Cinemorphosis

Tag: blog

  • What If Nobody Shows Up?

    What If Nobody Shows Up?

    I know where my greatest reach is. A blog post might get a dozen readers. A ten-minute video essay about philosophy, retirement, materialism, addiction, or my twenty-five-year enthusiasm for timepieces can get a few thousand views. If I want to engage with a larger audience, the evidence is fairly clear: I should take more of my writing and turn it into video essays.

    After I retire, I’ll have more time to do this. I could become, for lack of a less embarrassing term, a YouTuber essayist. But it strikes me as dreadfully presumptuous to assume I could pull that off. I see five major impediments: desperate content mining, narcissism drift, mukbang-hangout syndrome, performance anxiety, and algorithmic-brain dysfunction.

    The first problem is the demand for consistent content. Suppose I decide to make two fifteen-minute videos a week. Where does all that material come from? Inevitably, I start mining my own life. My anxious personality has provided me with plenty of comic misadventures, but I doubt it can reliably produce two worthwhile episodes every week.

    I see talented YouTubers run into this problem all the time. They need material, so they start digging toward the bottom of the barrel. A minor controversy becomes a major event. A molehill gets the full mountain treatment. Out comes the obligatory reaction video. Or we get some cutesy, self-referential meditation on the human condition that exists mainly because Thursday arrived and Thursday requires content.

    I know myself well enough to recognize the danger. The moment I catch myself digging through the dregs for “just something to say,” I’ll become too annoyed with myself to say it.

    The second problem is narcissism drift. You’re on camera. You’re talking about yourself. You’re watching yourself talk about yourself. You become the star of a program devoted largely to the continuing adventures of you.

    At some point, you have to look at yourself and ask, “What’s the big deal here? You’re just some schmuck complaining that somebody parked with a bumper sticking into your driveway.”

    Not every irritation is an essay. Not every confession deserves an audience. Not every personal experience contains some hidden philosophical treasure waiting to be excavated.

    My rule has to be simple: the personal story must lead to something universal. If it never escapes my own navel, it doesn’t deserve to be uploaded. Following that rule probably means I won’t make two videos a week. Maybe I’ll make one a week. Maybe one every two weeks. That seems preferable to manufacturing material simply because the channel needs feeding.

    The third problem is what I call mukbang-hangout syndrome. At some point, the creator stops producing meaningful content and starts hanging out with the audience. The channel becomes a parasocial living room. People eat, chat, open packages, answer questions, and keep one another company. The content is the hanging out.

    I can’t see myself doing this, partly because I don’t have the ego for it. Why would people want to hang out with me?

    My cousin Pete in Studio City recently said, “Jeff, you’re going to be sixty-five next month. Let’s have a big party.”

    I told him, “Pete, let me explain something about me. I don’t have the kind of ego that makes big birthday parties possible. The thought of dozens of people driving from afar bearing gifts to celebrate my birthday makes me feel chagrined and socially awkward. Let’s keep it small.”

    If I can barely tolerate the idea of holding court at my own birthday party, I’m certainly not going to hold court on YouTube while eating noodles.

    The fourth problem is performance anxiety. Few things are more demoralizing than uploading a video and watching it fail in real time. You get a spattering of views. Then YouTube helpfully sends you a notice: “This video is not performing as well as your previous videos.”

    I mentally translate this as: “Fix it, loser.”

    You start imagining the YouTube police arriving at your house to ask why you uploaded something so unpopular that you’ve become a liability to the platform.

    A poorly performing video feels like the grand opening of a restaurant where nobody shows up. The linen tablecloths are pressed. The napkins are folded. The menus are ready. The doors open.

    Nothing.

    Eventually, you want to turn off the lights, pack a suitcase, and check into an undisclosed hotel.

    And this leads to the fifth and most serious problem: algorithmic-brain dysfunction.

    Once you become anxious about performance, you start trying to please the algorithm. You notice what gets rewarded and begin changing your work accordingly. Out comes the Shock-Face Thumbnail, with your eyes bulging as though you just put your hand on a hot stove. Then comes the Catastrophe Title: “I Made a HUGE Mistake!” Then the False Binary: Seiko or Citizen?

    The more these tactics work, the greater the temptation to repeat them.

    Eventually, you risk becoming less like yourself and more like the algorithm. You’re no longer asking what you genuinely want to say. You’re thinking about audience capture, retention, thumbnails, titles, hooks, and whatever else might earn another burst of YouTube confetti.

    At that point, the algorithm isn’t merely distributing your work. It is changing your brain.

    Looking at these five impediments makes a respectable case for not doing any of this.

    But there are two important counterarguments.

    First, I’ve spent the last ten years on my channel developing ideas about addiction, consumerism, timepieces, aging, and the stages of life. It would be foolish to throw away everything I’ve built simply because I’m frightened by the traps of becoming a YouTuber. I already have a body of material. Retirement will give me more time to develop it.

