Your Watch Obsession Is a Chess Match Against Yourself

Comments

[Lee_K]

Excellent blog post, Jeff -- one of your most enjoyable.

It is said that one major reason for our obsession with sports teams is that it allows ourselves to focus on something else than our mundane lives. It lets us wash off the Dust of Life as we go through the emotional ups and downs of following our favorite teams. Why the fortunes of say, the Oakland Raiders would have anything to do with someone not directly employed by the franchise is an interesting subject in its own right, but we do know that there are billions of people on this planet have create an emotional bond to amateur and professional sports. I know people who are so engaged with their teams that they will go in a funk for days if there is a particularly tough loss.

That said, our obsession with watches is indeed very similar, only that we internalize our travails into a little microcosm we have created for ourselves. Some WOs indeed have a plan for their future acquisitions, but I suspect that the large majority of us are driven by emotion. We get a visceral response to a certain watch and then justify its purchase to ourselves, only to begin the search all over again once the latest object of desire is safely ensconced in our watch boxes.

It is the Thrill of the Hunt, which I believe is a major factor in why so many men cheat on their wives and girlfriends -- it's the process that is actually more satisfying than the actual kill itself. We look for more watches in order to achieve notches on the belt. We feel guilty after a while, the collection gets pruned, and the process starts all over again. I do note that this is mostly a male phenomenon. I'm sure there are female watch aficionados, but reading the various watch fora it certainly appears to be male dominated. My wife has eight watches and when I ask her about the motivations of obtaining each of them, her response is, "I don't know -- I just liked how it looked". No analysis of movements, not debates between the materials of the case or the crystal, no soul-searching over whether to get a diver-style or a flieger. She just liked it and bought it. How refreshing is that?

You can easily justify the MM300 over the Saturation Diver, Sumo, and Tuna because it is indeed marginally better than those "lesser" watches. And I can guarantee that after owning and wearing the MM300 for a few months or years, the hunt for something different will return. Will the next kill be the Breitling Super Avenger? Perhaps the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean? Or disgust with one's materialist tendencies and all will be purged in favor of a G-Shock?

It's who we are, and I appreciate the acknowledgement of how silly it all is.

[herculodge]

Thanks, Lee. I'm not going to get the MM300. Seems like an overpriced trap. I'm going to get my collection down to 5-7 watches and stay content in Tier 3.

[Paul]

Jeff, what do yo think of this?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-05/chronos-will-turn-any-watch-into-a-smartwatch

[herculodge]

Paul, that is a brilliant idea and I'll be curious to see how it does in the event it gets mass distribution. For me, though, the watch is a simple affair that can't bey synced with my phone or anything. I love my watches (down to 7) precisely because they are a fashion anachronosim. Or least that's my explanation.

[Paul]

TAG Heuer's Connected is a $1,500 Android Wear watch you can trade in

http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/09/tag-heuer-connected-watch-official/#continued

[Ulysses]

So the world of the watch-obsessive is a bit like the Matrix - an abstraction of the real-world that we willingly adopt in an attempt to feel like we have a semblance of control. Seems to me almost every odd human behaviour is some sort of deferral, some method of distracting us from something we really wish we could do. We shift focus away from things we feel are important yet cannot do anything about, to things we can control but, objectively, are of trivial importance (which we attempt to play up to satisfy our belief, however false, that we are doing something genuinely worthy). For men it's watches, for women it's every other garment that can be worn, but either way, I think it isn't particularly healthy in the long run. I cannot yet propose an alternative, but I can imagine what it must be like to be utterly free, how little stress one would feel to be unencumbered by the obligation to crush one's deepest desires into a little ball and swallow it down so deep that that anxiety would reveal itself in different ways, via collecting, or sport etc.

The Animal Kingdom is a constant battle for survival, but beyond that, that's it. If you out-run a predator, you're done - you can relax. No one is silently judging you from afar or sending you bills or taxing you for everything or expecting you to smile and tolerate that relative you hate. We humans have developed such a sophisticated and intricate culture that we are far removed from the essence of life, what it is to truly, simply and humbly exist, and the stress is killing us.

[herculodge]

Well said, Ulysses, I couldn't have said it better.