THE WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™
❌ Strategies for NOT collecting and also it's followup article, Ending The Wristwatch Detox Diet™
Hey you! Long time no post! I haven’t bought a watch in 3 years. No #NWA. Not a lot of new Instagram posts. Not a lot of activity from my end. If you’re reading this, you’re most likely from the watch world — something I’ve deliberately distanced myself from.
I started collecting watches at the end of 2019 with a salary raise in hand (a CasiOak and a Seiko Alpinist SARB017). A certain thing happened in 2020 and suddenly I had at least 6 more hours in a day to research this stuff, engage with the wider online community and a pocketsfull o’ cash that would usually go to traveling freed up. During 2021 there were mild signs of the world recovering, so I re-allocated the funds I had back into pre-COVID pursuits and so I wound down a chunk of my engagement. At the end of 2021, the Tiffany Patek 5711 shunted itself into the world. At the start of 2022, the MoonSwatch dominated the zeitgeist. These two events caused me to mentally check out of the watch world.
I’m a sneakerhead primarily, so these H.H.E’s (HYPE HORIZON EVENTS) are not foreign to me. But I couldn’t in good faith have two hobbies wherein a bunch of dudes camped out in a line in front a store from 2AM. I couldn’t have two hobbies wherein the majority of the discourse was, “How high price can go? Wow! Line go up big! Big resell!”. The Tiffany Patek and MoonSwatch had introduced the watch world to the concept of pure, unadulterated, manic hype. Something that sneakerheads discovered at the latest in 2005. I didn’t want to be part of the newest watch discourse. A discourse I’d lived out in another hobby 500 times over. So I tapped out, wanting to wait out the storm and have the zeitgeist slowly reset back into some sort of an equilibrium. If you’re a bit tired of watches, maybe you need my patented WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™.
Why do a WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™? Maybe you don’t have the moolah to think about any more watches. Maybe you’d rather your wrist have a little breathing room. Maybe you’re tired of reading and listening to people arguing about the devaluation of the noble Omega Speedmaster brand as if that’s a thing that matters. Maybe when it’s 3AM and you’re on Italian Craigslist looking for a vintage, period accurate gold buckle for your vintage Zenith watch — maybe you’ve gone too far? I’m looking for a 40’s/50’s Zenith gold buckle by the way. The one that has a star with a little, ‘Z’ on it.
The WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™ involves a number of congruent things. Let’s go over how I avoided buying a watch and avoided having watches completely take over my headspace for the past 3 years. Here’s how to take a step back.
1. DON’T COUNT G-SHOCKS AS WATCHES (BECAUSE THEY ARE BETTER) ⚡
Hey you know how I said I avoided buying a watch for 3 years? I lied because I bought some G-Shocks (they gave me a free pelican case with 30 slots, how could I not buy a few?). So in order for this whole thing to work we have to not count G-Shocks as watches. They’re better than watches anyway they are in a separate, higher category. Don’t count nuh-uh.
2. SEVERELY CONSTRAIN THE FLOW OF WATCH-RELATED INFORMATION 🧠
The internet is amazing for finding stuff out. Watches inherently are a thing you have to research. These two go together like the internet and watches. What we can do to clear some headspace and take a few steps out of the larger watchiverse is restrict the flow of information. I did this by:
Only consuming watch-related news through aggregators
Unsubscribing from all watch-related Youtube channels
Having a separate Instagram account only for watches
If you only consume watch news through an aggregator, you can take advantage of the human’s natural want to only read the headline and never the actual article. So shoutout to Watchville (rip), Watchicity and r/Watches. I got a quick jist of what was going on in the macro of the watch world and it only took a tiny scroll and max 5 minutes of my time. Can’t get wet if you only dip your toe in as the saying goes (?).
Youtube. You just have to do the opposite of what everyone tells you to do. Don’t like, comment and subscribe — unsubscribe, unceremoniously. The Youtube algo is alarmingly quick and will flush out any watch-related things from your front page. Sorry 20s-to-30s person standing in front of a blue/orange backlit gray wall talking into a DSLR about sapphire crystals and water resistance, I can’t watch you say the same shit 200 times anymore. I actually think Watch Youtubers are stuck in a well lit pocket dimension and can’t escape. And watches apparate into the room through magic from a higher being that wants to know the specs because they can’t just go to the watches’ website for some reason.
Instagram. This is the killer. During the pandemic I and many many others would scroll Instagram for hours upon hours. The solution to this is simply, have a separate watch-only account like some sort of wristwatch containment area. This lets you un-fuck the algorithm and feed on your personal account and revert it back to pictures of Freja, that Swedish girl you met in a Lisbon hostel in 2016 who you played Pokemon GO with.
This also if needed, lets you go absolutely wild on your watchtagram account every so often as sort of a valve release. You can like those pictures of lathes as if you could ever use one or understand what they actually do to your heart’s content with no fear of a picture of a lathe showing up on your suggested posts on the main feed.
Instagram within the past year has also removed the ability to sort by Recents on hashtags. This was an incredible way to search vintage watches that were currently on the market, or find new independent watchmakers. So in a weird way Instagram made itself far less useful to watch collectors with a bit more nous that truly liked digging in the weeds of Instagram. Gone are my pandemic days of trawling #vintagewatches and #independentwatchmaking for a find, because now going to the hashtag will only show you stuff that has already been found(!). Thanks Meta.
Cutting yourself off from the flow of wristwatch information is the pillar and cornerstone to the WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™. If you enact these three things, you can take your watch consumption down from hours to mere minutes a day!