    Second, video gives me something that writing alone cannot. I’m physically present. I work from an outline or partial script, but I also improvise. My voice, body language, facial expressions, hesitations, peculiar phrases, and occasional mistakes become part of the essay.

    This matters more to me as Artificial Intelligence spreads.

    I call it the Human-Fingerprint Premium: the more synthetic expression surrounds us, the more valuable unmistakably human expression becomes. AI can generate oceans of polished language. What it cannot duplicate is the exact experience of a particular human being sitting before a camera, thinking through an idea and occasionally surprising himself with what comes out of his mouth.

    That may become increasingly valuable.

    So I’m going to make an earnest attempt at video essays after retirement. I don’t know how often I’ll make them, and I don’t want the demands of YouTube to determine the schedule. The essay has to justify the video, not the other way around.

    Still, there is one reality I can’t escape. Running a YouTube channel is a lot like running a restaurant.

    You can believe in what you’re serving.

    But the place stays open only as long as people show up.

  • The Metamorphosis Watch

    The Metamorphosis Watch

    If you are a watch enthusiast, sooner or later you will encounter your Metamorphosis Watch.

    You will not find it through careful deliberation. You cannot summon it with spreadsheets, YouTube reviews, wrist shots, specification charts, or forty-seven browser tabs comparing lug-to-lug measurements. It simply appears, unannounced, like a baby delivered by a mythical stork.

    Price is irrelevant. Your Metamorphosis Watch might cost $80 or $15,000. I know a man whose watch addiction was effectively subdued by the $90 G-Shock Mudman G9000—the so-called “Mission Impossible” Mudman. Another man found salvation in a $5,000 Tudor Black Bay 58. Horological enlightenment, apparently, has no MSRP.

    By “cure,” I don’t mean the watch noise disappears completely. Your Metamorphosis Watch is not a GLP-1. New releases will still catch your eye. You will still inspect photographs, read reviews, and occasionally experience the familiar neurological disturbance produced by the phrase “limited edition.”

    But the hierarchy has changed.

    You have found your leading man.

    Everything else in the watch box has become supporting cast.

    The Metamorphosis Watch does something peculiar when you strap it on. You become Billy Batson shouting “Shazam!” The transformation is instantaneous. Dead weight falls away. Extraneous worries lose their jurisdiction. You have somewhere to go, something to accomplish, perhaps an innocent civilian to rescue from a burning building.

    My Metamorphosis Watch arrived seven months ago.

    On a whim, I bought a G-Shock Frogman GWF-1000.

    I had no idea what I had done.

    The Frogman became my daily mascot in much the same way the “Monkee pants” I wore in first grade allowed me to channel my childhood hero, Micky Dolenz. Apparently, the sixty-year interval between these two events produced less psychological development than one might hope.

    I strap on the Frogman and something happens.

    Deep beneath the Earth’s crust, I awaken.

    I explode upward through magma and volcanic rock, blast through the surface of the planet, and emerge in a cloud of smoke and pulverized granite. Somewhere nearby, an automobile has lost control and is hurtling toward pedestrians at a crowded intersection.

    I spring into action.

    Seconds before impact, I seize the vehicle, lift it above my head, and carry it several blocks to the nearest police station.

    The crowd erupts.

    I climb onto the roof of the disabled automobile. My Frogman gleams on my wrist. I survey the citizens below me with the grave composure of a superhero who has once again restored civilization to its proper equilibrium.

    “I am Frogman,” I announce.

    “Chaos has been subdued.”

    The crowd prepares to applaud.

    Too late.

    I am already gone.

    Somewhere, another mission awaits.

  • The Acquisition Readiness Principle of Certain Watch Enthusiasts

    The Acquisition Readiness Principle of Certain Watch Enthusiasts

    Six months ago, I bought a G-Shock GW-6900 and quickly convinced myself that it wasn’t for me. I already owned two G-Shocks—the Frogman and the Rescue—and two, I decided, were enough. I had achieved that mythical state every watch collector claims to desire and almost none can tolerate: contentment.

    There was also the 6900 strap. It was just a little too short. Once I buckled the watch around my wrist, I had only two holes remaining. The watch fit perfectly well, but in the fevered jurisprudence of watch collecting, two unused holes constituted evidence for the prosecution.

    So I put the 6900 back in its box, requested a return from Amazon, drove to my local UPS Store, and rid myself of the offending object within ten minutes. I felt enormous relief. Order had been restored. I owned exactly two G-Shocks. The collection was disciplined, coherent, complete.

    Naturally, I then bought three more.

    Over the ensuing months, the Mudman GW-9500 arrived, followed by the Mudman G-9300 and the King GXW-56. My austere two-watch collection had swollen to five, and I happily rotated among them while apparently forgetting the solemn principles of restraint that had compelled me to return the 6900.

    Then, about a month ago, the 6900 began haunting me.

