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Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
- dang 7y agoPrevious threads on this one: 2012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535611 2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405698 2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283 Diamonds are Bullshit: 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17184539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17184539 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9251952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9251952 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403988 Diamonds Suck: 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17186457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17186457 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464 Another one from 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1109318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1109318 Diamond threads are forever.
- baal80spam 7y agoCame here to reccommend Diamonds are Bullshit. It's a fantastic piece.
- fmajid 7y agoIndeed, but just as Keynes warned that markets can be irrational longer than you can be solvent, women have been thoroughly indoctrinated by De Beers and it's hard to buck the trend.
- henrikschroder 7y agoMarry a guy instead, boom, problem solved!
- nine_k 7y agoThan you may irrationality want a diamond!
- DonHopkins 7y ago"Real men prefer industrial diamonds." -DeBeer's next marketing slogan
- DonHopkins 7y agoAnd Bullshit is Gold! https://medium.com/the-hit-job/the-donald-trump-doctrine-bullshit-is-gold-a9a97e9c5582 https://medium.com/the-hit-job/the-donald-trump-doctrine-bul...
- DesiLurker 7y agoyet people keep buying them!
- KON_Air 7y agoFrom the dates of post we get; -Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?; September Months from Filing to Divorce:7, June MFD:4, Debruary MFD:0/12 -Diamonds are Bullshit; May MFD:3, March MFD:1, March MFD:1 -Diamonds Suck; May, November, February There is a study which found spike at filing divorces at February; https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/why-divorce-spikes-in-august-and-march/496883/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/why-divor... From this with MFD values it is (not) sensible to say these people want a divorce and seriously don't want to keep the ring and disappointed at the prices they got. Then there is this (probably doesn't really warrant being called a) study put marriage spikes to October, September and June; https://www.theknot.com/content/is-there-an-off-season-for-weddings https://www.theknot.com/content/is-there-an-off-season-for-w... From this it is (an even shakier prediction) to say these were asked to (or tasked with) buy a diamond ring, vehemently opposed it and wants rest of the world how to avoid it.
- DonCarlitos 7y agoGreat, (very) deep dive into a well-known cartel. Also a lesson in the power of marketing, advertising & PR. But from 1982... I'd be interested in hearing about contemporary outcomes of the events described.
- enriquto 7y agoThis is a fascinating account of a very large-scale advertisement campaign that succeeded in radically changing the views of millions of people over a few years. I wonder what kind of such campaigns are going on today, changing our thoughts without us noticing.
- d--b 7y agoelection rigging through orchestrated social media campaigns?
- michaelbuckbee 7y agoAlmost all seasonal marketing campaigns: - Modern consumer Christmas as invented by Coke - "Back to School" made a lot more sense when you were actually sending kids off to boarding school
- Smithalicious 7y agoDid Coke really substantially influence Christmas? I always felt that that was some kind of weird anti-Christmas and/or anti-Coke propaganda in and of itself.
- michaelbuckbee 7y agoI think it's probably more accurate to say that they cemented and popularized what's now the canonical image of santa (though there was lots of prior art). If you want a more indisputable fact of Christmas influenced marketing, check out Japan & KFC Christmas: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-kfc-became-a-christmas-tradition-in-japan-2016-12#kfcs-christmas-promotion-was-the-brainchild-of-takeshi-okawara-who-managed-the-first-kfc-restaurant-in-japan-he-would-go-on-to-become-ceo-of-kentucky-fried-chicken-japan-from-1984-to-2002-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-kfc-became-a-christmas-t...
- Animats 7y agoNo, modern consumer Christmas was invented by John Wanamaker, who also invented the department store.
- bob33212 7y agoI strongly recommend getting a stone other than diamond. A few months after the engagement no one will ever care for the rest of your life, with the exception of the jewelry sales person who missed out on the commission.
- jp555 7y agoSounds just like a lot of recent talk about college. :P
- Consultant32452 7y agoEngagement rings are status symbols, and many women, perhaps even most, will care about it for the rest of her life. Many women I know upgraded their stones after the family's economic situation improved over time.
- dmitrygr 7y agoThat is quite high on my "I shall never marry anyone who ..." list
- munchbunny 7y agoPersonally I'm very glad that we are moving away from that culture. Most of my friends (late 20s, early 30s) opted to skip the "big rock in a setting" for just a shiny enough ring that looks good.
- new2628 7y agoWhy anyone sane would marry such people is beyond me.
