I was vaguely aware that a pastry known as the cronut existed.
This morning I heard the NPR story that described the lines for cronuts in New York City. Apparently people are willing to wait more than three hours on the street for this croissant-like pastry shaped like a donut.
As expected, one of the customers defended the hours she spent waiting by claiming that it was “an experience.”
Consumer experts know better.
Irma Zandl is president of the consumer trends company Zandl Group. “There are parts of the brain that become super active when a fad idea is heard, and people want to pass it on.”
“One of the things that we’ve seen with the advent of all these blogs and social media is that people’s desire to be tapped in and to be perceived to be somebody who is in the know is much greater.”
I can’t begin to imagine the degree of self-loathing and required in order to waste hours of your life standing in line for a $5 pastry so that you can be perceived as someone in the know.
One person interviewed by NPR takes a bite of her cronut after waiting in line for two hours and declares, “Totally worth it.”
But the bite wasn’t what made the two hour investment worth it. Not was it “the experience” of waiting in line.
It was the ability to tell her friends about the bite, the chance to tweet about the bite and the photograph that she will post on Facebook of the bite that made it worth the wait.
It’s not about eating the cronut.
It’s about being a person who has eaten a cronut.
How sad it must be to be that person.
