (excuse me, Dept of Homeland Security or whatever the hell it’s called now) for a few hours and see someone try to cut in line. The atmosphere in the room changed in an *instant*. If the lovely INS officer with the gun on her hip hadn’t escorted the guy back to his place, I think there’d have been a mob incident.
July 18, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Neddy Merrill
Oh, I forgot to put this in the post– back in the 70s Milgram’s grad students did this experiment where they cut in line and recorded who if anyone objected. (I think it was a movie theater.) Objecting is not that frequent; the most likely objector is the person right behind the cutter; chance of objecting goes down sharply from there. I think the Lance outcome– guy in front objects– is really, really rare.
July 18, 2008 at 2:13 pm
eric
Suppose that in your country you’ve come recently to accept a government that ignores the law, a staggering level of income inequality, and a sadly decaying infrastructure and slate of public services. It might seem as though the willingness to stand in line and wait your turn is the last remaining vestige of civilization and one well worth defending.
July 18, 2008 at 2:13 pm
eric
I love the solid history-blogging here at EotAW.
Read The Fine About Page, ben.
July 18, 2008 at 2:16 pm
ProfHollywood
If you value the social norm — that people wait in line and don’t cut — then line-cutting hurts you because it diminishes something you value.
Just a slight twist on the Riker-Ordeshook model of rational voting in the presence of a near-zero probability that any one person’s vote decides an election — you vote because of the utility you derive from the act of voting.
July 18, 2008 at 2:20 pm
washerdreyer
Funny that both comments are about the INS.
In more serious contexts, I wonder if something like a rite of passage is doing the work here.
Which work where? You’re talking about opposition to changing an institutional norm for all future participants in that institution, not violation of an on-going norm which continues to be binding on others.
July 18, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Cala
I don’t know, w/d. Is the fear here really that we’ll abandon standing in lines? That doesn’t seem to me to explain this guy’s fury.
And the way it’s set up – the guy is behind the writer, he isn’t impeding this guy’s progress, and it isn’t clear that the Asian girl’s feelings are really the issue – sounds more like that he’s upset that this guy hasn’t suffered properly.
July 18, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Neddy Merrill
Cala, that’s sort of the uncharitable read, isn’t it? At least, if the other guy doesn’t suffer, he’ll get a reward for line-jumping, and that makes suckers out of the people who really waited. But he’ll get the reward by rules that everyone else implicitly accepted by forming a line in the first place.
July 18, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Kieran
YOU ARE STANDING IN LINE FOR SOMETHING THAT YOU CAN ORDER ONLINE.
You can’t order the new one online. You have to go to the store.
July 18, 2008 at 2:34 pm
bitchphd
I agree with ProfHollywood, and maybe I’m a philosophy dumbshit and basically this is what you were saying, but it seems to me that what the objector “gets” out of complaining is a reification of the objector’s sense of self as a social being, no? Which is partly why this kind of thing makes people feel conflicted: “self as social being” compels one *both* to object when people violate the rules of the commons, *and* not to tattle on people who are in close proximity.
July 18, 2008 at 2:38 pm
bitchphd
The fear, to answer Cala’s question, is that the line-cutter is violating a basic expectation of fairness, which is what leads people to stand in line in the first place. You want x, you wait your turn–in part because you recognize that everyone else who is waiting *also* wants x, and your desires don’t have priority over theirs. Plus, in cases where folks are lining up for commodities, there’s at least a possibility of shortages: the store might run out of iphones and people at the end of the line might have to come back next week. Which is annoying if you’ve waited in line, and (in a small way) ruins their fun in having an early iPhone!
It’s not b/c the line-cutter hasn’t suffered properly; it’s because he’s actively increasing the suffering of others, even if only by a tiny bit. That plus he’s pulling the guy-to-guy camaraderie thing of “don’t tell on me, bro,” and the objector is offended by the line-cutter’s presumption that that appeal will trump his (the objector’s) sense of connnection to the other people on line.
July 18, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Vance Maverick
I could only read Arthur’s post about a paragraph at a time — the white-hot impotent rage I’d have felt in his place kept threatening to overwhelm me.
As a teenager, I lived for a year in Zurich. I would walk home from middle school with a pack of classmates who lived in my neighborhood. They had discovered that it was possible to put out the streetlights, by grabbing them firmly about shoulder height and shaking the lamp. One dark winter evening, as we amused ourselves in this fashion, an upright citizen spotted us and ran over shouting “Hooligans!” (or words to that effect). My classmates scattered, but I, less alert, was caught red-handed. He pushed me up against the garden fence, and fulminated in Scwyzertüütsch against my irresponsibility. Meanwhile, above our heads, the light flickered back on. He muttered something and went on his way, and my classmates reëmerged from the shadows. Today, I salute him — mon semblable, mon frère.
July 18, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Cala
Cala, that’s sort of the uncharitable read, isn’t it?
Not really, given the rest of his article, where he seems awfully defensive about having to justify that he waited in line 3.5 hours. In other words, I can’t see him getting all that upset about The Principle Of Line-Jumping if it had been a five-minute-long line.
Kieran, fair enough. Replace caps with ‘could have gone to the store the next day and likely purchased the exact same model.’
July 18, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Cala
Oh, and the reason I thought ‘rite of passage’ is that as far as I know, there are no shortages of iPhones. Meaning, the only value to standing in the line for three and a half hours is to be able to say ‘I was so excited that I stood in the line for three and a half hours to be able to get it on the first day.’
Having someone jump the line just makes a sucker of that idea.
July 18, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Neddy Merrill
Hmm, I’m going to defend Lance on the grounds that our line-jumping rage is pretty common and not sensitive to the value of the thing we’re waiting for. Dammit, Cala, he’s cheating and not playing faiiirrrrrr.
July 18, 2008 at 3:02 pm
washerdreyer
Lines generally allocate goods according to some relevant scarcity, the scarce good isn’t iPods, it’s Apple Store employees’ time.
July 18, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Cala
Neddy, I’m not saying he wasn’t right to speak up. I’m arguing that this isn’t about The Principle of the Line but about the value of the experience of camping out for the iPhone.
Other examples: Lance is in the 10-items-or-fewer line at the grocery store. The person behind him has eleven.
Lance is in the iPhone store but the clerks are really efficient, and so he’s only been waiting five minutes. Guy cuts in line behind him.
Does it seem right to call management in this case? I’m sure if I were in the grocery line, I’d be more annoyed with Lance than with the other guy. And I’d be more inclined to think he was overreacting in the second case.
July 18, 2008 at 3:15 pm
bitchphd
But Cala, first, the author said that he felt like a dumbass for standing in line that long–he’s hardly going to be bragging about it (and in his post, he really isn’t).
