Why Do We Still Wear Watches?
You know, over the christmas holiday, I noticed something odd about todays youth. Why have watches suddenly become mens fashion again? I mean, why have two watches on your person everyday? Especially since the clock on your phone is probably atomically correct to the world standard... Don't get me wrong, I have two watches. I'm of the last watch wearing generation of dudes. This is back when it was all about Mossimo shirts, "Doc" Marten boots, baggy Lucky jeans, and Fossil big face fancy "Chad" watches.
I'm pretty sure it was christmas when I was 13 or 14 when I received my first watch. It was a Fossil brand watch, all stainless steel, and it had analog hands but a digital lcd countdown face. So behind the hands, it counted down the seconds. It was straight out of a music video back when hip-hop was still real rap, and rockers rapped as much as any other creator out there. I've still got it in my dresser.
I have a second identical watch, except it had digital flames on it, that I got as a gift for high school graduation. It had a thick gauntlet style leather band. At least, it was leather-ish. After wearing it through college and losing the band to years of sweat and water damage from wearing it in the lake/pool/ocean, I had a new one made when I lived down in Corpus Christie. Honestly, you'd be challenged to find better quality leather goods at cheaper prices than those you find in South Texas.
I still remember the day I stopped wearing that watch. It was my birthday in 2005 and my parents gifted me a slick quasi-smart cell phone for the occasion. It was a Motorola SLVR with 3G signal and some web capabilities. Now, I'd had a cell phone since 1999 at that point, but cell phones before those first original smart devices were rugged and utilitarian. They were like bricks, made by Nokia, clipped on our belts and were practically bulletproof... but as modernity entered my daily life on my birthday, I realized I didn't have to wear a watch since that small, sleek, and powerful little phone replaced so many things in my life. It held music, took pics, and had a super accurate clock on it. As I got dressed to go to bday dinner with my lady-friend that night, I remember pulling it off its first 100% charge, turning it on, having the watch realization, taking off my watch and slipping it into a Crown Royal bag in the top drawer of my dresser. That's the last time I wore a watch.
That's practical right? Who needs two watches? Post college, I grew into a person that just stopped caring about fashion and status, I literally had zero need for that watch anymore. I'm not alone in this either. I'd wager that a supreme majority of Gen X, Xennials, and Millennials don't wear watches. Some do, but not the bulk of us. While I did start noticing watch advertisements start to creep back into programming a few years ago, I always figured they were just trying to lure Boomers into spending some of that social security. It wasn't until my nephew and his friends wearing watches this past weekend that I realized just how powerful commercials still are. While the sample size is still too small to develop a thesis on the matter, it's easy to see there's a generation coming up now that think watches are things of status and general old-school-cool. Makes me wonder how long it'll be til they realize how redundant two watches is.