I had linked to this before in a linkage fest, but felt it warrants its own post.
At a very young age I knew diamonds were worthless. They were shinny rocks. They did nothing but sit on fingers. And the amount of money I heard the "adults" said they spent on them, I knew they could buy a lot more cool and practical stuff, say like, food, and ohhhhh, rent.
Of course, as I aged, life empirically proved my skepticism, and my education between college and poverty also confirmed to me just was a frivolous expense diamonds were.
However, it wasn't until yesterday reading this post at Maggie's Farm did I really realize what diamonds TRULY are -
They are the world's biggest shit test.
Understand what a woman is asking you to do, gentlemen, when she wants that diamond ring. She wants you to:
1. Spend as much as your money as possible
2. On a veritably worthless hunk of rock that
3. Offers no genuine production, value or worth other than to
4. Inflate her petty ego as she uses it to brag to her equally hollow and shallow friends who
5. Are such vain and worthless people as they measure human worth based on the size of a rock.
In short it is a purified economic test of the shits. She wants to see how much of your PRECIOUS FINITE LIFE you are willing to sacrifice on SOMETHING THAT HAS NO VALUE. It is the biggest hoop. The biggest hurdle. The biggest shit test. And it is also incredibly demeaning.
How do you deal with this shit test?
Like any other.
You get a small diamond, or better yet, no diamond at all. You find a ruby, an emerald, something prettier than a boring old diamond. You say, "I'm not getting you some big ass diamond, and matter of fact, we're not pissing away precious funds on a bullshit wedding. We're going to Vegas and getting married by "The Flying Elvi."
Of course, if you're at the stage a woman is still shit-testing you, and you're about to propose AND you still don't know how to pass shit-tests, then go ahead and pony up your 4 months salary, sucker. You may also want to start stashing away for a divorce fund which you're probably going to need later. For the larger the diamond you buy, the less of a woman you have.
36 comments:
The whole thing is capitalism's shit test, if you really look into diamonds and the diamond trade more.
Warehouse tons of the rocks (which are basically worthless), mark up the ones you let out to exorbitant prices, market them as the thing of love for couples everywhere to get women to adopt it as their shit test.
Profit!
I guess that makes me perfect, since I specifically requested a ring with no stones.
The whole thing really is capitalism's biggest shit test. Warehouse tons of these rocks, which are basically worthless. Then for what you do release mark them up to exorbitant prices and then market them as "the thing of love" so women adopt them as their shit test.
Profit!
(the history of the diamond industry in this regard is really fascinating)
This is your best post ever. In your delvings into the economic influence of women, diamonds are the corroded lynchpin.
Diamonds have no place in this world except in the machine shop.
Imagine the inroads we could make toward ending the cruel treatment of African laborers if we would stop buying diamonds. All the UNs men and all the UNs horses couldn't touch the influence of boycott on diamonds.
I just bought 2 more AR-15s. Colts this time. Threw in a Sig Sauer P226 in .40 S&W.
I will admit that I once was close enough to buying a diamond ring that I actually entered a jewelry store to check them out with the girl who would have worn it. She is history due to other shit tests.
Bachelor life FTW.
Word.
My sons will know this when they get older.
My wife never really gave a crap about the diamond size to begin with, she just wanted a pretty ring. I gave her a beautiful ring with some small diamonds, not expensive, and she is still enamored with it 7 years later.
Pick the ring like you pick the girl, go for pretty, not for size.
"No, Dear, Cubic Zirconia - that's the scientific name for diamonds!"
As I know many men who work for De Beers, I obliged to say you're wrong.. na na na na naa!
However, just between you and me... if a woman chooses a diamond over her future marriage or man, she's not worth a damn anyway. In the current economic environment, a diamond ring is an expense most just cannot afford and they simply don't need them at all anyway, money is far better spent elsewhere.
That link really needed a "NSFW" labe. :-)
Cousin of mine proposed to a girl. She handed the ring back and said "the diamond is not big enough."
He went out and got a larger diamond.
I would say the the marriage did not last very long, but I would be repeating myself.
Invest in Gold now.
4 months salary now? Was 2 months ten years ago, six weeks or a month way before that.
Opals were more valuable at one time, which is one of the reasons you see it in older jewelry quite a bit.
Well... if you get enough of them, you can make a saw that powers through other rocks :) .
I've got a few opinions on this..