    I started looking at photographs. I read discussions. I watched videos. I studied that strange face with its three circular indicators staring back at me like the instrument panel of a tiny Cold War submarine. Enthusiasts call the GW-6900 “The Three-Eyed Monster,” which is a perfectly good nickname. I prefer my own: the Triclops.

    Soon the Triclops was everywhere. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. The watch I had dispatched to UPS with the efficiency of a man returning a defective toaster had somehow acquired an aura in its absence.

    So I bought it again.

    It is now in transit and should arrive in a few days.

    I don’t remember whether the first GW-6900 I owned was the older version with the greenish electroluminescent backlight. I do know that the incoming watch is the newer GW-6900U-1, with its bright white LED. More important, I am strangely confident that this time I am going to connect with it.

    I’ve experienced this phenomenon before: a watch leaves me cold the first time and captivates me later, even though the watch itself has barely changed. Other collectors have experienced it too. It’s tempting to dismiss the whole business as fickleness. We buy something, reject it, romanticize it, and buy it again. From the outside, this resembles the behavior of someone who should have his credit card frozen inside a block of ice.

    But I think something more interesting is going on.

    Collectors like to imagine that our reactions reside entirely in the objects themselves. A watch either speaks to us or it doesn’t. The dimensions are right or wrong. The dial works or it doesn’t. The strap fits or it doesn’t. We behave as if we were laboratory instruments registering objective measurements.

    We’re not.

    Timing matters. Mood matters. The condition of the existing collection matters. Most of all, our willingness to admit another object into that collection matters. Sometimes we encounter the right watch at the wrong time.

    This is what I call the Acquisition Readiness Principle: the psychological state in which a collector becomes genuinely receptive to incorporating a new object into an established collection.

    The first time the GW-6900 arrived, I was defending the sufficiency of my Frogman and Rescue. I wanted a small collection. I was guarding my wrist rotation like a suburban homeowner defending his property line. The 6900 wasn’t merely another watch; it was an intruder. Its slightly short strap gave me the excuse I needed to evict it.

    Six months later, the watch is essentially the same. I am not.

    Now there is a vacancy waiting for the Triclops.

    This raises an obvious question: How can anyone possibly be “not ready” for a wristwatch?

    The question itself exposes the magnificent lunacy of the hobby. We don’t merely buy watches. We audition them. We assign them roles. We decide whether they overlap with existing members of the collection. We worry about whether they will receive enough wrist time. We speak of watches “connecting” with us, as though a 50-millimeter lump of resin containing a quartz module were an emotionally complicated rescue dog.

    A new watch therefore requires a certain receiving mode. We have to lower the drawbridge. We have to stop protecting the existing collection long enough to imagine another member belonging there. The object has not changed. The collector has.

    Does this sound nuts?

    Of course it does.

    The most honest watch enthusiasts have long since abandoned the pretense that this is an entirely rational hobby. But perhaps the watches aren’t making us crazy. We’re doing that perfectly well ourselves. We take harmless little machines designed to tell us the time and burden them with identity, nostalgia, status, memory, personality, tribal affiliation, and elaborate theories of Acquisition Readiness.

    Then we give the hobby a bad name.

    It’s one of the things we’re most proud of.

  • Why I Can’t Let Go of G-Shock’s Chromatic Certainty

    Why I Can’t Let Go of G-Shock’s Chromatic Certainty

    Before the technical specifications, before the discussion of movements, and before the endless debates about quartz versus mechanical watches, something unexpected happened inside my head.

    Six months ago I underwent what now strikes me as a genuine conversion. I almost stopped wearing analog mechanical watches and entered the world of G-Shock Multiband-6 digital watches. To my surprise, a number of my YouTube subscribers later described the very same journey. They had once adored mechanical watches, only to discover that after living with atomically synchronized digital time, they could never comfortably return.

    At first glance, the conversion makes little sense.

    A quality mechanical watch running five seconds fast per day is an astonishing feat of engineering. For every practical purpose, it tells the correct time. It gets you to appointments. It catches flights. It reminds you when class begins. Its error is so small that it almost never matters.

    And yet it no longer feels right.

    That is the mystery.

    Objectively, nothing important has changed. Subjectively, everything has.

    What changes is not the watch but the standard by which the watch is judged.

    Before owning a Multiband-6 G-Shock, my standard was simple: close enough.

    After Multiband-6, my standard became: exactly right.

    Every night my watch quietly synchronizes with the atomic clock. Every morning I wake knowing—not hoping, not estimating, not approximating—that the time on my wrist is identical to the world’s official standard. Five seconds fast, once a badge of mechanical excellence, now feels oddly imprecise.

    I call this Chronometric Certainty: the psychological satisfaction that arises from knowing one’s timepiece is synchronized with an external objective standard, eliminating even trivial uncertainty about its accuracy.

    The difference is not practical.

    It is psychological.

