The Watch That Squatted in My Brain

Six weeks ago I flirted—briefly, innocently—with an all-black Citizen Attesa. I ogled it on Sakura Watches, skimmed a few YouTube reviews, and rendered a tidy verdict: Handsome? Yes. Would I wear it in the wild? No. A museum piece for other people’s wrists. I closed the tabs and returned to my life. Or so I thought. Because the Attesa didn’t move on. It began stalking me with the devotion of a stray that has chosen its human. I’d open the Times, the Post, the Atlantic, the New Yorker—and there it was again, gleaming like a prom queen locking eyes across the gym, smiling just enough to suggest destiny and just enough to feel dangerous.

That’s when the questions got weird. Why is this watch tailing me? Is it cosmic—my own horological North Star? A nudge from fate? Or something less celestial and more diabolical? Are marketing engineers quietly installing this thing in my skull, the way my engineer friend once installed competence on my computer during a Zoom rescue mission? I remember giving him full control and watching, slack-jawed, as he ninja-glided through my settings like a man who had memorized the machine’s dreams. Now I wonder if the Attesa has done the same to my mind—deleted entire neighborhoods of thought and rezoned them for luxury steel.

Because let’s be honest: the watch isn’t just appearing on my screen; it’s squatting in my head. I no longer “think about” the Attesa—the Attesa thinks inside me. This is Cognitive Squatting: when a marketed object occupies prime mental real estate long after rational interest has expired. It pays no rent, ignores the lease, and refuses eviction. It replaces memory with mirage and turns coincidence into choreography. Do I still own my brain? Of course not. I’m a tenant now.

So if one day you spot me wearing that all-black Attesa, don’t congratulate me on my taste. Call the authorities. I won’t be human anymore. I’ll be a converted unit—property of the algorithm—walking the earth as a watch-wearing android, ticking obediently to a rhythm I no longer chose.