If you have to walk the path of beta, buy her a giant Cubic Zircone - she won't be able to tell the difference anyway and it will cost alot less for a stone much larger. (Kudos to Professor Richard Muller of Physics for Future Presidents - he had a good rant about DeBeers)
Better still don't buy her anything.. and don't get married. I've started to think of marriage itself as shit test, the only cause for which are (unplanned?) children, and still the arguments are slim. Man in that scene isn't man enough to take the woman to the doctor if he doesn't want kids. Ah, the ways in which lives are ruined. I can laugh now.
The expensive wedding, invitation cards, gift registers and all that crap. That is a shit-test more massive than the ring since it ropes so many suckers in with the expectations of utter BETATUDE - your family, friends, etc. And then the guy loses his balls with an 'I do'.
As you put it so nicely capn, spend the money instead on eloping somewhere interesting.
Formalities and Expectations are for the beta.
Or you could be creative and get her birthstone...as long as she isn't born in April.
After all creativity is a masculine trait.
I will never buy a woman a diamond.
1) Little boys in diamond-war countries are taken from their families, sometimes forced to kill their own families, all over the inflated value of this stupid rock. Thanks developed-world-ladies, for creating inflated value that emotionally rapes and kills little boys.
2) Buying a diamond is like throwing money at the rich. F-You DeBeers.
3) There are BETTER gems, Moissanite for example.
4) Their value is wholly artifically kept high.
I can not stand listening to jewelry commercials on the radio. Valentines day, Mother's Day, anniversaries, ugh! What a scam. Sucker the poor dumb bastard into throwing 4 months of his life into a hole in the ground just for some sparkly rock. Women are like crows that collect sparkly things. As soon as they have it they loose interest in it and want new sparkly things. I'm so glad I will never have to set foot in a jewelry store again. Reason #1342 of why I'm glad to be MGTOW.
Of course, if you're at the stage a woman is still shit-testing you, and you're about to propose AND you still don't know how to pass shit-tests...
---------------------------------
Propose? In Amerika in the 21st Century? Bad idea with all of the divorce court rapes going on. Shit Test? Dump her ass...well, that is if you are over 40 which is the beginning of when women start to outnumber men (due to the shorter male life span)
I would never buy a woman a diamond, and all the women I've dated would have likely preferred we did something more creative than that, were we to marry.
On the other hand, one of my best friends spent THREE months' worth of his nice middle-class income on a diamond ring.
Idiot.
It's only a worthless hunk of rock until you figure out how to charge it up with gamma rays!!
http://bios.weddingbee.com/pics/143937/Laser_diamond_2.JPG
First of all, if you're even dating a woman who would even want a diamond to begin with, you need to rethink your priorities.
A conscious woman will not covet diamonds because she knows they are extracted with the labor of an exploited people who make peanuts while the Diamond companies that pimp them in TV commercials make BILLIONS.
The whole diamond thing was created by the corporate American Diamond Industry and embedded into the psyche of the American public via Marilyn Monroe movies (Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend) and then from there pimped as the jewel of choice for weddings.
If you are dating a woman who is plugged into mainstream American "culture" to that extent - you've got more problems than just buying a diamond, son.
Stating the obvious, a diamond is jut a Ferarri writ small; a public accounting of disposable income. Having married a woman from a 3rd world shithole, my wife loves things like that, but sees them as they are. For me, jewelry is a backup present for gift-giving occasions. Because I can, if nothing else, but really it's because women are like crows- show them something shiny and you can forget about peace and quiet. Really, jewelry means I couldn't think of something with sentimental value to do or say on an occasion, but at can be bought for a 10-minute investment in time, and the opportunity cost is right for me, for the most part. I'd rather not go in a store for more than 10 minutes, thank you.
Where did 4 months come from? That is very fishy. Median guy would spend over $15,000 if you believe salary stats, or $12,000 basing it on after-tax pay. I don't think I've ever been in the same room with a man who spent that. Come on. Shenanigans.
Well, you can be caught out even so if you know better. I was Beta enough to buy a large diamond when I was stupidly in love.
When I was young I learned the truth about deBeers and their artificial restrictions on the availability of diamonds. Did you know that the lack of very large diamonds these days is a deliberate byproduct of a change in diamond mining? The rock holding the diamond matrix is crushed in milling machines, incidentally cracking and crushing larger diamonds.
