If you queued for a viral snack you saw online, you’re an idiot

But there is a new phenomenon – people queue for hours for a snack or even an experience in a deranged FOMO-induced attempt to prove they were there. This, I genuinely cannot get my head around.

When I recently visited Stockbridge, in Edinburgh, a friend and I spotted a queue. As we approached, curious, we realised it was for Lannan Bakery – that queue wrapped itself around the side of the shop and went up another three streets.

I had to close my mouth to avoid catching flies, as I stared in horror. There were so many people the bakery had to employ a queue warden to keep things under control, and impose an eight-person limit on the number allowed inside at any one time.

People had given up their entire Sunday afternoon just to get into a bakery, all because the internet told them so. There they were, standing outside a bakery for ninety minutes in the rain, phone out, filming their own feet shuffling forward an inch at a time, for a croissant they will later tell their 400,000 Instagram followers is “the best thing they’ve ever put in their gob”. Right.

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This, of course, is not new. Humans have been seduced by queues for years. There’s a psychological cue that fires the moment we spot one, a cocktail of FOMO and a social validation that kicks in at the sight of a queue that looks like it’s going somewhere.

But now, most people don’t just join the queue by accident – they have seen it online first. Discovery takes place through personalised feeds, and the pressure to perform mounts before they’ve even joined the line. And most of them aren’t actually enjoying the food – or rather, they’re enjoying filming themselves eating it more. We’ve lost our sense of living in the moment. That, itself, is the real tragedy.

A friend of mine recently visited Australia and went to a popular frozen yoghurt chain called Yo-Chi, which is another viral brand that people are losing their minds over. She said she’d never experienced anything like it, with people coming up to her, demanding to know where she purchased her pot of yogurt. The chain has since launched in the UK, and you guessed it – the queues have already flooded social media.

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Part of this is our sheer fascination with having what others have, our need to close the gap between ourselves and everyone else. I often wonder how we got here, how somewhere along the way we lost our sense of individuality – perhaps we lost it somewhere back in the queue.

I’m not immune to trends – the M&S speckled cookies spring to mind. I heard these delicious beasts were something special, and my greediness, combined with a long-standing devotion to the cult of M&S picky bits, got the better of me on numerous occasions. Did I stand in a queue for a biscuit? Absolutely not. I recoiled at the people who did.

For those of us food lovers who don’t want to spend time queuing for mediocre yoghurt, TopJaw’s new Instagram series is worth a look, showing great value food places. I’m aware this makes me a hypocrite – sending you off to another Instagram recommendation. But there’s a difference between being told where to eat and being told where to suffer.