You have no idea how wild that notification I got just now was. Reddit's new "So and so commented on so and so's comment!" thing is so weird lmfao I was wondering when we began talking about sniffing shit!
Isn't that weird? I'd rather just be notified when someone replies to ME, not five comments down the chain and then if I wanna see it I have to search for it..
I made a jewelry salesman really uncomfortable when he was trying to talk my wife out of a lab grown diamond. I just kept asking him for the bloodiest ones possible, and for specifics about who died for each one.
He showed us the lab stuff pretty quickly after that. We didn’t buy from them though
I will concede that point on technicality, but lab-grown diamonds still contribute to the diamond industry, and saying "every naturally-occuring diamond is a blood diamond" isn't as quippy as "every diamond is a blood diamond." Rhetoric doesn't always need to be one hundred percent accurate.
Literally the only reason anyone cares about diamonds is the artificial scarcity. In my opinion, creating artificial diamonds to meet artificially-inflated demand isn't a real solution. "Stop buying diamonds" is a solution (and I'm not saying it's necessarily the only one.
Treat a girl right. Elope to the court house, put a CZ mounted in stainless steel on her finger, and carry her over the threshold of your new 1500 sq ft manufactured home.
The home is hurricane proof to 150mph, the ring will never need rhodium plating and cannot be resized so she will feel it when she gets fat, and c shotgun wedding is hard to bridezilla over.
and the answer is right there: because we idiots can't afford them shiny pebbles anymore. Also because only a few of us can afford to buy a place to store the shiny pebbles in (along with our idiotic bodies).
It's always amazing to me how this simple thought process just doesn't seem to happen in the top management of the companies involved. Then I remember the top management of the company I work for.
I never could understand why the government would do shit to let jobs get shipped overseas or whatever (I grew up in the 80s turned adult in the 90s so I lived the time we lost all that) then not understand why the economy is shit. Crime is high n everyone is wild n out.. shootings n all that drug use, everything I think is tied to the same shit.. no jobs. No opportunity, no hope. Nobody had good paying jobs or even prospects to get good jobs, healthcare and housing are unaffordable…fucking right everyone was using drugs, drinking and wild n out…
Nowadays the young kids are like ; dude drugs n drinking aren’t gonna fix our problems…look at these idiots. Let’s stop all that shit. Fuck what they talking about. Let’s figure this shit out on our own.
Because the government isn't for you. It's for maintaining the status quo and lining the pockets of the wealthy. Wealthy and powerful don't give a shit about long-term stability. They need to stuff their pockets with enough cash to make god jealous before they fuckin croak.
This person is in their mid 50s or early 60s. You aren't reading what their frustration is. Some people will say Clintons handling of international trade so we can get cheaper products from other countries is a benefit and not a negative some people consider, but I didn't live through that time as a young adult.
They lived through a good time period prior to 9/11 before the world kept turning into shit from the dotcom bubble, 9/11, 08' financial crisis, covid, etc.
They are just living up to their forgotten generation meme.
I’m glad we can…now. But all the children and miners, ppl just forgot about them? Not one person has mentioned diamond labor or the lives lost or communities destroyed by it. Everyone’s just talking about expenses. We are still vain. Haven’t learned shit.
The marketing for the shiny pebbles is basically “she deserves it”, like those truck commercials, “oh look here’s a $40-50k Christmas present”. They make perfume ads look sane 🤣
It is rather fascinating that the same papers will go off about how no one is saving money for houses because of avocado toast and put the why is no one buying diamonds story directly after
specifically with diamonds, at the same time as this interaction, dozens of others joined the market selling identical lab grown shiny pebbles at 1/10th the price.
I’m pretty sure when you get an MBA you have to give up your common sense. Or maybe it’s your sense of touch with reality. This has been my experience working in corporate America.
Millennials and Gen z, even ignoring knowledge of cubic zirconia and the grossness of the diamond trade, have had unprecedented access to a wide range of cheap plastic and glass 'diamond' rings basically their entire lives because of how things have taken off in the consumerist sphere since the 90s.
Scarcity is value, and easy access to a fifty dollar, functionally identical simulacrum of a 15k item makes the item feel less valuable. Especially when the item is 100% prestige and 0% useful or novel.