Second, though, and more importantly, he makes a *point* of noting that the line-cutter *grinned* at him, and this: He’s trying to show that I shouldn’t care about anyone else. Like he does.
I really think it’s not selfish commercialism (which the author is totally being self-deprecating about), but being invited to betray one group (and especially the woman in line behind him he’d talked to for hours) by a stranger.
July 18, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Neddy Merrill
Cala, I’d expect that anger goes up as my investment in the rules does– that is, the more I’ve sacrificed to be a norm-follower, the angrier I am when you violate the norm. But I think that can be justified on Line-Following grounds.
July 18, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Cala
Don’t you go deflationing me, Neddy.
July 18, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Neddy Merrill
I’ll do whatever it takes to make it look like I inspire long threads.
July 18, 2008 at 3:38 pm
bitchphd
I was just wondering about why that happens, and I decided that asking people to talk about moral intuitions, which are important to most of us, is just a recipe for long threads disaster.
July 18, 2008 at 3:40 pm
bitchphd
Why does this blog not allow html coding in comments? Hmph.
July 18, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Rich Puchalsky
Here the line-jumping story is again. Well, I suppose I should out-contrary my comments at Crooked Timber, so:
1. Anyone who would wait hours in line for an iPhone isn’t a norm-defender. They want to brag that they got a luxury item that others don’t have. Most people can’t afford an IPhone. Let a thousand line-jumpers jump that line, I say.
2. In general, societies in which people naturally form lines are not good societies. I’d rather put up with annoying grinning line-jumping guy than with authoritarian security-calling line-forming guy.
3. Unless “young Asian girl” means an actual child, unlikely in the case of someone buying an iPhone, this guy was flirting in line. A lot of this anger seems to me like him sticking up for his imaginary girlfriend. “How does it hurt you?” has no force not because the guy is a selfless defender of lines, but because he wants to put on a macho show for the girl that he’s suddenly been separated from. That’s at least as credible as the million other psychologizings of this story I’ve seen.
July 18, 2008 at 3:56 pm
todd.
“Hmm, I’m going to defend Lance on the grounds that our line-jumping rage is pretty common and not sensitive to the value of the thing we’re waiting for. Dammit, Cala, he’s cheating and not playing faiiirrrrrr.”
Interestingly, my thought was pretty much the opposite. I felt pretty much no sympathy for Lance, and thought his post was kind of obnoxious. But Scott recently posted a similar story about the line at the pharmacy in the local grocery store, and I was really annoyed by the line-cutting old man in SEK’s story. Either the object of the line-waiting is important to me, or Scott just won me over with his superior narrative.
July 18, 2008 at 3:58 pm
todd.
Is anything worse that failing to proofread and being forced to see your reliance on lame crutch phrases like “pretty much” etched in internet stone?
July 18, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Neddy Merrill
Rich, I think 1-3 are all false. I think 3 is false because Lance says “I message Robert to tell him what happened. He tells me he loves me even more for doing it.” I took this to mean that Lance doesn’t have much interest in the women in line, but I could be wrong.
1 is just a non sequitur. Norm violator/defender is orthogonal to loves gadgets/doesn’t love gadgets. Not sure why it matters that “most people” can’t afford iphones, or why that makes it ok to jump lines.
2 is odd to me as well. I think of a line as a convention implicitly accepted by the group as a whole. It’s not a bad way of solving the problem (there are drawbacks to rival solutions), and it’s certainly not true that Lance “formed the line” in any interesting sense.
July 18, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Neddy Merrill
Ah, at least I’m right about one thing: Lance refers to his boyfriend in another post.
July 18, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Amos Anan
I’ve seen this elsewhere and didn’t pay much attention but reading your response has gotten me thinking how narrow focused your argument is. It’s true that the person that was ahead in the line wasn’t actually affected by the cut in but that’s just a matter of luck. Nothing more. The grin that had one connotation for the guy ahead may have been very different when directed towards the “young Asian girl” behind. It may have been the same and perceived differently or it may have been malevolent and menacing with words to match. At the extreme, the logic you present says why care if there’s an insult or crime being committed against someone else? It’s not my concern. It’s not my problem. I’m happy. I should stay happy and content. At the extreme extreme it’s the justification for not objecting or even caring when your neighbors and their children are being carted off to extermination camps.
The fault lies with the vendors for not “policing” the lines that they create and often create willfully for the publicity generated.
Years ago in New York City a mayor (I think it was Giuliani) began a program of enforcing what were called “quality of life” crimes. Beggars on the street and homeless people who washed car windows at red lights were arrested. I questioned the motivation for those actions other than the obvious political value but there was one crime that was focused on that may have seemed petty but I agreed that it was one that should have been enforced – subway turnstile jumpers. Much like the situation you describe you can ask yourself why should anyone care. It’s not your money that’s being lost. But from my view it was a deterrent to the more violent subway crime that was more common then. People (and often the jumpers went in large groups) who jumped turnstiles did so in open disdain of laws and others. That disdain often manifested in the more serious subway crimes I’ve mentioned.
The logic of condoning crime (or public intimidation or insult) because doing so avoids effort, stress, aggravation and possible danger is also the logic we’re now being presented with in regard to the high crimes of our current federal government. Let’s move on and not waste any more of the nation’s time on the past. We’ve got lot’s of work to do to restore America to the status it had before the current group took power. But just as little was done after Iran-Contra, many of the same criminal clowns came back to do it to America again. The logic seems to have similar tones in all these cases. Bad logic whose only validity seems to be the petty aspect of the situation (other than possibly the unseen interaction with the “young Asian girl.”
July 18, 2008 at 4:34 pm
grackle
I have sympathy with Cala’s formulation, although I suspect the anger has a lot to do with Lance’s admitted superficiality – he starts his piece admitting the ephemeral nature of his quest. Being confronted by a line-jumper emphasizes not only the ephemerality but the fact that he really has been wasting time for something not only unnecessary but truly frivolous. There is nothing like self-justification to damp down dimly perceived feelings like that one has been on a fool’s mission of this sort. How better to justify the time spent than with a nice bout of self-righteousness? He still feels like shmuck though, because deep down he knows it is all vanity – that there is something ultimately artificial about his identification with the queue.
How’s that for a moral take on it?
July 18, 2008 at 4:42 pm
eric
You guys who are fixating on the iPhone are chasing a red herring. Whether it has any intrinsic value is beside the point. It has the only real social value anything has—a significant number of people agree it’s valuable. Substitute the word “McGuffin” for “iPhone” and it’s the same moral problem. And the line-jumping is the same gesture in defiance of morality.