    An analog watch always feels like an interpretation of time. The hands point. They suggest. They approximate.

    A digital display does something altogether different.

    It declares.

    When my G-Shock reads 12:37:42, there is no interpretation. It does not hint at the time. It announces it with unapologetic authority. One of my favorite G-Shocks, the enormous King, reinforces this feeling. Its giant television-shaped display gives me the uncanny impression that I am not wearing a watch at all. It feels like I have strapped a broadcast monitor to my wrist, one that receives the world’s official time directly from reality itself.

    The mechanical watch, by contrast, quietly asks for my participation.

    I know it gains a few seconds.

    I occasionally reset it.

    I mentally compensate.

    None of this requires much effort, but each act reminds me that the watch is only approximating reality.

    The G-Shock abolishes those tiny negotiations.

    It simply tells the truth.

    This realization has convinced me that my conversion was never really about watches.

    It was about certainty.

  • When Father Time Becomes Your Authorized Watch Dealer

    When Father Time Becomes Your Authorized Watch Dealer

    At sixty-five, with retirement approaching, I have aged out of five-thousand-dollar watches.

    Not because I can’t appreciate them.

    Not because they aren’t beautiful.

    Because I no longer have the wrist time.

    Twenty more years—if fortune is generous—is not enough to justify rotating my current collection alongside two additional grail pieces that would spend most of their lives quietly aging in a watch box. I call this Chronological Misalignment: the condition in which a person’s remaining lifetime no longer justifies acquiring possessions intended to be enjoyed over a much longer horizon.

    Time eventually becomes the harshest accountant.

    But time is only half the problem.

    The other half is geography.

    Or, more accurately, lifestyle.

    I still admire the Grand Seiko GMT. I still admire the Tudor Pelagos. They remain magnificent objects.

    I simply struggle to imagine wearing one while binge-watching Hulu, pushing a shopping cart through Target, or taking my daughters to YogurtLand for frozen yogurt.

    The watch would be dressed for an expedition to Antarctica.

    I would be buying gummy bears by the ounce.

    The mismatch is almost comic.

    I call this Environmental Misalignment: the condition in which one owns or desires objects whose elegance exceeds the ordinary circumstances of one’s daily life.

    Recognizing these two forms of misalignment is not depressing.

    It is liberating.

    Reality has performed the difficult task of setting my priorities for me.

    The question is no longer whether I can justify another grail watch.

    The question is what deserves that energy instead.

    For decades, watches occupied an astonishing amount of mental real estate. They required research, comparison, speculation, buying, selling, photographing, discussing, and occasionally irrational justification.

    Now that enthusiasm has become available for reassignment.

    It belongs elsewhere.

    It belongs in writing.

    It belongs at the piano.

    It belongs in my kettlebell-filled garage.

    Most of all, it belongs to my health.

    I am still about twenty pounds overweight.

    My physician periodically reminds me that it is time for fasting bloodwork—cholesterol, blood sugar, and the rest of the annual report card. I already know roughly what the results will say. At 230 pounds, everything will probably look respectable except my LDL cholesterol, which has an annoying habit of hovering around the borderline.

    So the mission is obvious.

    Reach 210 pounds.

    Then endure the ritual: skip breakfast, forgo the morning coffee, wait patiently while someone extracts several vials of blood, drive home slightly lightheaded, and receive laboratory numbers worthy of the inconvenience.

    At thirty-five, my grail was a Tudor Pelagos.

    At sixty-five, my grail is different. It’s a total cholesterol below 200 and a blood pressure reading of 120 over 80.

    That is not surrender.

    That is maturity.

    There comes a point in life when we stop negotiating with Father Time.

    He begins issuing instructions.

    He says:

    “You’re not wearing a Grand Seiko to Trader Joe’s.

    You’re not timing your afternoon nap with a luxury GMT.

    Your assignment now is different.

    Become as healthy as possible.

    Remain mentally sharp.

    Write your books.

    Play your piano.

    Stay strong enough that your family never has to carry you through the final chapters of your life.”

    For once, I find myself with no desire to argue.

    His orders make perfect sense.

    The remarkable thing is that they do not diminish my life.

    They simplify it.

    The pursuit of watches has quietly given way to the pursuit of longevity, creativity, and strength. Those ambitions promise far greater returns than another polished titanium case ever could.

    I wrote this little manifesto wearing a G-Shock Frogman.

    It told time just as faithfully as any luxury watch.

    More importantly, it reminded me that I have finally found a grail worthy of the time I have left.

  • The Watch Channel at a Crossroads

    The Watch Channel at a Crossroads

    My video production is on hold because I find myself interrogating my place in the watch world. I have little appetite for another “State of the Collection” video. That genre has become the YouTube equivalent of a sitcom reunion special: everyone knows the script before the opening credits roll. Likewise, I am convinced I have exhausted the lexicon of watch addiction. I have dissected acquisition syndrome, rationalization, buyer’s remorse, dopamine hits, grail watches, collection pruning, and every psychological contortion a watch enthusiast performs while pretending another purchase is somehow “different this time.” At some point, the commentary begins recycling itself, and I have no desire to become an echo of my former self.