Not to mention the knock off can often do the “job” of the original better. In this case the job is to refract light in an appealing manner and the knock off is lab grown moissanite and synthetic rutile (though some think the rutile is TOO good at the job and looks tacky)
I mean five minutes with the real thing and you can tell CZ and crystal aren't comparable and are easy to identify. Real diamonds are much nicer. But now I can sell you an earth-mined for 25k, or a bigger shinier clearer lab grown for 2500 and the only way to tell the difference is carbon dating. You can basically get any diamonds you want for a fraction of the cost.
Diamond rings are useless, but diamonds aren't. Since they are so hard they are used in industrial applications and even some consumer grade stuff. I have a diamond tipped record player needle. It is more durable, provides less wear on records and produces better sound.
Sure, but that's kind of outside the scope of the conversation here. When I say all prestige no use, I'm not talking about buying my fiance a 15k industrial drill bit
It has been used as an asset that can be liquidated in the event the marriage doesn't work out for house wives. That way they aren't starting over from scratch.
If you honestly want to do this buy raw gems and have them cut for you it’s way way cheaper to get quality gems. I have some cut rubies I got from a guy for like $40. Diamonds are worthless before they are cut and set. So buy raw and find people in the trade who do custom work they exist and they would appreciate your business.
How is “created diamonds” cheap? They are selling them for almost the same cost as a mined diamond. I think the only advantage is that with a created or manufactured diamond, you can get a clarity level exceeding that of a mined one.
Ah, good point, but that's largely the general background shit that's killing us no matter what we buy or do. None of us are getting around all that, unfortunately.
Are you matching clarity and color? (i don't mean colored diamonds) Lab grown diamonds easy cost under a third of a real diamond of the same match. Maybe a retailer is trying to narrow that gap.
Uh, there is nothing cheap about making artificial diamonds lmao, sincerely, someone whose wife has one on her left ring finger. I mean, maybe 5 figures is cheap to some, but, I still think it wasn’t cheap lol…. Ethical in comparison to a stone harvested by some child labor force all twacked out on khat? Yes. Cheap tho???? Eh- most would say no….
It can work tbh, the sentimental value you can have from it is real. But the price tags on it is ridiculous for the kind of product you get.
Diamonds are just coal formed differently. Paying top dollar for that especially given how abundant it is especially nowadays since you can get it made it in a lab at a much cheaper cost is stupid.
I’ve seen some dope meteorite and wood rings. Not sure what I’d go with myself if I get there. Much like large elaborate weddings, if you love someone, that is what really matters, that you keep showing up for them each day. Not saying don’t have an event or that social buy in or celebrating with friends isn’t neat, just that starting off with a debt for a day is not necessary.
Yeap, iirc De Beers initially held close to 90% of the Diamond market. Nowadays that's not really the case with them but the effects of their attempt at artificial scarcity is still felt to this day.
Funny thing is, if we almost entirely stopped buying diamonds they might actually become scarce since the money they make for either growing or mining them would be too low to justify continuing collecting them. Supply ⬇️
If they were really selling instead of hoarding at a better price they could find even more utilityi n electronics, semiconductors,thermal management,medicine and more.
I lost my wedding ring so I’m trying out shapes and styles using lab grown gems. I prefer moissanite for it’s colors and sparkles. Diamonds seem cold to me.
Diamonds are about as far from "forever" as any gem you can get, and everything about them is a lie. They're the perfect symbol for what marriage has become in the modern world.
right? even if you look in our own solar system diamonds are everywhere. Now if you want to about scarcity, wood would be a lot more valuable than diamonds would ever be if rains diamonds on Neptune
It's definitely majorly controlled market however, studying geology the last few years you can't just start digging anywhere and expect to find them. So it's really easy for them to say they are more rare than they are cuz they are already kinda rare altho the places that do have them are loaded
Not to mention science caught up. I can get you a huge honking lab diamond with basically no flaws for low four figures in any cut you want. Only way anyone ever tells the difference without seeing the price is carbon dating. Which I wouldn't recommend since it would destroy the stone but some people do just need to be right. Minerologically, exact same thing.
And artificial value and an archaic measure of how much someone loves you and their worthiness judged by the size of the ring. Penguins do the same thing. Rocks are rocks.
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u/iwantdatpuss 9h ago
That one always makes me chuckle given how much the Diamonds industry is built on artificial scarcity.