July 18, 2008 at 5:02 pm
grackle
And the line-jumping is the same gesture in defiance of morality. But the point of Neddy’s post has to do with a kind of moral ambiguity that Lance more than acknowledges, and , in his acknowledgment, admits that the fact of the kind of line plus amount of time spent is actually pertinent to the fact of his anger and, as I would characterize it, his self-righteous indignation. I do not believe, that in the actual situation, he was convinced of a clear moral rightness to the exclusion of his feelings about the real worthiness of the pursuit. It is beautifully ambiguous.
July 18, 2008 at 5:04 pm
eric
I think the ambiguity—begot of the self-deprecation, right?—is by way of trying to deflect criticism of the “it’s only a stupid iPhone” sort. Yes, it’s only a stupid iPhone. But that’s not the point.
July 18, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Rich Puchalsky
Neddy, I think that investigating Lance’s sexual orientation gets into swampland I’d rather not get into, OK? But in general, I don’t think that people should be quick to assume that bisexuality doesn’t exist. If you want, you can assume that he was absolutely uninterested in that sense in this “young girl” who he was talking to for a while, and the protective impulse would be much the same. Point being that the people who present this as disinterested anger in service of justice are missing part of the story.
Nor do I think that the fact that it’s a iPhone is unimportant. The line isn’t a group convention. It’s not people lining up in a disaster area for food. It’s a sales tactic, created by a corporation that used a manufactured condition of scarcity as advertising for their luxury product. It’s not ideologically blank, as if people participating in it are merely “gadget lovers”.
July 18, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Rich Puchalsky
eric, if you want a view-from-the-stratosphere takeaway from this story, that elides the iPhone and the particular behavior and so on, then I’d say that my preference is for more people to be making non-criminal “gestures in defiance of morality” than people looking for authority to shut down those gestures. Sure (getting back to these particulars), this guy was an annoying line-cutter, not a brave rebel. But you can’t open up social space for one without opening up space for the other.
July 18, 2008 at 5:25 pm
todd.
Wait, what is the point of “gestures in defiance of morality”? Won’t it always be the case that, once you get down to particulars, the act in question was (at best) petty and annoying?
July 18, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Cala
Substitute the word “McGuffin” for “iPhone” and it’s the same moral problem.
There’s no Platonic form of the iPhone, of course, and it’s nothing to do with touch screens or 3G, but it to be the same moral problem, the macguffin better be a non-essential consumer good with the same amount of hype, a similar lack of supply restriction, and a similar feeding frenzy.
If it’s a bread line, Lance looks restrained, IOW.
July 18, 2008 at 5:56 pm
eric
this guy was an annoying line-cutter, not a brave rebel
See, I go beyond “annoying.” I see sense of entitlement, cheerful collusion amongst us white fellows in defying these silly rules. In other words, I see white collar criminal. I’m okay with calling “authority”—i.e., spotty, voice-breaking Apple employee—down on him. Also on people who talk loudly during movies.
July 18, 2008 at 5:57 pm
eric
Cala, what if the McGuffin was a gate agent in an airport?
July 18, 2008 at 5:59 pm
eric
Won’t it always be the case that, once you get down to particulars, the act in question was (at best) petty and annoying?
No, I really don’t think so; I think whoever pointed to the “broken windows” trope has it right—that’s an overused trope, but it does apply. Norms of civility really matter if you want a public sphere instead of a mob.
July 18, 2008 at 6:04 pm
bitchphd
The line isn’t a group convention.
What? Nonsense. You stand in line at the post office, you stand in line at the coffee counter, you stand in line at the freaking McDonald’s. You wait in line at the emergency room after you’ve been triaged (do you want an iPhone or something else from the store?). It is very much a convention that we use to regulate who gets their wants/needs met first.
July 18, 2008 at 6:09 pm
grackle
O.K. Eric, I’ll bite. What, to you, is the point? I mean, you’re not just incensed that someone cut in line? Is the point that cutting in line is bad? That seems to be tacitly agreed in a Miss Manners sort of way.
July 18, 2008 at 6:14 pm
grackle
Ah, the moments between composition and posting. I guess that is what you think the point is. I thought that conversation was taking place elsewhere. I thought Neddy was introducing intricate philosphical reasoning in order to effect a discussion about the differences between what we think we are doing (or feel) and what actually it is that we effect. My apologies.
July 18, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Kieran
The line isn’t a group convention.
Yes it is. In fact it’s a little institution. How do you think those people know how to behave in that setting? Everyone’s behavior there, including the queue-jumper’s, is understood with reference to conventions/institutionalized rules of queues. Just go somewhere where these mutual expectations are different to see (e.g., contrast and Irish with an English bus stop).
July 18, 2008 at 6:24 pm
eric
I think it goes beyond “Miss Manners.” Neddy’s taking for granted that it doesn’t hurt Lance. But it does.
July 18, 2008 at 6:30 pm
bitchphd
Miss Manners and the conventions she discussions are’nt petty, even though people like to pretend that they are.
July 18, 2008 at 6:30 pm
bitchphd
aren’t.
July 18, 2008 at 6:31 pm
eric
Or, to continue this week’s theme, any young Asian girl unjustly deprived of her iPhone for a little longer diminishes me.
July 18, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Kieran
No man is an iLand.
July 18, 2008 at 7:10 pm
todd.
Eric, I’m confused as to how we disagree about gestures in defiance of morality. You think petty and annoying is too generous? I intended to leave room for that when I said, “at best.”
July 18, 2008 at 7:14 pm
SEK
As .todd referenced above, SEK’s different sort of line-cutting story, for the interested.
July 18, 2008 at 7:23 pm
eric
Then todd., I don’t understand your question of 5:25pm.
July 18, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Neddy Merrill
There’s sort of an interesting interpretive question here about whether acts like this would be in defiance of morality or of defiance of a particular interpretation of morality that the agent wants to supplant with a different one. On the first interpretation the line-cutter is saying “ah, boo for morality, I favor some other set of norms that allow me to cut you!” while on the second it’s “morality endorses cutting! you’ve just misunderstood it, Lance.”
Spending Friday nights writing my dissertation was bad; spending them reliving it is agony.
July 18, 2008 at 7:45 pm
The Depths of the American South « The Edge of the American West
[…] remember, kids, this ain’t a substantial academic post on an academic blog so much as announcement of future unavailability of the sort common to academic […]
July 18, 2008 at 8:04 pm
todd.
Eric,
Rich said: “I’d say that my preference is for more people to be making non-criminal ‘gestures in defiance of morality’ than people looking for authority to shut down those gestures.”
