I've always liked wearing a watch. It seems redundant at first, since we're perpetually glued to our phones these days, but it's really not.
A smartphone is like a Swiss Army knife. It can do a lot of things, but if I'm assembling some cheap furniture, I'm not doing it with the tiny little Phillips head screwdriver that flips out of the side. I'm using a screw gun.
Maybe that's not the best analogy; your phone keeps perfect time, sure. But when you go to check it, you notice you've got some new notifications. Reply to a few texts, check Reddit, tumblr, watch some TikTok for six hours straight...
I'm obsessed with my iPhone. I'm on it too much as it is because I have terrible impulse control. I use it like a time machine. I get to work, it's a slow day, so I decide I'll completely dissociate and fast forward from 10am to 8pm through the power of brainrotting. I don't remember half of the shit I've read, or the videos I watched.
I'm trying to get better about that...
I had an Apple Watch for a minute, and I remember reading this post by Kev Quirk about why he doesn't like smart watches:
Whether it’s Apple, Samsung, Google, Garmin, or any other smartwatch brand—they’re all utterly pointless as watches, in my opinion. Let’s call them what they are: not smart watches, but wrist phones.
The first time I read this, I was like wtf mate. I love my wrist phone. How could Kev be so behind the times on this obviously great, life-changing piece of tech? If I don't wanna reach in my pocket and check my phone phone, I can just use my wrist phone✨
How convenient! I can be on my phone even when I'm not on my phone! And besides; my favorite feature was always the sleep tracking function.
Want to track your sleep? Too bad, your bloody wrist phone needs charging every night. Why track your sleep at all? If you’ve had a crap night, you’ll wake up tired. What more do you need to know?
Honestly, great fucking point. The Series 7 I had needed a full charge by the time I made it home from work anyway. Sometimes even if I charged it before bed it'd be half dead by the time I woke up.
And instead of making me rely less on my phone, I was staring at a little OLED screen even more. I had a little web browser on it, a collection of dumb little games, I could read little RSS feeds... It was like a smaller, shittier version of my phone that I could get away with using when I'm in the middle of talking to a customer at work, and I could use it to check notifications or the weather while I'm driving 🫣
You’re paying the same price for a wrist phone as you could for a beautiful automatic watch; one that will last a lifetime and can be passed down to your kids. Worse still, that stupid wrist phone will be e-waste in a few years, just like the rest.
Another great point. My Series 7 died a couple months later and I just quit wearing a watch altogether. Until my girlfriend got me a Vostok Komandirskie for Christmas. My first automatic watch ever!
(UPDATE! New bezel:)
It's not really a Russian Timex and it's definitely not a Russian Rolex... it's more along the lines of 'the AK-47 of watches.'
It wasn't even a month later that I realized she opened a whole new can of worms for me. After watching a bunch of YouTube videos and reading reviews, I decided I couldn't wear the same thicc diver every day; I needed something less blingy.
So I ordered a Seiko 5 GMT:
THIS fucking thing is where the real obsession started. I paid about the price of an Apple Watch for it, and it doesn't even take a battery. It'll outlast me and still keep chooglin' for years to come. Automatic watches are sick. They wind themselves from the movement of your wrist, so it'll never die as long as you're wearing it. The only thing is, and even Rolex has this problem, they're just not that accurate. They're pretty accurate; like within a few seconds per day, but those cheap quartz watches you can buy at the mall are much more precise.
So I started looking, and I ended up scoring a vintage Seiko Sports 50 for $51 in an online auction:
It was the cheapest, most beat up old piece of shit that I owned, and it was instantly, by far, my favorite. After a month without setting it, it was still perfectly in sync with the time on my phone. It almost gives off a quiet flex vibe... like the slickest dress watch I've ever had on my wrist and it was less than the price of a Nintendo game.
It didn't stop there though. I kept seeing all this hype about Casio G-Shocks, and I didn't get it. At first.
It's just a cheap plastic watch with an 80's style LCD display. They really haven't changed much since the 80's altogether. But that's the point. They fucking NAILED it the first time and they're just as practical today as they were 40-something years ago. They're insanely durable and they might not be an heirloom, but one of these things will easily last 10x longer than an Apple Watch.
And look at mechanical watches anyway: they're using hundred-year old tech and some cost as much as a house. They didn't even nail it the first time really; even the most precise automatic watches can still drift by as much as four or five seconds per day, depending on the weather, your body heat, abuse, etc.
Don't get me wrong; I absolutely love my Vostok and my Seikos, but there's something very appealing about a watch that I can just slap on my wrist and forget about. So, needless to say, I caved and picked up an atomic solar G-Shock:
It uses a radio signal to set its time to the atomic clock, so it's always dead on. And it's solar powered. From a full charge, from nothing other than the light of a fucking star in the middle of space, it can hold a charge for almost a year in total darkness. It's the most retro futuristic thing I've ever owned, and it cost less than my monthly electric bill.
I like the feel of having a heavy bracelet filled with a bunch of gears, but every time I take off the G-Shock I miss it.
There's definitely something to be said about rocking a mechanical watch. It's a tiny machine on your wrist that will outlive you with proper care. And it can really bring an outfit together, too. It's a functional piece of jewelry and an ode to simpler times, before that rectangle in our pockets started to steal the spotlight.
Collecting watches is like having a few good pairs of shoes to wear for different outfits and different occasions. I love how bold and retro futurist this G-Shock looks, and it requires zero maintenance, which I also love. But there's just so much charm and personality in mechanical watches.
I'm not trying to redpill anyone into giving up their smartwatch for something simpler if it doesn't make sense for them, but I love my old, utilitarian little machines.
I think this is my first grown up hobby 🥲
...definitely the least unhealthy addiction I've ever had, if nothing else.