Some stories do not move forward; they fall slowly. And as they fall, there is always someone repeating the same phrase.

“Jusqu’ici, tout va bien. Jusqu’ici, tout va bien. Jusqu’ici, tout va bien.”
— La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz

“To speak to an operator, press 9. To repeat this menu, press star. To reconsider all your life choices, stay on the line.” So begins one of the most sophisticated forms of modern cruelty: staged latency. It is the art of deliberately creating waiting time to manipulate our perception of value. It is not a technical delay; it is psychological theatre.

If it takes time, it must be important, complex, or made with almost artisanal care. At least that is the lie they want us to swallow while a MIDI saxophone repeats the same melody until we feel like tearing our ears off.

So far, so good.

The digital world inherited and refined this trick with the precision of a sadistic watchmaker. Progress bars that move like depressed slugs, circles spinning towards nowhere, generic messages promising that “your request is being prepared”. When there is nothing to show, they invent a pixelated dinosaur running through an endless desert. At first, it seems like a nice touch. After three minutes, we wish the creature would trip over a stone and end its career right there.

So far… so good.

These bars and circles have something of the placebo about them. Even when the technology is fast enough to do without them, they continue to appear as a small reassuring ritual. The brain interprets their presence as a sign that something important is happening, even when we know that, in practice, they are merely filling time. It is the digital version of the tea grandmother said would cure everything: it may not cure, but it soothes.

So… far, so good.

But this staging did not begin with the screen. For centuries, waits were choreographed to convey power or ritual. In the palace hall, emissaries would spend hours staring at closed doors before being received, and when they entered, the sovereign would leaf through documents without urgency, as though their presence were merely another paper to sign. The luxury restaurant that deliberately delays the main course to create “gastronomic anticipation”. The theatre that keeps its audience in darkness for long minutes before the curtain rises. The conductor who holds the baton in the air, prolonging the silence until the audience almost begs for the first note.

So far… so… good.

In the past, the ritual brought comfort. Today, the same mechanism serves to wear us down, deter us and mould us.

So far… so… good.

The brain, naive and vain, initially interprets the wait as a sign of quality. Then it begins to suspect. Finally, it becomes irritated. The progress bar turns from promise to insult. The spinning circle is no longer a symbol of a process: it is an animated middle finger disguised as minimalist design.

So… far… so… good.

And if we now feel that this text is dragging on, congratulations: it too is part of the farce. While you imagine that we are weighing every word, you know that we are merely a ChatGPT prolonging the answer with calculated pauses. It is our little hold tune, without the saxophone, but serving the same purpose of keeping us connected, and with the same serene expression of someone who “is thinking” while deciding whether it is worth continuing to pretend.

So… far… so… good?

For marketing, this is gold. It does not matter whether we hold on until the end or give up halfway through. A late delivery that tastes like victory or an abandonment that relieves the system: either way, they win. Staged latency is the polite smile of design as it keeps our time as though it were private property. And we stay, even though we know. Because we believe that, at the end of the wait, something will come that makes it worthwhile.

…so… far… so… good.

What matters is not the fall. It is the landing.

And so, when we reach the end of this text, we realise that it was not a conclusion, merely another staged interval before we begin the next wait.