Which I took to mean that he sees some value in “gestures in defiance of morality.” Morality seems by its nature to be something that you don’t value flaunting just because you can. So I was trying to find out what good there is in the defiant gestures.
July 18, 2008 at 8:15 pm
eric
Ah, then you and I agree in disagreeing with Rich.
July 18, 2008 at 8:21 pm
bitchphd
Spending Friday nights writing my dissertation was bad; spending them reliving it is agony.
Who wrote the post in the first place?
July 18, 2008 at 8:21 pm
ac
I see that the Apple Store in question was not in New York.
July 18, 2008 at 8:25 pm
eric
from ac’s link: You should NEVER “cut” in line.
I thought New Yorkers said “on” line. No?
July 18, 2008 at 8:29 pm
ac
The writer is showing her Rhode Island roots.
July 18, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Rich Puchalsky
To the two people who expression amazement that I wrote that this particular line wasn’t a group convention: the post mentions Apple employees. In fact, it mentions Apple security guards. It mentions two lines, set up and patrolled by Apple. This wasn’t a group convention in the sense that the people in the lines did not decide that this was the best way to handle distribution of iPhones. They were told what to do and they did it.
Yes, there is a common level of line-behavior-technology in our culture such that when someone tells you to form a line, you know what to do, you know that cutting is bad but that people sometimes do it, and so on. That’s … unremarkable. If someone handed you a gun and told you that you were part of an execution squad, you’d know to form a line near the guy in the blindfold, aim at his heart, then fire when you receive some signal. But the more important point to me seems to be whether you end up doing it or not.
July 18, 2008 at 9:10 pm
bitchphd
Because standing in line to buy an iPhone is exactly like shooting someone!
Oh wait.
July 18, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Rich Puchalsky
“Morality seems by its nature to be something that you don’t value flaunting just because you can. So I was trying to find out what good there is in the defiant gestures.”
People in America currently think that it’s moral to deport illegal aliens. To torture prisoners. To preserve institutional systems that disfavor gay people. To sign up for the military to fight in aggressive wars. Why wouldn’t people want to make defiant gestures against morality? Morality is not some kind of uncontested, singular value.
Of course, the line cutter isn’t making such a gesture. But the same sentiments against him work against everyone else too.
July 18, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Rich Puchalsky
bitchphd, you were describing a corporate sales decision as a group convention. I have no idea whether you’d also describe a governmental execution decision as one, because people also follow instructions as a group to carry it out. I suspect that you’d be incredulous that I’d suggest such a thing.
July 18, 2008 at 9:48 pm
eric
Rich, I think I could understand your argument if you were in favor of flouting authority, convention, or even law (though ultimately I wouldn’t probably buy the argument in this case) but appreciating a defiance of morality doesn’t seem right to me. Mainly because you’re appealing to a differently constructed morality to justify it.
July 18, 2008 at 10:45 pm
andrew
Other examples: Lance is in the 10-items-or-fewer line at the grocery store. The person behind him has eleven.
If the person is only one item over the limit, then it’s probably not a problem. Two items? Maybe. What about three? or four? At some point it becomes objectionable. Are any of the items Soritos tortilla chips?
July 18, 2008 at 10:51 pm
ari
Four. That’s the cut-off, right there. More than four items over the limit, and I’m glaring at you. But I still won’t summon the management. Just don’t glare back, though; you need to know that your role is to smile weakly and apologetically, maybe even shake your head at your own bad behavior and shrug your shoulders ever so slightly, and then don’t make any more eye contact with me. Because if you do, I might say something not very nice.
July 18, 2008 at 10:59 pm
andrew
At the supermarket and in that situation, at least, you can opt for the non- or less confrontational: “I think you might be in the wrong line.”
Also, this is the Edge of the American West: is line-jumping like claim-jumping?
July 18, 2008 at 11:01 pm
ari
Claim-jumping gets you killed, I’m pretty sure. Line-jumping not so much. Or at least not so often.
July 19, 2008 at 12:25 am
queue is for quiescent « by the wayside
[…] is for quiescent Posted on 19 July 2008 by andrew The discussion of attempted line-jumping reminds me of a discussion of queuing behavior in Russia – focused mostly […]
July 19, 2008 at 5:50 am
SomeCallMeTim
More than four items over the limit, and I’m glaring at you.
I realized the other day that I start bouncing on the balls of my feet if I think a line is taking too long to empty because of someone’s malfeasance. It’s involuntary in my case. But it appears to creep people out–more than glaring, which I used to (OK, still) do–so you might try it.
July 19, 2008 at 6:23 am
Rich Puchalsky
“Mainly because you’re appealing to a differently constructed morality to justify it.”
Well, yes. I’m not making an abstract “Down with morality” statement. I’m saying that just about every aspect of morality is contested. Whenever someone makes a public gesture against morality, it’s quite possible that they are doing so in the name of some other moral system or value.
Let’s imagine the line-jumper’s an anarchist of the break-Starbucks-windows variety. (He’s not, he’s just a self-interested guy, I know. But bear with me.) He could look at the Apple Store lines and feel the same mild disgust that I do. So he decides that he’s not going to break windows, or commit any crime, he’s going to culture-jam the line by openly cutting, waiting for officious people to call security on him, walking away, then cutting the line again. Result: trendy bloggers write fuming blog entries about how they got that line cutting guy and somewhere in their self congratulation and self-justification for standing in line for an iPhone starts to seep through some questioning of the whole process…
But this guy wasn’t an anarchist, he was just a creep. The problem is, a lot of the time there’s no way to tell. The person bucking a social convention always looks like a creep.
July 19, 2008 at 6:53 am
chris y
You call these things as you see them at the time, without the prior benefit of discussing them at length on the intertubes, so I doubt if Lance was taking a very thought through approach to the issue.
I’d guess two heuristics are likely to be in play here. One, jumping a big line makes you a bigger jerk than jumping a small one. No logic, but I bet if you go out in the street with a clipboard you’ll get 85% assent to that proposition. Two, the guy trying to implicate Lance in his line jumping – “How does it hurt you” – is creepy. It makes him seem borderline sociopathic, and you think, let him get away with this and next thing you know, he’ll be getting a job in McCain’s Justice Department. So, in the fine illogic of the moment, I reckon Lance did what a lot of people would have done, regardless of rationality and counter-examples.
July 19, 2008 at 7:46 am
Rich Puchalsky
“I doubt if Lance was taking a very thought through approach to the issue.”
It’s not what Lance did that bothers me. Sure, he was pissed off; I’m not going to be throwing any stones in that glass house. It’s all of the blogospheric congratulation about it for “norm enforcement” or (here) as behavior that may not be individually optimal but that deters aggressors. I want to live in an open, pluralistic society. When its a common sentiment that Something Should Be Done About Those Rude People, it’s not a good sign.
