An article in Fortune magazine this week points to the rise in “conspicuous waiting” as the new status symbol as people proudly share images of themselves in line queued up for some sort of experience that is presumably worth the wait. The term comes from the work of economist Thorstein Veblen who we also referenced in Future Words as part of our coinage notes for the term Effortlux:
Effort + luxe. More than a century ago, Thorstein Veblen argued that the wealthy display status through “conspicuous abstention from labour” in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). The embrace of non-work used to be the luxury, but now that labor is increasingly automated, the struggle and effort become a status-making, symbolic choice.
Our word was inspired by seeing more examples people choosing to do things the “hard way” like making their own sourdough bread or choosing to add more friction and authenticity back into their travel. Now it seems that the wait itself can also be a signal of this same willingness to spend “unnecessary” time on something as a way to indicate a devotion and embrace of the experience itself.