To have a hobby is to cultivate an identity. The longer you grow in the hobby, the more you learn about yourself, your likes, dislikes, and inclinations. If you’re a watch collector, as I am, you gravitate to certain types of watches and retreat from others. You cannot explain your inclinations. When fellow watch collectors notice you share a proclivity for a type of watch, there is both a bond and a fellowship. When the fellow watch collectors notice your tastes clash with theirs, disappointment and even hurt feelings can ensue. Within the larger watch hobby, there are subcategories, where collectors branch off and form tight alliances, tribes, and deeply-forged bonds. A sense of loyalty ensues. We call this Taste Tribalism: the formation of tight-knit subgroups within a hobby, bound not by logic but by shared aesthetic instincts. These tribes generate loyalty, belonging, and, when challenged, a surprising capacity for disappointment.
Woe, however, to the watch collector who, for reasons he can’t explain, departs from what was once his favorite watch type and ventures into fresh waters. Such a transition can bring disorientation and confusion. To abandon one watch category and embrace another creates what is called Horological Identity Drift: the slow, almost imperceptible shift in a collector’s taste in which objects once central to identity begin to feel like artifacts from a previous self. The watches haven’t changed; the wearer has. What once signaled meaning now feels like a costume left over from a role no longer being played.
While this new adventure from “watch drift” gives fresh blood to his hobby, it leaves his fellow collectors feeling betrayed and abandoned. What offends them is their sense of Aesthetic Apostasy: the moment a collector abandons a once-defining preference—crossing from one horological faith to another—provoking confusion, quiet resentment, and the sense that something sacred has been violated.
In my case, the “drift” occurred two months ago when I started wearing G-Shocks at the exclusion of my Seiko divers. I did all I could do to return to my mechanicals, including the act of putting steel bracelets on them, in the hope that giving them a luxury look would make them more appealing, but this measure failed. The Seiko divers remain in the box, largely unworn. As a result, I am a watch drifter.
What does this “drifting” collector do? Retreat to his old watch type and return to his fellow collectors? What folly. He would simply be betraying himself to please others. Such an act would be a violation of a hobby that brought him joy and authenticity. He must therefore let his true tastes govern his watch journey and the desire to please others take a back seat. Otherwise, his hobby will be a superficial affair, a desperate act to belong while his authentic self withers on the vine.
Cinemorphosis 
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