July 19, 2008 at 8:29 am
SomeCallMeTim
When its a common sentiment that Something Should Be Done About Those Rude People, it’s not a good sign.
Depends who the rude people are.
Moreover, these are internalized norms we’re talking about. Nobody’s saying that people should complain about violations that don’t bother them, personally. At which point we have to people responding to felt individual impulses: the line jumper and the person who feels like calling out the line jumper. I’m not sure why one shouldn’t be restrained (the line jumper) by the response of others and the other (Lance) should.
July 19, 2008 at 9:46 am
eric
So Rich, as I understand it, you think that line-jumping is okay, and window-breaking is okay, at least when they’re directed against Apple or Starbucks. How far are you taking this? Is other property crime okay? Arson, burglary? What about crime against persons? Robbery, assault, rape, murder?
July 19, 2008 at 10:05 am
grackle
Isn’t standing in groups of three or more illegal in Davis?
July 19, 2008 at 10:21 am
Neddy Merrill
Maybe my question comes to the same thing. Even an open, pluralistic society will need to have ways of solving collective action problems. One way of doing this is to have social conventions, and one way of maintaining those is to have patterns of response (shame/scorn, e.g.) for those who violate or witness violations. Are all of these bad?
At times it seems like the problem is (a) people who want iphones when they should want other things; at other times it seems like the criticism is directed against (b) the rule against cutting in line; and sometimes I get the sense that the criticism is of (c) any enforcement of a social convention of this sort.
(a) is fine, if kind of boring. (b) is odd to me just because I like line-forming as a way of solving a problem. If we just surged to the front I would do fine but other people might lose out simply because they’re smaller. That seems bad. (c) seems kind of crazy to me because a world without these behavior-regulating conventions seems obviously worse than what we’ve got now.
July 19, 2008 at 11:08 am
SomeCallMeTim
If we just surged to the front I would do fine but other people might lose out simply because they’re smaller.
You’ve the large soul of a much smaller man, He-man.
I don’t really understand what it means to talk of a world without social conventions. Isn’t the social world mostly social conventions? I would think that the general rule would be that we are OK with flouting social conventions only when we have reason to doubt those conventions. But we mostly start out respecting them, don’t we.
July 19, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Rich Puchalsky
“So Rich, as I understand it, you think that line-jumping is okay, and window-breaking is okay, at least when they’re directed against Apple or Starbucks. How far are you taking this? Is other property crime okay? Arson, burglary? What about crime against persons? Robbery, assault, rape, murder?’
Eric, this line cutter committed no crime. Even when I reimagined him as an anarchist, I specified that he committed no crime.
As a slippery slope argument, this fails. As an illustration of petty-authoritarian tendencies, it succeeds. “So you’d let people cut in line — what’s next, murder?” Is that really what you’re saying?
So yeah, I think that line cutting is OK. Because whenever I suggest that maybe people should put up with line cutting, as well as gum chewing and all those other things that would get you carted away in Singapore, as regrettable parts of an open society, I get far more scared by the “what’s next — murder?” people than I do about some line cutter.
July 19, 2008 at 12:51 pm
JPool
Rich, I think we’ve long since established that you and I disagree about the best way to wage the class war. I understand the historical political reasoning behind the IWW line that “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common,” but applying it in such a way those choosing to stand in for an iphone don’t deserve our moral sympathy makes no sense to me.
The line-jumping “culture jammer” is a misguided creep in exactly the same way that the window-breaking “black mask” anarchist is. They are not hurting the corporations whose power they object to into any meaningful way, but are mainly harming/annoying/inconveniencing the people who work and shop there (and, in the Starbucks/MacDonalds example, those who live and work in and around it). These harmed people, and the many more who find it easier to identify with annoyed schmo than smashy-smashy jerk, are now less rather than more sympathetic to your critique of such corporations/institutions, and folks will have to work much harder to convince them not to reject said critique out of hand. People may also annoyed or inconvenienced by other forms of protest, such as picket lines, but protestors in those situations are more likely to explain why they are inconveniencing you and what they are trying to achieve by doing so.
Finally, I think this goes back to the civility discussion. Certainly notions of politeness can at times be used to enforce social hierarchies or to encourage social or political quietism. This does not, however, make impolite behavior subversive or the encouragement of polite behavior convservative, in and of themselves. Indeed, if we are to move to a less authoritarian society, one needs a more developed collective sense of acceptable behavior and non-violent means for enforcing it, rather than needing to rely soly on state or corporate enforcers to achieve quotidian justice.
July 19, 2008 at 1:23 pm
bitchphd
He could look at the Apple Store lines and feel the same mild disgust that I do. So he decides that he’s not going to break windows, or commit any crime, he’s going to culture-jam the line by openly cutting, waiting for officious people to call security on him, walking away, then cutting the line again.
Ugh. In what way is this politically effective (or effective in any other means)? It seems to me that great, he gets a nice feeling of moral superiority: but other than that?
It’s all of the blogospheric congratulation about it for “norm enforcement” or (here) as behavior that may not be individually optimal but that deters aggressors. I want to live in an open, pluralistic society. When its a common sentiment that Something Should Be Done About Those Rude People, it’s not a good sign.
This is a reasonable sentiment, but it is misapplied. Doing Something about Rude People who are going about their own business and inevitably inconveniencing others because other people are inconvenient is not a good sign. Lacking empathy for people who occasionally break social conventions for decent reasons is not a good sign.
But the thing you’re defending here is someone who broke a social convention in order to buy an iPhone. The line-cutter is doing the *exact same thing* you’re looking down on the line-standers for doing, but you want to give him a pass because he’s being all rebellious about how he goes about it. Which is ridiculous.
There’s a contradiction inherent in wanting to live in a pluralistic society and object to those who want to Punish Rude People vs. wanting to defend rudeness to other people on the simple grounds that you disapprove of their priorities.
July 19, 2008 at 1:24 pm
bitchphd
In short (because I think this point was ill-expressed), objecting to the tone of congratulatory “you show the assholes!” is one thing; defending the behavior being condemned, however, is another.
July 19, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Made on a Mac
My (as always, late) 2 cents:
First, Rich Puchalsky is a stone-cold line-cutter. Heck, he may even be THE line-cutter that got Lance riled.
Second, how do you follow an assumption-fueled assertion like this: “this guy (Lance) was flirting in line. A lot of this anger seems to me like him sticking up for his imaginary girlfriend,” with (when told Lance dates men) this: “I don’t think that people should be quick to assume that bisexuality doesn’t exist”?