    The irony is that none of this means I love watches any less. They remain as captivating—and as capable of hijacking my imagination—as they were twenty years ago. Two pieces continue to haunt me. The first is the Grand Seiko SBGP009, whose champagne-silver dial possesses the quiet authority of vintage elegance while its quartz movement drifts no more than ten seconds in an entire year. The second is the Orient Star M42 Diver 1964 Recreation (RE-AU0503N), a watch that somehow manages to look both nostalgic and purposeful without descending into retro cosplay. My greatest misfortune is that neither watch is outrageously expensive. The Grand Seiko costs only about three thousand dollars, and the Orient Star about one thousand. I almost wish they were twice as expensive. Overpriced luxury has an odd virtue: it occasionally protects us from ourselves.

    Meanwhile, most of my creative energy has migrated to my blog. There I can pursue ideas that would suffocate inside a fifteen-minute YouTube video. I can move from watches to literature, from moral philosophy to true crime, from AI to theology without asking whether the algorithm will punish me for changing lanes. The writing feels richer, stranger, and ultimately more meaningful. Unfortunately, blogs occupy the cultural equivalent of a deserted side street while YouTube resembles Times Square. One offers freedom without an audience; the other offers an audience that constantly demands the familiar. Whether I can remain content scribbling thoughtful essays into relative obscurity is a question I have not yet answered.

    One conclusion, however, no longer requires interrogation. I am an incurable watch enthusiast. There is no treatment, no twelve-step program, no miraculous cure. I have accepted that reality. My task is not to extinguish the fascination but to discipline it. I must keep reminding myself that admiring a watch is not the same thing as needing to own it. Beauty can be appreciated without becoming another possession. In fact, the older I become, the more I suspect that an overcrowded collection diminishes rather than enriches the experience, spreading affection so thinly that no single watch receives the attention it deserves. Perhaps the highest form of collecting is learning that appreciation sometimes reaches its fullest expression the moment you decide to walk away.

    Happy Fourth, everyone.

  • Every Watch Collector Dreams of Losing His Collection

    Every Watch Collector Dreams of Losing His Collection

    I’ve been obsessing over watches for more than twenty years. During that time I’ve come to know hundreds of fellow obsessives, and I’ve learned that we all suffer from the same peculiar affliction.

    Many of us eventually assemble collections that should, by any reasonable standard, satisfy us. Mine certainly should. I own watches I genuinely love and wear regularly. The hunt is largely over.

    Or so it would seem.

    Because every serious collector eventually asks the same deliciously irrational question.

    What if I had to start over?

    Suppose I came home from work and discovered that an earthquake, a burglary, or perhaps the Rapture had removed every watch from my collection. My watch box sat open like an abandoned nest.

    Tabula rasa.

    Nothing remained.

    What would I buy first?

    Among watch enthusiasts, this thought experiment produces an excitement that borders on religious ecstasy. It is Dorothy taking her first step onto the Yellow Brick Road. The adventure begins anew.

    The appeal isn’t difficult to explain.

    You would have the opportunity to lose your mind all over again.

    You could experience, for a second time, the exquisite madness of becoming a watch collector.

    When you were young in the hobby, you complained endlessly about the obsession. The endless research. The sleepless nights. The compulsive buying and selling. The dopamine dripping from every incoming package and every outgoing shipment.

    You called it addiction.

    You called it insanity.

    You swore that one day you would finally reach contentment.

    Then contentment arrived.

    And quietly, almost shamefully, you began missing the insanity.

    The seasoned collector sometimes resembles Neddy Merrill in John Cheever’s “The Swimmer.” Like Neddy, he imagines himself younger than he really is, setting out once more on an impossible journey, convinced that somewhere ahead waits the exhilaration of youth. Not because youth was wiser—it certainly wasn’t—but because everything still shimmered with possibility.

    That is what the empty watch box promises.

    Possibility.

    So what would I do if fate forced me to begin again?

    I’d like to think experience has made me wiser.

    I’d probably abandon mechanical watches altogether. I’d pursue precision instead of romance.

    Every watch would be solar-powered.

    Every watch would synchronize itself through atomic radio signals or GPS satellites.

    No winding.

    No battery changes.

    No time drift.

    Just effortless perfection beneath the endless Southern California sun.

    The collection might include several digital G-Shocks, unquestionably a Frogman, a couple of Citizen Promasters, one or two Citizen Attesas, and perhaps a pair of Seiko Astrons.

    On paper, it sounds almost ideal.

    Until I imagine living with it.

    Then the doubts begin.

    I’d miss my Seiko mechanical divers.

    I’d miss my quartz Tuna.

