xwolverine: Why was it only men who queued for an iPhone 6?


Josh Warwick By Josh Warwick 2:45PM BST 19 Sep 2014

Let me be clear from the outset: I am not one for judging others before I’ve met them.

But I make an exception when it comes to the misguided hordes who queue for hours, days or weeks for the ‘privilege’ of being among the first to own a new iPhone - or any other mass-produced gadget, book, album, toilet roll holder or whatever.
The notion of human beings camping outside a shop with the sole aim of getting their hands on a product that will, within days, be as common as a tin of baked beans is a giant cocktail of wrongness and irrationality.


The scenes in Regent Street and Covent Garden this morning were like a distorted version of the final days of the Soviet Union - only then they queued for bread, not a mobile telephone upgrade.

But aside from the obvious question - what the goddam hell do you think you are doing? - there is something else puzzling about the demography of the pilgrims who have spent the last week kneeling before the altar of Apple: they are nearly all men.
Which is all the more confusing when you consider that, according to this 2012 study, women are are increasingly becoming the tech-dominant gender.

The report found females buy more smartphones than men and have the biggest input when purchasing a new TV.
So what does today’s grotesque consumer circus say about the Y chromosome?

Are men hard-wired to want to be first? Even when it's being the first to own something that will, soon after, be utterly ubiquitous?
Perhaps it’s a testosterone-fuelled itch that must be scratched - a competitive urge for the man who, some of the pictures would suggest, never tasted glory on the sports field.

Whatever the answer, it's a fairly desperate indictment on 21st century masculinity.
Jameel Ahmed and Sam Sheikh waited outside the Apple Store in Covent Garden for a week

To the men who have dedicated the last week of their lives to buying an iPhone 6 before anyone else - I say this: enjoy today.
But remember that by tomorrow, the object of your fanaticism will be in the pockets of millions of others. And they didn't have to sleep in a tent to get it.


Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/11109023/Why-was-it-only-men-who-queued-for-an-iPhone-6.html