Thus, no more Cullinan, Hope, Dresden Green, Blue Heart, or the like famous diamonds are being found.
So damn stupid when I was younger. My reflex now is to say "never again", yet, I might be stupid again...
That was one positive to my ex-wife. She was content with a $127 ring from Wal-mart at a time when I was such a beta, I would have bought a $5000 ring.
Don't stop at diamonds. Jewelry in general is a fucking scam and a complete waste of money.
"But it's an investment!" - Like hell it is!!
Jewelers are nothing more than legal cons.
I guess I passed an s-test, because I bought my wife a diamond engagement ring. I didn't pay 2 or 4 months salary for it either. I paid about 1 month salary for the ring, but I also was able to purchase the wedding rings with that money. Funny thing is she rarely wears it now, and prefers the super cheap black diamond ring for everyday wear, I purchased for her birthday a few years ago.
For her next birthday, she wants something more practical, like a Glock 19 for her CCW permit.
diamonds could be useful...
like say, if they were cheap enough to build an entire space shuttle out of.
It's kind of funny coming from a guy who tells you to buy physical gold, which has no real utility either ;) Only difference is, you can't make new gold with todays technology.
Someone even wanted to start a Diamond ETF, akin to GLD/SLV.
I was given a pink sapphire. I absolutely LOVE it, and it didn't cost more than a few weeks' salary (we'd been married over a year before I finally read the appraisal sheet). My hubby (then fiance) got the bonus of gettin' his geek on checking out all the mathematical angles of the facets and their optical effects (he's an engineer). I got the bonus that my ring is not huge enough to rip my gloves and is sturdy enough not to get beaten to death in the lab. Win-win-win if you ask me.
Ever try to sell off a diamond wedding ring? You then find out what a scam the racket is. You get a minute fraction of retail value. I found a diamond ring once and was surprised at what I thought were low-ball offers for the thing. I did better selling my gold high school class ring with the fake stone in it. With rare exception for collectibles and oddities, the biggest money pits (as for value drop once you pay for it) I've seen so far in 40+ years of living are
1) Furniture
2) New vehicles and appliances
3) Jewelry
4) Designer Name Clothing
5) Gadgets (audio, video, computer, etc.)
But the real problem with the darn diamond ring thing is not as much that she's shit testing you, it's that the kind of ring you get is also a shit test that her friends, co-workers, relatives all give her by judging her by the ring. We know the ways a woman can make her man look small just the way she talks to him in front of others. Mindful of that, how does a guy give his fiancee an acceptable, affordable ring that doesn't embarrass her and make those around her think she's not worth two bits because the man she's marrying doesn't, since he got her a Cracker Jack ring. Women are brutal to each other, and why cut your girl's legs out from under her with her friends and rivals? It's a real, not a rhetorical question.
The sad thing about the whole diamond thing is that women aren't really aware that the stone has little to no resale value and it's primary value is in industry, not as pretty rocks on fingers.
Let alone all the garbage that goes with mining them and marketing them.
They, and friends and family equate the size of the diamond a man gets a woman with the amount of esteem and love in which he holds for her. This has been drilled into most of us since we first heard a cleverly researched and manipulative advertisement created to tug at our ego/guilt/shame strings.
If you were never a part of the herd mentality, you consider the simple gold band the ultimate symbol of the high regard you hold for your beloved.
As for engagement rings, any semi precious stone will do if you can imbue it with something meaningful and personal to you both. Back-story in absence of perceived monetary of stone is a good trade-off. Heirloom rings resized and redesigned work well. Pawnshops are a good source.
People have forgotten that engagement rings are really a signifier of intent to marry.
Captain, you kidding me? Would you really marry this kind of woman at all? My wife told me to buy a cheap silver ring only, because we have better uses for the money. That was about the 25th green flag that she is going to be a reliable ally for my life. Why would you make a shit-testing, selfish, shallow woman your wife?
I think you Americans have a hopelessly romantic view of marriage. You see it as something similar to a girlfriend, all about sex and romance. Nope.
You want romance, you just have a girlfriend, or keep a mistress. You want a reliable ally in life and a family and kids, you find a good wife. Not to be mixed.
Supposedly, there is a vault in Russia where if the diamond content within was all flooded on the open market, diamonds would be worth less than dirt.
And had anyone heard of blood/conflict diamonds? Paul Elam describes the earth destroying hypocrisy of women "loving" mother earth.
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