    I’d miss the gentle sweep of a mechanical seconds hand doing absolutely nothing more accurately than a quartz movement while somehow feeling infinitely more alive.

    Before long, I’d find myself rebuilding almost exactly the collection I own today.

    That’s when the embarrassing truth becomes impossible to ignore.

    The exercise was never about watches.

    It was about the rabbit hole.

    Collectors often imagine they’re addicted to acquiring things.

    I don’t think that’s quite right.

    We’re addicted to anticipation.

    To research.

    To comparison charts.

    To late-night YouTube reviews.

    To convincing ourselves that the next purchase will finally resolve the argument raging inside our heads.

    The object merely gives the obsession somewhere to land.

    Take away the watches, and we’d simply begin manufacturing another fantasy.

    The empty watch box isn’t appealing because it contains nothing.

    It’s appealing because it gives us permission to become beautifully irrational one more time.

    That is the secret longing of the seasoned collector.

    Not another watch.

    Another chance to go gloriously, ecstatically, and completely mad.

  • The Watches Were Never the Addiction–It Was the Rabbit Holes

    The Watches Were Never the Addiction–It Was the Rabbit Holes

    Over the past twenty years, I’ve learned that I love watches a little too much.

    Not because I own too many.

    Because I expected too much from them.

    I made two mistakes. First, I convinced myself that the next watch would somehow complete me, that a particular dial, bezel, or movement would usher me into a higher state of existence. Second, I became addicted to flipping watches—not because I disliked them, but because every purchase, every sale, every unboxing delivered another hit of dopamine and another round of approval from fellow enthusiasts online.

    The watches became secondary.

    The chase became the hobby.

    Fortunately, my collection has settled into something resembling adulthood. I own five Seiko divers and five G-Shocks. After falling under the spell of G-Shock’s atomic precision—watches so obsessively punctual they correct themselves while I sleep—I have found myself drifting back toward my mechanical Seikos with fresh appreciation. As I write this, I’m wearing my Seiko SBDC203 Coastline Diver on a Divecore Waffle strap, watching its blue wave dial catch the light with quiet confidence.

    Oddly enough, I have nothing on my wish list.

    That statement would have sounded impossible a few years ago.

    I still admire watches. I linger over Citizen Attesas, Seiko Astrons, and Grand Seikos. My favorite watch ever made remains the Seiko SLA017, but I suspect our relationship will remain safely one-sided. I’ll admire it from afar on YouTube, where it can continue living its best life without emptying my wallet.

    That realization has spilled into other corners of my life.

    Once you discover that a watch cannot make you whole, you begin looking suspiciously at everything else trying to make the same promise.

    A forty-thousand-dollar Honda.

    A forty-thousand-dollar Toyota.

    A four-thousand-dollar luxury mattress.

    Consumer culture speaks with remarkable consistency.

    “Buy me,” it whispers. “Your new life begins here.”

    No, it doesn’t.

    At best, your new life begins with a slightly nicer object.

    The harder truth is that the improvements I actually want cannot be purchased.

    I want to become healthier.

    I want to lose twenty pounds.

    I want more discipline.

    I want to be fully present for my wife and daughters.

    I want to become the kind of man whose character quietly exceeds his possessions.

    No watch accomplishes that.

    No car does.

    No mattress does.

    The real danger isn’t believing that buying something will make me happy.

    That illusion is almost too obvious.

    The greater danger is subtler.

    It’s the research.

    I can disappear for hours into consumer rabbit holes with the enthusiasm of an archaeologist uncovering a lost civilization. I compare specifications, memorize model numbers, watch endless YouTube reviews, read forum debates, and convince myself that this painstaking investigation is somehow productive.

    It isn’t.

    It’s beautifully disguised procrastination.

    The internet has become a casino where information replaces slot machines. Every click offers the possibility that the next review, the next comparison, the next expert opinion will reveal the perfect purchase. Hours disappear without resistance.

    The acquisition isn’t the addiction.

    The pursuit is.

    That’s the part that frightens me.

    I have an obsessive personality. Obsession can be useful when it is harnessed toward writing, teaching, or improving my health. Left unattended, however, it happily attaches itself to titanium watch cases, mattress coil counts, automobile trim packages, fountain pens, headphones, or whatever shiny object wanders into view.

    Obsession doesn’t particularly care about the subject.

    It simply wants something to consume.

    Going forward, I want to become more suspicious of that impulse.

    Not because curiosity is bad.

    Curiosity is wonderful.

    But there is a profound difference between curiosity that enlarges your life and curiosity that distracts you from it.

    I want to spend fewer afternoons researching products and more afternoons becoming the kind of man who no longer needs them to feel complete.

    The irony is almost embarrassing.

    For years I believed I was searching for the perfect watch.

    What I was really searching for was the discipline to stop searching.

