Unless you need/like to stand before takeoff, I don't see the point. I don't mind if people do, as long as they are polite.

Bag space woes? It's real, but seriously see what you can do without. I fly for work at least once a month and I'm a pro one bagger for trips of 4 days or less; more if I'm doing summer weight clothes. It means I rewear things if they are clean and sometimes wash clothes in my hotel, but damn does it make travel easy.

Checked bag fees suck. Be the first to volunteer to gate check. I can only recall one flight in the last few months where an announcement wasn't made. The bag is waiting at the destination gate so you don't even have to handle bag claim. I do it every time I travel.

brother you and I are the same

Mostly already mentioned I guess.

Bag fees is the answer. And people who’d rather screw over the next person by putting everything into the overhead bin (jacket, backpack, whatever) that should be under the seat.

People don’t want to pay to check more bags, so they cram as much as they can into anything checked and then the rest into a carry on (assuming they check anything at all). These over-stuffed carry-ons have to then be shoved into an overhead bin, and once the bins are full, the airline will gate check it to the destination. Now you have to wait at baggage claim for your bag along with the fear that for whatever reason it won’t make it. People don’t want that, so they line up to make sure they can put all their stuff in the overhead bin.

So there’s everyone filling up the overhead bin with purses, backpacks, and whatever other items that should have been placed under the seat in front of them. Yeah, I get it, space is tight. No, airline travel will never be like “the old days” when you can spend $250 or less round-trip today to cross the US and back. You wanted cheap, you got it, along with commensurate service. It’s no secret that space is limited. However, IMO those people are dickheads for forcing fellow passengers to check a bag because they take half the bin for all the stuff their cheap asses didn’t want to check while they simultaneously complain about the service they wanted to pay bottom dollar for.

From the airline's point of view, having the next person right there ready to get in their seat is preferable to having everyone come up one at a time. This is why they have boarding groups. You usually see between 3 and 5 boarding groups because it's a reasonable number between 1 and N (N being the total number of passengers). I'm curious how ~10 boarding groups would fare, but presumably there's a reason airlines don't do that.

I see only one reason, why i would want to be early at the seat. its bcs if i am not, my backpack might be placed above but multiple seats away by the crew, where it is then uneasy for me to have an eye on it whilst easy for theives to take and open them, especially on long flights there would be plenty of opportunity like when everyone is sleeping.

but for this case i use locks on the backpack anyway, so that anyone who wants to open it, either opens it where nothing of value is in it thus no lock, or at least has a much harder time than when trying the very same with other bags...

also on longer flights i usually did not have that problem, but that could also have been just luck