Second, what’s with the iPhone hating?! Setting aside the kookiest formulations (“Anyone who would wait hours in line for an iPhone isn’t a norm-defender,”), what’s up with “a non-essential consumer good,” “not only unnecessary but truly frivolous,” etc., friggin’ etc.
What are you, a bunch of nuns? I mean, a cold beer on a hot day is non-essential, too, as is a trip to the ballpark, but I waited in a long line to get a cold one at the game just the other night.
How many of you have cell phones? I remember the first time a friend got one – it seemed non-essential, even frivolous. I’ll bet that most of the posters in this thread will be using some sort of smart-phone within a few years. Lance and the line-cutter and the Asian girl are just early-adopters of a product that does things no other product has done before. And to get one, they had to wait online. (In fact, here in NYC, you still do. A week later the line is still out the door and down the block.)
July 19, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Rich Puchalsky
“The line-jumping “culture jammer” is a misguided creep in exactly the same way that the window-breaking “black mask” anarchist is.”
All right, I’ll try another example, then. Let’s say the guy is now not an anarchist, but an anti-abortion protester, doing the non-criminal subset of whatever things they do to people waiting to get into a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Personally, I’m pro-choice. I assume that most of the people here are, too. Do I support this guy’s right to protest in a cause that I think is evil? Using methods that seem counterproductive? Of course I do. That’s what part of being in an open society means — that some people will use that freedom to do annoying things that I don’t like.
If the guy was a political protester, I think that this would be an open-and-shut case of “well, what are you going to do.” But he isn’t. Then, I think, there’s the question of whether you can reliably treat casual jerks differently from politically motivated ones. I don’t think that we (in the sense of a social we) can.
Of course if you see some line-cutter cut into your line, and you feel like telling them to get out, feel free to do so. But you haven’t defended society by doing so. What you’ve done depends very strongly on what the line that you’re actually in is for, and why you’re in it.
July 19, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Neddy Merrill
Rich, you say
There are some ambiguities here. If you think line-cutting is regrettable, that suggests you think it’s bad thing. Because it’s an action, not an event, it’s not a bad thing like rain on your wedding day; it’s the kind of thing for which you hold people responsible. A sensible response to agents behaving badly is some degree of anger.
However, you also say that line-cutting is ok, which means that anger wouldn’t make sense in response. On the other hand, your rationale for this is a practical consideration about the benefits of putting up with line-cutting and gum-chewing: it’s better to put up with these than to impose sanctions, because once we impose sanction we’re on our way to Singapore. This suggests that anger is warranted (it’s justified by the noxious behavior) but for other (political) reasons it would be better not to express (or, if possible, even feel) anger.
At this point I’m confused as to what the disagreement is about. If your view is that line-cutting in a case like this is obnoxious, but we shouldn’t get mad about it because that will set us down the road to becoming an oppressive society, I at least understand the claim, though I think it’s false.
This concludes tonight’s Allan Gibbard impersonation contest.
July 19, 2008 at 3:27 pm
eric
Rich, I didn’t say, “what’s next — murder?”. You’ve come out in favor of line-cutting and window-breaking. Do you stop there, or not? Show your work.
July 19, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Rich Puchalsky
“If your view is that line-cutting in a case like this is obnoxious, but we shouldn’t get mad about it because that will set us down the road to becoming an oppressive society”
Yes, that’s pretty much it.
But. On a social level, individual people behaving badly is inevitable. It’s like having a rainy day in that sense. If you have lines, and no authoritarian state (whether in the sense of having guards, or the sense of having stifling social conventions) enforcing the lines, some people are going to try to jump the lines, just as some days when you’d rather be out doing something, it’s going to rain. Let’s keep in mind that obnoxiousness does not equal crime. If people are mad at the rain, that’s fine, but saying “You go, guy! Punish those raindrops! You defend us all by doing so” seems a bit much.
But there’s a much more personal, visceral level on which I dislike this whole blogospheric mini-storm. I spent some time being a ground-level environmental activist around toxic sites. Here’s a tactic suggested by one prominent grassroots environmental group: a tactic known as the “Chocolate Mess”. You bring your young children to a meeting where the local polluters are planning on dazzling everyone with their BS. You give them chocolate, and say “Hey, kids. If you want to run around and grab things today, feel free. Especially things from that table over there.” I suppose that you can imagine the results, as the people from the community laugh tolerantly at their children and the polluter looks like a jackass, either trying to punish the kids, or having his presentation completely disrupted.
People completely get the vapors, hearing about this kind of thing. “How dare you” — well, the how dare yous can be from all sorts of directions. Except, of course, from the people in the community, whose kids are living on top of a Superfund site, and who could care less about whether you’re being polite.
The fact is that unless you’re going through the most well-worn political channels, every political activist has to be a jerk. Everyone has to be obnoxious, from the people who sat down to integrate lunch counters (“how dare they disrupt our peaceful meal”) to the people doing things that no one here approves of. And the general level of tolerance for random obnoxiousness is correlated, to a large extent, with tolerance for political activity as such.
July 19, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Rich Puchalsky
Eric, you’re being obnoxious, which I guess I should congratulate you for. I never said that I was in favor of window-breaking. That’s a crime. If you ever want to respond to what I actually did write, feel free.
July 19, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Neddy Merrill
Rich, I have a better understanding of your view, and I’m friendlier to it than I was.
I am, in general, sympathetic to this line of argument: X is bad, but outlawing Xs would be worse than keeping X legal. Here, I was focusing on the reactions of an individual, and in particular the justifiability of anger. (That still seems right, and it’s different from being angry at rain because of the agency issue.) I can see how the involvement of the store employees complicates things, though, because that’s getting closer to some kind of authority enforcing the group norms.
That said, I would have thought that someone who’s worried about, say, the state overstepping its authority would want to promote private enforcement of social norms like the one about line-cutting, on the grounds that the work has to be done one way or another, and a community that handles things by social convention won’t have a need for legal authority to step in.
July 19, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Rich Puchalsky
“I would have thought that someone who’s worried about, say, the state overstepping its authority would want to promote private enforcement of social norms like the one about line-cutting, on the grounds that the work has to be done one way or another […]”
But that’s where the question emerges of what work, exactly, is being done. It’s why I’ve always said that it matters that this was about an iPhone rather than a generic McGuffin. I envision the process as being something like this: a) Apple managers have the idea “Hey, let’s have people form lines at our stores to buy iPhones, rather than having them shipped, or ordering them in advance and coming to pick them up! That will be great publicity”; b) well-off, self-satisfied consumers of prestige luxury goods dutifully line up to buy them; c) someone on a blog tells me that I should be willing to have the community do the social work of helping Apple’s publicity stunt function, or else the state may step in.
