Dan and Michael Are Not Into Instagramming Their Food: Conspicuous consumption, Instagram attention economies, and the anthropology of standing in line.

Why will people wait an hour in the rain for a lobster roll when the exact same food is available across the street with no line? This week on People Stuff, Dan and Michael take on Red’s Eats, Magnolia Bakery, Courage Bagels, and the modern compulsion to be seen eating the “right” food in the “right” place.Drawing on Thorstein Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption—updated for the Instagram era—they argue that what’s being consumed isn’t lobster, cupcakes, or bagels, but attention itself. Taste turns out to be beside the point. The real question is whether the meal happened publicly enough to matter.Anthropology says: it’s not about flavor. It’s about status, visibility, and being legible as a person worth noticing. That’s it for this week’s People Stuff — the show where two anthropologists try (and sometimes fail) to make sense of people.If you’ve got a question, a dilemma, or just something deeply weird about humanity you’d like us to unpack, send it our way at people-stuff.com CreditsProduced by Gabe BullardMusic by The Endless BummerArt by Siobhan HeneganMarketing by Bryan HautLegal support by The Law Office of Matthew Shayefar, the one true business uncle.You can also sign up for our newsletter, drop us a voice memo, or become a Friend of People Stuff — which is our fancy way of saying you get to support the show and we get to keep talking about dust, dads, and late capitalism.So go to people-stuff.com