    ***

    For my fellow watch addicts, here is the link to my book The Man Who Lost His Mind to Watches:

  • The Speaker That Ate My Bedroom

    The Speaker That Ate My Bedroom

    A month ago, I reached my breaking point with the smart speakers in my house.

    I finally accepted an uncomfortable truth: they were not smart.

    They were the technological equivalent of an overconfident waiter who gets every order wrong while insisting he knows exactly what you want. Every interaction became an argument. When I asked for Bach, I got Led Zeppelin. When I asked for jazz, I got information about a music festival in a pumpkin patch somewhere near Santa Cruz. The speakers spent less time serving me than forcing me into a hostage negotiation with their algorithms.

    I found myself shouting at inanimate objects far more often than seemed healthy.

    Something had to change.

    The first casualty was the kitchen speaker.

    I removed it and replaced it with a Marshall Acton III. The improvement was immediate. Music sounded richer, podcasts sounded fuller, and the speaker itself looked handsome sitting on the countertop. Instead of feeling like a piece of disposable technology, it felt like a piece of furniture with a purpose.

    Before long, I wanted the same experience in the bedroom.

    Buying a second Acton III would have been the sensible decision, but sensible decisions are not always the most entertaining. I measured the space on my bedside table and convinced myself that I needed an upgrade. Thus began my journey into the upper reaches of Bluetooth speaker excess.

    I ordered a Marshall Stanmore III.

    Larger than the Acton and packing more power, the Stanmore occupies a different class of speaker altogether. It is less a Bluetooth speaker than a luxury liner disguised as one.

    Appropriately enough, it arrived on Father’s Day.

    When I opened the box, I experienced a moment of panic.

    This thing was enormous.

    I placed it on my bedside table and immediately began comparing it to the Acton. I played classical music. I played podcasts. I switched back and forth.

    And then I arrived at an awkward conclusion.

    The difference wasn’t dramatic.

    If the Stanmore sounded better—and I believe it did—the improvement was subtle. The Acton III had already crossed the threshold where additional performance produces diminishing returns. The smaller speaker would have been more than sufficient.

    Unfortunately, that observation leads to the painful portion of this review.

    The Stanmore dominates the room.

    Not physically.

    Psychologically.

    Its presence reminds me of John Cheever’s short story “The Enormous Radio,” in which a household appliance gradually takes on an outsized role in a family’s life. The Stanmore radiates a similar energy.

    It seems to say:

    “I’m not here merely to play music. I’m here to become the main character.”

    The speaker sits beside my bed like an ambitious monarch surveying its kingdom.

    “Look at me,” it seems to whisper. “Notice my beautiful cabinet. Admire my brass controls. Listen to my glorious sound. Rearrange your priorities around me.”

    It is a speaker with the confidence of a cruise ship.

    I’m hoping adaptation will solve the problem.

    Five months ago, when I bought a G-Shock Frogman, its enormous size dominated my wrist. For weeks I felt as though I had strapped a small appliance to my arm. Then something curious happened. My eyes adjusted. The watch stopped looking gigantic and started looking normal.

    I’m hoping the same thing happens with the Stanmore.

    At the moment, however, when I lie in bed, I remain acutely aware of its presence. It looms beside me like a luxury ocean liner docked next to a studio apartment.

    Sometimes I feel as though I should christen it properly.

    Perhaps I should smash a champagne bottle against its side before asking it to play Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony.

    And yet, despite my complaints, I find myself increasingly charmed by the thing.

    The more I listen, the better it sounds.

    The strings grow richer. The voices become warmer. The music seems to expand beyond the walls of the room.

    Perhaps that is the secret behind all successful indulgences. At first they feel excessive, even absurd. Then, little by little, they win their case.

    I suspect the Stanmore III is doing exactly that.

    The cruise ship has arrived in port.

    Now I just need to stop staring at its size and enjoy the voyage.

  • The Solitary Consumption Economy

    The Solitary Consumption Economy

    Yesterday, while enjoying the small thrill of introducing new kettlebell movements into my workout—single- and double-handed thrusters, reverse-lunge thrusters, and offset cleans—I had a podcast murmuring in the background, as I usually do. Few pleasures rival the discovery of a new exercise. It is like finding a hidden room in a house you thought you knew by heart.

    The podcast featured Bill Maher interviewing Sam Levinson, the creator of Euphoria. Levinson spoke candidly about addiction, explaining that his own began at age eleven with pharmaceuticals. Addiction, he said, would be a central theme in Euphoria’s final season because it had become one of the defining forces of modern life.

    Levinson then turned to OnlyFans. He described an industry generating revenues comparable to major entertainment sectors while gradually degrading many of the people who participate in it. The descent, he suggested, is often incremental. A few suggestive photos become a stream of content. The stream becomes a livelihood. The livelihood becomes an identity. Before long, the dream of escaping the drudgery of a conventional job transforms into something more unsettling. You become both entrepreneur and product. You begin exploiting yourself for an audience whose appetite is never fully satisfied. The result is a kind of spiritual erosion. The person becomes hollowed out, exhibiting many of the same compulsive traits associated with addiction.