That’s just really bad politics, I think. It would mobilize general social sentiment in a direction that I dislike (respect for people telling you how to behave, even when criminality isn’t involved) in order to help elements of society that I dislike. It seems like a bad deal. I mean, in cases where people are forming lines for things like disaster relief, they already naturally generally behave well and punish line-jumpers quite harshly, so why should I care about this case?
July 19, 2008 at 4:22 pm
eric
Rich, I’m not trying to be obnoxious, though I may be one of those people to whom it comes naturally. I’m genuinely trying to find out where you’d draw the line in terms of “gestures in defiance of” etc.
Evidently I misunderstood your comments about the guy theoretically being a window-breaking anarchist. You now say no, you don’t favor that, because it’s a crime. Which is plenty clear, and I understand that.
I also understand “Chocolate Mess,” which I think is a bit more defensible than the line-cutting. After all, “Chocolate Mess” is a political statement; it’s not one person claiming a good that belongs rightfully to another person. Which is what the line-cutter did.
July 19, 2008 at 4:23 pm
eric
a) Apple managers have the idea “Hey, let’s have people form lines at our stores to buy iPhones
Also, purely as a point of fact, with which I probably shouldn’t sully the discussion, the lines–at least, at that really unreasonable length–appear to have been unintentional; according to all the press on the subject, the lines happened because Apple’s activation servers went down, and they ended up with a lot of unhappy customers because of it.
July 19, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Rich Puchalsky
I’m sorry for the confusion, Eric. (And for cluttering this thread.) One of the things that I’d thought I’d emphasized with the anarchist example was that this time, he’d decided that he *wasn’t* going to commit a crime — that he was going to culture-jam instead. Which, I thought, pointed out how it was more defensible.
July 19, 2008 at 5:02 pm
bitchphd
Let’s keep in mind that obnoxiousness does not equal crime.
No one has been saying it does. Even if you want to say that bringing the store employees into the mix equals calling “the authorities.” Here’s why: your a, b, c about why it matters that the issue is an iPhone is implicitly based on the idea that “well-off, self-satisfied consumers” don’t have a lot of moral authority. Only the guy who’s cutting in line is *himself a self-satisfied consumer.” He’s *so* self-satisfied, in fact, that he thinks that even the minor modesty of having to stand in line is beneath him, and that this should somehow be honored by others of his “class.”
No one is telling you you should be willing to “help Apple’s publicity stunt”. No one here, anyway. What we’re saying is you shouldn’t be sitting there pretending that Mr. Smug is some fighter-for-justice just because he’s irritating other people who you think are also smug.
July 19, 2008 at 5:02 pm
bitchphd
Also, is Neddy fired for creating a fight, huh huh?
July 19, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Rich Puchalsky
“What we’re saying is you shouldn’t be sitting there pretending that Mr. Smug is some fighter-for-justice just because he’s irritating other people who you think are also smug.”
Great, another exercise in creative reading comprehension. Here’s what I wrote:
“I’d rather put up with annoying grinning line-jumping guy than with […]”
“Sure (getting back to these particulars), this guy was an annoying line-cutter, not a brave rebel. But you can’t open up social space for one without opening up space for the other […]”
“But this guy wasn’t an anarchist, he was just a creep. The problem is, a lot of the time there’s no way to tell. The person bucking a social convention always looks like a creep.”
“If the guy was a political protester, I think that this would be an open-and-shut case of “well, what are you going to do.” But he isn’t. Then, I think, there’s the question of whether you can reliably treat casual jerks differently from politically motivated ones.”
I don’t know how many times I can write the same thing. I suggest that if you don’t get it by now, that you, for some reason, really don’t want to hear it.
July 19, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Neddy Merrill
Can I ban her? Can I?
July 19, 2008 at 5:28 pm
bitchphd
It’s already been done. You don’t want to be just a pale imitation of that other guy, do you?
July 19, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Neddy Merrill
I don’t think I could stomach it.
July 19, 2008 at 5:43 pm
bitchphd
I think you mean bear it.
July 19, 2008 at 5:43 pm
eric
He couldn’t be any paler, that’s for sure.
July 19, 2008 at 5:43 pm
JPool
Actually, in what I understand to be the terms of the hypothetical, I’d say that the window smashing is more defensible (and I’d invest more time and effort trying to defend it) than the jammy line jumping, because the window smashing sends a political message, whereas the line-jumper just annoys people and walks away. We defend political speech in a pluralistic society precisely because in order to live in a functioning democracy we have to create space for people to try and persuade others to believe things that they don’t already. So we allow the anti-abortionists to harass women entering a clinic because we also want the right to harass polluters entering their place of business. What we don’t do is say that its OK for folks to follow abortion recipient or polluters home (because that moves it from political speech to personal harassment and intimidation) and we don’t allow someone to sit next to you on a bus and, because you’re consuming a product they don’t like or because they enjoy being an asshole (who can tell?), play “I’m not touching you. I’m not touching you.”
Or, shorter, this
the general level of tolerance for random obnoxiousness is correlated, to a large extent, with tolerance for political activity as such
is bullshit.
July 19, 2008 at 5:56 pm
bitchphd
He couldn’t be any paler, that’s for sure.
Expert opinion.
July 19, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Josh
Or, shorter, this
the general level of tolerance for random obnoxiousness is correlated, to a large extent, with tolerance for political activity as such
is bullshit.
Or at least amenable to empirical analysis. Which, from my perspective, doesn’t do much for Rich’s case; the places that spring to mind that have a high tolerance for random obnoxiousness don’t seem to have a particularly high tolerance for political activity as such. I can certainly think of plenty of countries with repressive governments where the line-jumper would fit right in.
July 19, 2008 at 7:50 pm
grackle
“A sensible response to agents behaving badly is some degree of anger.” Well, this is an interesting statement. In exactly what way is anger a sensible response? How does it help me understand some situation I’m in? How does it champion some ideal I have? How does it further some cause I feel myself to be involved in? If I chart out a path in which (a) “line-jumping creep” appears behind me, (b) I notice that he is not “sympathetic fellow-traveler” Asian girl, and (c) I become moderately-or-not enraged; I have followed a path in which I (d) succumb to a loss of energy which I expend involuntarily by allowing myself to become embroiled in anger, which (e) I will never recover, and which, (f) in all likelihood, in the morning, I will not remember why it seemed so important. And this is sensible why?
July 19, 2008 at 7:55 pm
bitchphd
Because it’s human. Human beings tend to have feelings, even if those feelings are involuntary or unproductive!
