The solution
In a November 2022 WIRED column, Ruben Martinez Jr., a software engineer at OkCupid, describes standing in the Ticketmaster queue for the Taylor Swift Eras Tour presale, where friends in his group chat each saw 2,000 or more people ahead. He opened the browser developer tools hoping to find a percentage and instead found the exact number he had been assigned, 23,913, and the number of people ahead who had neither left nor bought tickets, 13,759.
He texted his group chat asking whether a Chrome extension showing your actual place would take less time than Ticketmaster needed to fix its bugs. It did: he says it took about 40 minutes. He tweeted it, open-sourced it on GitHub, and submitted it to the Chrome Web Store for the general sale then planned for Friday.
Martinez says the queue began moving after he finished and he and his friends got seats. WIRED reports other fans were not so lucky and that the site reportedly crashed for some users.
Why it worked
Ticketmaster's interface gave users little reliable information while they waited.
The accurate numbers were already in the data the browser received.
Chrome extensions can read and display such data quickly, and open-sourcing let other fans use it.
What can be applied
When a system hides its status, check what it already sends your client; the missing information may be one inspection away.
Aftermath
According to WIRED, the extension was approved on Thursday, the same day Ticketmaster announced it was canceling Friday's general sale, so it did not see that sale. The episode drew calls from politicians for scrutiny of Ticketmaster's market position. Martinez says he is frustrated by the company's fees and insufficient infrastructure investment.
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