Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like typical "I don't need anything for my birthday". Even the most rational people tend to get disappointed if they really get nothing.
I don't get disappointed. The best gift you can get me for my birthday is remove the obligation for me to get you one on yours. Saves so much mental energy and time.
Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
541–550 of 686 posts
Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
#542Random diamond story! As a freshman in college, I took a geology class and our teacher asked all of the women in our class to raise their hand if they would rather have natural or human-made diamonds. Most of the women (over 80%) raised their hands for natural. The reasons they gave all seemed to tie back to branding and natural diamonds being “real.” Then our teacher gave another analogy. He asked if people would ra…
I went through this not that many years ago buying a ring for my SO. My biggest mistake was including her in the decision. She described what she wanted exactly– nothing gaudy or ostentatious, just a singular, tasteful stone on a plain band. Couldn't be simpler, could it? Finding stones that met her criteria was easy. Some were natural diamonds, some lab grown, many moissanite. From the outset, she said the meaning o…
I avoided this by discussing the size of the diamonds in dead slaves rather than carets. Once I realized it didn't bother her to consider the dead slaves, I knew the "natural" diamond was what she wanted, so that's what she got. She may have genuinely believed it when she said the size of the stones didn't matter, but you can't deny how good she felt when other women fawned over it and were jealous that her stones were bigger/shinier.
It's all about status signaling. The whole concept of the ring is a literal status symbol, signaling you're off the market. We can get upset about this particular status signal all we want, but it's not as if it's any less moral than any other status signal we participate in. That new phone was made by slaves. The car was built by raw materials mined in awful ways, possibly with slave labor. We can't go down this rabbit hole with everything in our life. I recommend making small nudges when we can in our own lives, but try not to get too worked up over any of them, it's not good for your mental health.
Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
Natural, as in what would commonly be referred to as a real diamond (yes, I realise they're they're chemically and structurally the same). Edit: As I said in another reply, there's nothing illogical about it. If value is placed culturally and socially on natural diamonds, then they are valuable, regardless of if that value is "artificially" created via advertising of whatever. Lots of stuff is quite stupid if you loo…
I truly mean this to be thoughtful and not antagonistic, and your notion of value being subjective is accurate. But I think I can somewhat snarkily summarize a lot of the doubt some HNers are feeling (I'm not saying I agree or disagree): it's basically saying diamonds are like NFTs. EDIT: Just did a ctrl-f for NFT and I guess I wasn't the first to say that, although those comments are much lower on the page.
Oh, sure, not to going to disagree! I don't think it's being sarky to compare the two (although NFTs have slightly different cultural precursors), no offence taken. I also think that in this case many commenters [being human] have equally subjective notions of value (edit: which are also correct in context, I'm not just having a pop) but would just like to pretend that they do not, that they are being "rational".
Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like typical "I don't need anything for my birthday". Even the most rational people tend to get disappointed if they really get nothing.
I try to tell people I don't have a birthday anymore. Because if I tell people not to get me anything, sometimes they hear please get me something. Ugh.
I normally just tell them "it was a few weeks back". This gives a full year for them to forget about it and has a sufficiently vague period of time that they can't nail you next year should they remember.
Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you miss the part where she gas-lit him? She agreed with all the points about moissanite/etc and then got bent out of shape when he took her at her word. Clearly all that was a "test" that he was supposed to "pass". I rarely see happy marriages with that kind of behavior as a baseline. God forbid he get her Carnations and a nice dinner for Valentine's day, she'll likely ignore the dinner and focus on why he didn'…
I didn't view it as gaslighting, I viewed it in the way I said it: she may have not wanted to demand a 'genuine' diamond, so she left it open-ended. What woman wants to demand that when asked for preference? Demanding it would remove the sincerity and meaningfulness of the man's gesture. On the note of carnations for Valentine's Day, I'd view it in much the same way. Unless she's told you how much she adores and pref…
> Unless she's told you how much she adores and prefers carnations on Valentine's Day, roses are the best bet.
Um, she did say with regards to the gem, that's the confusing part.
Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is that we need a sweeping, emotion-fill, romantic story toward something else, not just away from the current diamond-status quo. There certainly is a quiet satisfaction, and clear conscience, in avoidance of evil. But no joy in the act of NOT. A normal person who repeatedly throws aside a full heart in favor of facts will not wake up singing for many years. There needs to be a new song to replace the old,…
That will be hard, women are much more conservative and care more about traditions than men.
Interesting that you are downvoted when what you are saying is quite true.
Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
#547Random diamond story! As a freshman in college, I took a geology class and our teacher asked all of the women in our class to raise their hand if they would rather have natural or human-made diamonds. Most of the women (over 80%) raised their hands for natural. The reasons they gave all seemed to tie back to branding and natural diamonds being “real.” Then our teacher gave another analogy. He asked if people would ra…
The teacher was fighting another principle of consistency. where people want to be consistent with a previous decision. There probably would have been more hands raised for human made if the professor never did the first voting.
Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t see what’s so hard to understand. The entire point of buying a ring is that you’re showing her how much you care by spending a bunch of money on something special. Instead, you decided to save money and get something that’s not as special, and that hurt her feelings.
The point is that its fucking stupid and a corporate mind game that is trivial to see through.
So, tell her that. You didn't need to be in a relationship anyway.
Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
#549Random diamond story! As a freshman in college, I took a geology class and our teacher asked all of the women in our class to raise their hand if they would rather have natural or human-made diamonds. Most of the women (over 80%) raised their hands for natural. The reasons they gave all seemed to tie back to branding and natural diamonds being “real.” Then our teacher gave another analogy. He asked if people would ra…
That doesn't bode well for your marriage. I would ditch her now before it's too late .. later.