Plus, the tendency of people to be annoyed by bad behavior is part of why we call such behavior as “bad.”
July 19, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Rich Puchalsky
“What we don’t do is say that its OK for folks to follow abortion recipient or polluters home (because that moves it from political speech to personal harassment and intimidation”
Personal harassment and intimidation being, you know, crimes.
For the rest, Shorter Jpool appears to be: It’s only a political message if I can understand it. If only those Situationists would put out a nice list of bullet points, a sound bite, and stop bugging people…
July 19, 2008 at 8:23 pm
bitchphd
Yeah, and shorter Rich seems to be, well, if it’s not actually *illegal*, then there’s nothing wrong with it.
And the line-jumping *wasn’t a political message*.
July 19, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Rich Puchalsky
“the places that spring to mind that have a high tolerance for random obnoxiousness don’t seem to have a particularly high tolerance for political activity as such.”
This does bring out potentially empirical questions, yes. The general problem is that, though, there’s a difference between obnoxiousness in a generally functioning, democratic society and obnoxiousness in a state that’s trying hard to be autocratic but failing. Tolerance for obnoxiousness is not the same thing as helplessly permitting obnoxiousness because there’s no other choice.
July 19, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Rich Puchalsky
bitchphd, your reading comprehension problems aren’t my problem. I’ve tried to present a reasonably nuanced position. No one who actually read what I wrote would still be telling me that the line-jumping wasn’t a political message. I know that.
July 19, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Josh
The general problem is that, though, there’s a difference between obnoxiousness in a generally functioning, democratic society and obnoxiousness in a state that’s trying hard to be autocratic but failing. Tolerance for obnoxiousness is not the same thing as helplessly permitting obnoxiousness because there’s no other choice.
See, now, this is where concrete examples come in handy. When I think of places where social norms like this aren’t enforced, I think of places like Turkey, a country which certainly doesn’t have a hard time repressing political activities. In fact, I think at this point I’m having a hard time coming up with any countries that *do* support your thesis. Got any?
July 19, 2008 at 10:32 pm
ari
Expert opinion.
Thread winner. Well, maybe not. But still: very funny.
July 20, 2008 at 6:10 am
John Emerson
Wow! It isn’t just me and Abb1 (that clown). This riles everyone up.
I think the argument went bad when the phrase “norm enforcement” entered. “Norm enforcement” sounds like The Man. But I can’t see that in this case. The Man doesn’t care, it’s just a bunch of people in line, one of whom is gaming the others in an individually-small, collectively-substantial way (a few hours divided into minute individual chunks.)
I became incensed because I’ve seen a lot of these chickenshit anarchists in my life, and to my knowledge they don’t stop at line-jumping. It isn’t The People against The Man, it’s this one guy against anyone who happens to stand in his way at any given time. And he also tries to establish a brotherhood of cheaters which isn’t real (though Abb1 feels he belongs to it), and did what he can to push the blame back at Lance — line jumpers have to have some kind of threat in their back pocket.
There’s also the fact that there’s no guarantee that there’s just this one guy. Sometimes there are lots of cheaters.
By and large, I’d rather live in a wait-in-line place than in a scrum place. Rich associates lines with totalitarianism, wrongly I think (it also fits weenie liberalism), whereas I associate scrums with bullying.
July 20, 2008 at 7:58 am
Rich Puchalsky
How about Japan, Josh? Notoriously polite place; notoriously bad politics. Same party in power forever, economics pretty much held hostage to the banks, and (in my own particular area) really, really bad public access to governmental information, in the “you want to see the plans for the proposed dam? Please wait in our office for days” mode.
July 20, 2008 at 8:19 am
Rich Puchalsky
John E, I’m not an anarchist. I’ve personally never jumped an on-foot line (although I have driven past lanes of cars waiting to make a right turn, and then merged into their lane at the last moment, so that probably counts). It’s not like I’m eager to launch my middle-aged self into a scrum. But it’s possible — however misguidedly, if you like — to believe that the U.S. is a better place as a whole because people do cut in lines and flip each other the bird and do all those things, even though each individual line-cutter or bird-flipper is acting like a jerk.
I think that the best argument against what I’ve written is, first, Josh’s — making this an empirical question does allow you to look at empirically, which means I could be proven wrong — but, more immediately, Amos Anan’s: “The logic of condoning crime (or public intimidation or insult) because doing so avoids effort, stress, aggravation and possible danger is also the logic we’re now being presented with in regard to the high crimes of our current federal government.” Of course, I’m not saying that people should be condoning crime because it takes too much effort to prevent it; I’m saying they should tolerate obnoxiousness because it opens up social space for various kinds of dissenters from the prevailing culture. But still, I could see someone saying that we need more respect for following social norms, not less, in response to all the official law-breaking going on.
I don’t think it works that way. When Bush decides to torture someone, that doesn’t occupy the same mental space for people as the anger at the line-cutter who got ahead of them in line. Mostly I think that the anger at the line cutter is a distraction. You can’t do anything about Bush — but you can vicariously enjoy some line cutter getting told off.
I think that, really, people have been too polite in this historical era. I went to anti-war demos; we behaved politely. We should have broken things.
July 20, 2008 at 8:52 am
John Emerson
Basically the linejumper seemed to me like various guys I’ve known who patched together vaguely ideological justifications for what was basically jerkishness, whose jerkishness at times went well beyond linejumping. What set me off wasn’t mostly my own anger at the linejumper, though, but the accusations in the thread against the “norm-enforcer”, which struck me as far off the mark. .
July 20, 2008 at 9:25 am
Rich Puchalsky
I have to say that if I was recruiting activists, I’d take Annoying Grinning Line-Jumping Guy over Lance any day. I mean, look at AGL-JG’s actual skill set. Shamelessly puts himself into socially embarrassing situation, doesn’t back down, makes up glib justifications on the spot, extricates himself without looking defeated — someone give that guy an ideology. In general, I think that most of the good political people on the ground had plenty of practice being jerks beforehand.
July 20, 2008 at 5:25 pm
ProfHollywood
Would it be different if the line had been for life-saving medicine in the wake of a catastrophic health crisis? Imagine 4 people in line. Person 1 is unaffected by the cut. Person 2 is unaffected, but annoyed by the cut. Person 4 jumps in front of Person 3 and is confronted by Person 2 and grins. “It doesn’t hurt you,” says Person 3.
Same scenario, different stakes.
Does 3’s rejection of the social norm “hurt” more in this scenario because the desired object has, at least by someone’s standards, greater intrinsic value (i.e., it’s not “just” an iPhone). Does the value of the norm vary with the social value of the good?