3. HAVE A BUNCH OF WATCHES THAT CAUSE MASSIVE ANXIETY BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T SOLD THEM 💸
Here’s an easy way to turn yourself off watches. Set yourself an arbitrary, numbered limit for your collection. Buy a box that can only fit X number of watches. And go far over that. Have a bunch of watches sitting around that you want to sell. Be too lazy to sell them and gaslight yourself into thinking that you might have sellers remorse. But then that keeps you over your arbitrary limit causing double-anxiety from maybe not wanting to sell but thinking you have to sell.
Couldn’t be me. Anyone want this AC Milan watch? DM me (seriously this is the last watch that I have to sell in order to finish a complete consolidation please help me).
4. HAVE A GOOD COLLECTION ALREADY ✨
Ayo for real I got some bangers. If you truly think you have some heavy-hitting stuff then it’s all the more easy to gloss over a new watch release thus forming a key part of the WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™. Watches & Wonders? More like Watches & I-already-got-a-Kurono-Tokyo-in-green-which-is-my-favorite color-for-my-everyday-watch-so-I-don’t-need-the-new-Tudor-Black-Bay-54-even-though-it’s-pretty-cool. In a quasi-wristwatch-buddhist-existentialist way, simple contentment with the watches you currently have could be the antidote to a watch world that wants to keep you in the new release mousewheel. Measure up every new release to the watches you own already. I think you should give your guys some more credit!
We don’t often let our collection just fucking sit. Try it. It’s kind of wild.
5. SHIFT YOUR PRIMARY ENGAGEMENT WITH WATCHES, WATCH-PEOPLE AND WATCH-RELATED THINGS TO IN PERSON (AKA TOUCH GRASS) 🌳
During the H.H.E’s (HYPE HORIZON EVENTS) of the watch world in late 2021 and early 2022 I made the conscious decision to decouple from the watchternet and up my engagement of watches in the real, living breathing world (you know the one where you get food).
It really was the best decision I’ve made and was the driving force behind the WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™.
I’ve concluded that the best way to detox from the noise of release cycles, deep-diving, wheeling and dealing and cynical discourse of the watchiverse is to actually go outside and meet people and look at watches with your eyes. I’ve gone to Korea and met with an independent watchmaker. I spent a bit over a month in Japan meeting watch-folk and looking at watches across the whole spectrum among other things (field notes soon!). I’ve semi-figured out the world of the International Airport Transfer, where the watch-dealer-per-square-meter ratio is possibly the highest in the world. You can get alot of wrist time with crazy references in an airport. I thought the Zenith Defy Extreme looked stupid in photos until I tried one on while doing a transfer. It probably still looks stupid because I was mighty jet-lagged.
By touching actual grass you unlock the crucial ability to withhold judgement of a watch before holding it in your hands and you engage in this hobby in a far more deep way than scrolling past a picture on Instagram or listening to a talking head on Youtube go over a new release. You realize that these things are cool shiny things and the people and culture around them are really cool. That’s something you can’t gleam from the internet. In search of said cool shiny thing in person, you get to go into a random suburb of Seoul or go to a meetup in Tokyo or just walk into a vintage shop in Copenhagen that might have some stuff. You also realize that you don’t even have to fly anywhere and that you can just walk into Vacheron in your home city and they just have a 222 laying around that you can put on. Absolutely nuts.
We’re all guilty of comsuming watches primarily through the internet but if you adjust your internet-to-grass ratio I promise that the WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™ will work in your favor. Watches are meant to be experienced in person.
The WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™ is how I’ve avoided buying a watch for so long, kept consumption to a minimum and refrained from succumbing to information overload. When I have dipped into the watchiverse within the last couple of years, it’s because something has truly interested me. It’s been incredibly refreshing engaging with this stuff on my own terms rather than getting caught up in the cycle. Maybe try the detox for a few months!
ENDING THE WRISTWATCH DETOX DIET™
Ah fuck I’m turning 30 this year.
I need a 30th birthday watch.
I’ve had one empty slot in my watch box, explicitly for this purpose.
I’m back in it lads.
I’m reading everything. I’m back on Instagram. fuckfuckfuck. In my time away the legendary podcast About Effing Time managed to appear and then disappear. I binged all the episodes in like a week. In my time away WatchCrunch appeared as well (nice UI!), another thing to infinitely scroll. There are so many new Instagram accounts to follow and so many have fallen by the wayside post-pandemic. I already bought another mechanical watch leading up to my 30th (a real funky one, words on it soon!). I’ve subbed to a bunch of new Youtubers that have popped up (the new cohort seems a bit better and production values have taken a step up! There are also some new absolutely terrible clickbait scum of the internet type Youtubers as well so it balances out!). I’m looking at indies. I’m back in the Facebook groups. I’m in the trenches looking through the catalogues of vintage dealers in Poland. I’m on German websites looking through archives of Japanese Limited Editions. I’ve sat refreshing for Watches & Wonders news to appear on all the feeds. I’ve bought a few books. On a more positive note, I’ve managed to sell all but one of the watches not in the core collection. I got the writing itch again.
So let’s shake the dust off this barely used newsletter, write some things I’ve always been meaning to write (I got an ‘Ideas for Articles’ list that’s been piling up the past 3-4 years, so let’s tackle some here?). Lets restart the journey and get myself a 30th birthday present shall we? I just bought almost a grand's worth of bespoke custom straps.
Any ideas for a 30th birthday watch? DM me at @agakipasyal. If you haven’t subscribed and you made it this far you might as well click the button.
They say diets don’t work because you end up relapsing anyway.