#i'm british i know how to queue || queued | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lululawrence · 3 months ago

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Hi— can you tell me what queue means? I saw your comment “cue the queue” and I see lots of people saying phrases with queue in it but I don’t understand.

hiiiiii!! okay so when i think of a queue i firstly think of a line. that's how the british use it, and that's basically what i think of when i think of it. you're waiting for your turn to be able to check out or talk to the service desk, and you're standing in line, otherwise known as a queue.

that's basically where the concept of a queue comes from when you think of digital things like when you're listening to music on spotify and don't want to get out of your playlist but want to add a song that isn't on the playlist into the play cycle, you can add that song to the queue or in netflix when you're adding movies that you want to have in a separate little area for you to remember to watch later, you add them to the queue as well. it's maybe not an actual physical line, but more like the list of what is coming up or what you'd like to have waiting for you.

the queue on tumblr is the same kind of thing. a lot of us utilize the queue feature because they are posts that you like and enjoy and want to reblog, but doesn't necessarily need to be reblogged right away (does anything really actually need to be reblogged right away? very few things do. anyway...). there are a lot of reasons people might use the queue feature. i know some people are only able to get on tumblr for an hour or two every day but want their blog to remain active even when they aren't there, so they fill their queue and have it post during the hours they know they can't be online, and others might have their own reasons to use a queue, but for me, i usually use it for a few different reasons.

the first is because i don't want to completely spam people with like 200 posts in 20 or 30 minutes and then just be completely gone for the rest of the day or even more than that. i still spam people when i'm online lololol but not nearly as bad as it would be if i wasn't constantly adding posts to my queue to post later lol

another reason is that i can't be on regularly, so i do like my blog staying active even if i'm not online. it feels like less pressure for me to be on and keeping up with everything for some reason, even though there's literally no pressure? i dunno. i like feeling present even if i'm not able to actually be there if that makes sense.

another reason though, and one i'm becoming more and more passionate about as time goes on and the culture of fandom continues to shift, is that i get frustrated with the speed with which things seem to come and go, content wise. if i am not able to be online during a louis show or harry or niall or whatever or in the immediate hours that follow, i feel like there's little to no chance of me seeing any content from that show unless i actually go to update accounts and seek out that content myself and i don't... do well with remembering what the update accounts are since i don't really follow them closely lmao i like coming across the content on my dash because people are still basking in it hours, days, weeks, YEARS later. so when the content starts coming out for the shows and i'm able to be online, i only actually reblog maybe half of what i'm seeing and i try to queue the rest so that they will still come up later. try to slow down the content a little bit and help it still be seen beyond those first few hours, show there's still a desire to have that content out there even if the gifs aren't posted immediately or whatever.

TAKE YOUR TIME MAKING THE CONTENT FOR WHATEVER SHOW OR VIDEO OR WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE TO MAKE. I PROMISE I WANT IT AND IF I SEE IT I WILL REBLOG WHENEVER IT GOES UP. or i'll queue it. if you see me liking a post of yours and it isn't immediately reblogged, it's okay. it WILL BE. i've liked it to show myself later it's okay, i have either previously reblogged it or i have queued it so i know i will have it on my blog in an attempt to not have too many repeats. lol which still happens cause my memory is horrible. but yeah.

so anyway. that's what a queue is. and a lot of us use silly tags for our queue that is usually a play on words or sounds or whatever. mine is cue the queue because i like homophones (words that are spelled differently but said the same way) and so i use that. but yeah, unfortunately the tag is only added if i'm on desktop, it doesn't automatically add when i'm on mobile which is annoying and therefore only maybe 1/3 of the time do the posts that are posting from my queue have that tag, but it's okay. i do try. (those of us that tag for our queues use a tag so that people can see the blog is active but they can know that while the posts are there, we aren't actually online. that way people don't think we're like purposefully ignoring them or something if they reach out and we don't immediately respond)

and there you have it! i hope this is thorough enough in what a queue is, why it exists, and what the tags might mean so everything you keep seeing people mentioning or talking about makes sense for you :D

#asks #Anonymous #i get a lot of questions about what a queue is #i should maybe tag these responses so i can easily link them to the times i've blathered on about it before #rather than creating a new one every time #somethign to consider perhaps #about queue #hahaha another fun pun hehe

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thepastisalreadywritten · 2 years ago

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17 September 2022

The queue of people patiently waiting to pay their respects to the Queen as she lies in state in Westminster Hall has become a talking point around the world.

The people populating its five-mile length are willing to shuffle slowly along for between nine and 24 hours, sometimes overnight.

The fact that it all works is down to a team of crowd science experts and a professor from Cumbria.

It has become known, simply, as The Queue.

Those watching its calm progress towards our former monarch - and it makes for strangely compulsive viewing - marvel at both its length and the stoic patience of those in it.

It is idiosyncratically British, they say.

Who else would willingly join a queue that lasts longer than the average working day?

And it comes with its own ecosystem. There is a live online queue tracker, coloured wristbands, toilets.

That it works is down to, among others, Prof Keith Still, from Burton-in-Kendal, Cumbria, who has been teaching and advising on crowd science for 30 years.

Planning for something like The Queue takes "decades", he says.

He has provided analysis and advice and reviewed plans for not only The Queue, but also the Queen's journey from Balmoral through Aberdeen, where he was born.

Asked if he ever anticipated The Queue could reach five miles long, he replies, swiftly: "Yes."

The Queen was so loved and reigned for so long, it was clear to him she was bound to have more people wanting to pay their respects than the 200,000 who gathered for the Queen Mother.

"You always plan for what might arrive and then five times that, and 10 times that," he says.

The Queue is remarkable for mostly being good humoured. There have been few reports of queue jumping or problems.

As Prof Still puts it: "The crowd itself is looking after people within it."

While this may be due to the sombre occasion, human nature and the psychology of queuing behaviour must also be considered, he says.

People need to know what is happening in advance to have their expectations set, and to be kept constantly informed and updated. In The Queue, they have had that.

Perceived fairness is also important, with VIP lanes visually separate, so it does not appear someone has just turned up and walked straight through.

"So long as people know what's happening, what's expected of them, how long it's going to take, they no longer face the uncertainty," he says. "And it keeps the crowd very much on your side."

People are happy if they know what is happening, even if the update is to say the update is coming.

"It's as soon as that information flow stops that you get a degree of uncertainty and people start behaving as individuals rather than as a collective," he says.

The Queue's temporary closure on Friday afternoon briefly concerned him. People were already on their way to join the end.

"When they announced that the queue had stopped, I thought 'you're just going to create another queue of people waiting to join the queue'," he says.

But this was "already in the contingency plan" and the closure was quickly reconsidered and The Queue extended out beyond Bermondsey.

The longer the queue, the more facilities you need to provide. As well as information, the crowd needs toilets, food, drinks, shelter and medical care.

"Eight hours might be acceptable for most people but 10, 12 - where's the limit of human endurance when standing for that length of time? These are all factored in," Prof Still says.

He does not think he could have stood for that length of time himself, not with arthritic hips.

"At 63, I can walk my dog for about 4km and that's it, I'm knackered for the rest of the day," he says.

But he trusts The Queue and has faith in the handful of his Masters students from Manchester Metropolitan University who took over from him in the team managing its planning.

These things are "always a significant team effort", he says.

"It's never just one person."

#Queen Elizabeth II #The Queue #Prof Keith Still #Manchester Metropolitan University #crowd science

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