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>I don't know what kind of spell the diamond people cast on otherwise reasonable women to make them able to reduce the totality of a life and experiences shared
by Frost1x 6y ago
>I don't know what kind of spell the diamond people cast on otherwise reasonable women to make them able to reduce the totality of a life and experiences shared together into a single crystalline bet, but they need to package it and sell it to the military.
The militaries of the world invented it, it's business that bought it. Much of this diamond/marriage symbolism stems back to the late 1940s post WWII with DaBeer's engagement ring ad campaigns.
WWII involved a lot of R&D in psyops and effects of propoganda. Sure, these strategies always existed but it became part of scientific research, was refined and weaponized to manipulate perceptions of people using non-kinetic approaches to try and avoid or minimize kinetic warfare. After the war in the mid 40s ended, where do you think all that expertise in propoganda from military went? Business marketing and advertising sprouted from much of this expertise. Marketing and advertising always existed before then but there was a dramatic shift in how things were sold creating armies of refined snake oil salesmen.
In the late 40s, DaBeers ran a massive ad campaign employing such propoganda that shifted culture into associating diamond rings with marriage. There had been dowries and other exchanges of wealth and power in marriages before (it's often been a basis for marriage) that but DaBeers managed to shift that in culture in the west to the diamond ring. It's now so deeply ingrained in culture and people's perceptions that it can make otherwise rational people irrational.
Do not ever underestimate the power of propoganda in its various forms. Pyschogical manipulation runs rampant in business marketing and these are the effects. We've culturally accepted it for a variety of reasons. I question if we should continue to accept these practices in business.
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- nickik 5y agoThis is partly a myth. More important was the non legal enforcement of engagements. Many couples in the past would start to have sex when engaged. If the engagement is not legally secure, the diamond basically serves as signal. That why 3-month salary make sense. If I buy a 3-month salary worth diamond I'm probably not gone leave you after a month. Its an easily portable high value item that also serves as signaling for the person wearing it. It makes more sense then livestock in the modern world. Marketing had something to do with it, but its more complex then that.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago> Its an easily portable high value item that also serves as signaling for the person wearing it. It makes more sense then livestock in the modern world. Jewelry is not a great value store, unless you're fine with selling it at a significant loss. Diamonds specially, unless they're rare, seem to magically lose a lot of its value as soon as they print your receipt. To be honest, I find the whole love-engagement-sex-wedding handling retrograde and inappropriate for the current times.
- setr 5y ago>Jewelry is not a great value store, unless you're fine with selling it at a significant loss Neither is a car, but they're both still very strong signals of wealth (specifically, that you could afford to burn the money). However, if you want jewelry as a value store, you deal in gold and silver (mainly that it can be melted down)
- nickik 5y agoThis is true but this happen partially over time and the more important function is the initial signal. And displaying the wealth that is mobile is also an important signal. Pure economics would suggest a small gold bar would make more sense if you want to signal commitment. > To be honest, I find the whole love-engagement-sex-wedding handling retrograde and inappropriate for the current times. Me to but that is not the discussion.
- wahern 5y agoTo the incredulous: the argument is that expensive engagement rings helped fill the cultural gaps left by the repeal of Breach of Promise to Marry laws. The supporting evidence is an apparently strong geographic correlation between repeal of these laws and increases in high-value diamond engagement rings, the latter beginning after the start of the repeal movement yet before the infamous De Beers marketing campaigns. For the overview: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-strange-and-formerly-sexist-economics-of-engagement-rings/255434/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-str... The original research paper: Margaret F. Brinig, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 203-215 (13 pages), https://www.jstor.org/stable/764797 https://www.jstor.org/stable/764797 Wikipedia page on Breach of Promise to Marry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_promise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_promise
- biofox 5y agoCorrect story, but arguably the wrong war. The allies in WWI really invented much of modern propaganda, paving the way for Berneys, Lippmann et al. to refine those methods for marketing use. Hitler and Goebbels both wrote about the manipulative and underhanded use of propaganda by the allies as being the cause of Germany's defeat in WWI and seemingly carried a lot of resentment about it (while simultaneously trying to outdo them)