- colechristensen 7y agoWhat about people showing off their car, perfect pictures of their vacations on social media, some set of achievements or trophies, their perfect "battlestation" computer setup, etc. etc. etc. People are generally obsessed with status symbols, jewelry isn't really any worse than anything else.
- fortran77 7y agoBut there's little harm done. Nobody needs a gem-quality diamond (and the industrial diamond market wasn't really manipulated). It's not like they were colluding to raise the price of insulin or wheat. The fact that people were willing to accept the idea that they needed a diamond is as much the responsibility of the people who wanted to buy them, as it is the responsibility of those who marketed and sold them.
- beamatronic 7y agoSocially, there is a “need” for status symbols, among many people.
- AmericanChopper 7y agoShould people not meeting their “status needs” for luxury goods be something that society needs to care about on any level?
- FakeComments 7y ago...yes? At least for societies above subsistence level — Status signaling is involved in mating, and a bunch of lonely men is historically a bad time for society. (Before people say that’s irrelevant, the topic is gemstones for marriage rings.)
- philwelch 7y agoLittle harm done, except to children in Sierra Leone forced to mine the diamonds at gunpoint to enrich warlords.
- toomanybeersies 7y ago80% of mined diamonds are used for industrial purposes, rather than cosmetic.
- wastedhours 7y agoThat's why I've just bought a lab grown one - don't feel too happy thinking of something she'll (hopefully) be wearing for nigh-on 60 years being the result of some of the horror stories out there. (Ignoring the fact that the demand even for lab grown ones is caused by such accounts...)
- deogeo 7y agoOne thing I don't quite understand - why didn't a second-hand diamond market form, if one could get diamonds so much cheaper that way?
- dmitrygr 7y agoThe article touches on that: * Marketing to discourage such sales ("a diamond is forever" "a diamond is a family heirloom") * Few people would be willing to sell something for 1/3 - 1/5 of what they paid for it if said item in no way degraded. It just sucks psychologically
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoBut if the second-hand diamond market existed, then they would only have bought it for 1/3 to 1/5 of the current price, too. (You could still face that problem getting the market going in the first place...)
- dmitrygr 7y agoDeBeers used to mandate Jewelers do not buy used diamonds under threat of inability to buy new ones from them
- andechs 7y agoBecause the 2nd hand valuation is so much lower than the purchase price, there aren't any sellers. There's TONS of demand to get a diamond for 80% off retail, but many diamond owners would rather not sell than accept the massive write-down on their "asset".
- joejerryronnie 7y agoI tried to sell a diamond once. It involved an underground British boxing match, a shady Russian hitman, and a dog who swallowed a squeaky toy. The moral of the story: Don’t go to England.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- fnord77 7y agomillennials see diamonds as bougie (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/20/millennial-couples-arent-buying-diamonds.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/20/millennial-couples-arent-buy... etc.) I'm surprised the bottom hasn't fallen out of the diamond market already. They are falling though: https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/diamond_price.png https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/diamo...
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoEverytime a friend is talking about a diamond ring for their wedding, I have to keep telling myself "keep your mouth shut!"
- JackFr 7y agoCan't figure out if this is an argument for or against bitcoin.
- roberdam 7y agoIt is amazing how much of what we perceive as part of our culture and is really manufactured by personal and economic interests and we are not even aware of that. Diamonds: When the campaign began, in 1967, not quite 5 percent of engaged Japanese women received a diamond engagement ring. By 1972, the proportion had risen to 27 percent. By 1978, half of all Japanese women who were married wore a diamond; by 1981, some 60 percent of Japanese brides wore diamonds. In a mere fourteen years, the 1,500-year Japanese tradition had been radically revised. Bacon & Eggs for breakfast: http://levick.com/blog/public-affairs/history-bacon-breakfast-pr-success-story/ http://levick.com/blog/public-affairs/history-bacon-breakfas... Some other examples?
- djpowell 7y agoThe same Edward Bernays also did a PR stunt to market cigarettes to women, calling them "torches of freedom", associating women's smoking (which was considered taboo at the time) with feminism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom It is covered in the Adam Curtis documentary, 'The Century of the Self'.
- Air_Marshall 7y agoInteresting article. I had no idea about the diamond industry, even though I really thought the expensiveness is sooo exaggerated and unworthy and all those ladies desperate to have diamonds are just brain washed. So the men who are buying the diamonds for them.