    Maher agreed and argued that most people fail to grasp how profound a cultural shift OnlyFans represents. He said we now live in a “masturbation economy.”

    As I worked through a set of offset cleans, his observation lingered in my mind.

    I have spent the past several years reading about declining rates of dating, sex, marriage, and face-to-face social interaction among younger generations. Increasingly, many people appear content to retreat into simulations of intimacy that deliver pleasure without requiring vulnerability, compromise, rejection, or genuine connection.

    I was reminded of a stand-up routine by Chris Rock. Reflecting on his divorce, infidelity, and pornography addiction, Rock explained that therapy helped him recognize the damage pornography had done to his ability to connect with other people. His provocative way of describing it was that pornography had made him “autistic”—not in the clinical sense, but in the sense that he had become trapped inside his own head, detached from the emotional realities of those around him.

    Listening to Maher and Levinson, I found myself wondering whether this condition had escaped the boundaries of individual pathology and become cultural.

    What if the isolated, screen-mediated existence once associated with addiction is becoming normal?

    What if more and more people prefer substitutes to relationships, simulations to experiences, and curated fantasy to the friction of actual human life?

    What if the dystopia is not approaching but has already arrived?

    As someone who teaches critical thinking and spends an unhealthy amount of time searching for the defining themes of modern culture, I immediately began thinking about how I might frame this discussion in a classroom.

    Maher’s terminology, “the masturbation economy,” works perfectly on television. It grabs attention. It provokes. It entertains.

    But in a college classroom, I would probably use a different phrase.

    I might call it the Solitary Consumption Economy or the Self-Gratification Marketplace.

    Students could then examine the argument that platforms like OnlyFans are not merely examples of personal empowerment but symptoms of a larger cultural shift toward self-exploitation, alienation, dopamine dependency, and emotional isolation.

    Viewed this way, OnlyFans is not an anomaly. It is the logical extension of several trends that have been developing for decades.

    One precursor is the modern obsession with optimization.

    Why endure the messiness of courtship when technology can deliver a carefully curated fantasy tailored to your preferences?

    Why invest time in building a relationship when digital alternatives can be scheduled conveniently between deadlifts and protein shakes?

    Why risk rejection when algorithms offer endless affirmation?

    Optimization culture promises efficiency in every domain of life. The problem is that many of life’s most meaningful experiences are inherently inefficient. Friendship, romance, family, and community require patience, sacrifice, awkwardness, misunderstanding, and compromise. Remove those elements and you often remove the humanity as well.

    A second precursor is the social conditioning produced by the pandemic.

    Many people discovered that life could be organized around isolation. Work from home. Food delivered. Entertainment streamed. Social interaction filtered through screens. For some, this arrangement felt less like an emergency measure than a permanent upgrade. Why drive across town? Why spend money on gas? Why risk discomfort when one can remain safely cocooned inside a personalized digital environment?

    The result is a culture increasingly comfortable with substitutes.

    And the phenomenon extends far beyond sexuality.

    Today people seek fitness coaching, nutritional guidance, therapy, cooking instruction, financial advice, and life direction through screens. Entire industries now exist to provide virtual versions of activities once rooted in face-to-face relationships and local communities.

    As I thought about all this, I was reminded of an episode of Lost in Space that haunted me as a child.

    The episode, “The Promised Planet,” aired in 1968.

    The Robinson family arrives on a planet populated by perpetual teenagers. The inhabitants speak in fashionable slang, dance compulsively, and embrace a culture of endless stimulation. New arrivals are placed in individual booths where a machine bombards them with loud music and psychological conditioning until they become compliant members of the tribe.

    One of the victims is Penny Robinson.

    After undergoing the process, she stands on a platform, swaying mindlessly to the music while parroting clichés about being “with it” and “cool.” Her father watches in horror. He sees that his daughter has not merely adopted new habits. She has surrendered her individuality. She has become a consumer of slogans and sensations.

    The scene terrified me as a child.

    Watching it today is even more unsettling.

    Written nearly sixty years ago, the episode feels less like science fiction than prophecy. Its creators anticipated a world in which overstimulation, conformity, and technological manipulation would become normal features of everyday life. They imagined a generation pacified not by force but by pleasure.

    The frightening possibility is that they were not predicting some distant future.

    They were describing us.

    The Solitary Consumption Economy may simply be the latest chapter in a story that began long ago—a story in which technology gradually teaches us to prefer stimulation over connection, convenience over community, and fantasy over reality.

    The question is not whether such a culture can generate wealth.

    Clearly it can.

    The question is whether a civilization can flourish when more and more of its citizens are living alone inside their heads, consuming experiences that feel increasingly vivid while becoming increasingly detached from the world itself.