[brunoTbear]

Having recently purchased an engagement ring, I am amazed by how inexpensive synthetic diamonds have become. Back in 2015 I paid for a natural stone. Prices then were nuts. You can get so much more weight, color, and clarity now. I really hope the extraction of natural diamonds becomes a historical shame soon.

I do not understand people who want a natural stone. My buddy is marrying a woman who insisted on a natural rock. It’s one of many things wrong with her, and fits the pattern I’ve seen with her to a T.

[otherme123]

Ask the jeweller to put one natural rock on a table, among 1 synthetic and 8 Zircons, and let she choose the one she likes more.

[explaininjs]

Aren’t engagement rings supposed to be a surprise?

[quickthrower2]

Why do people want a diamond at all is a good question to ask (and research). Shame $5k to charity isn’t the convention.

[dalbasal]

Or how about a proper dowry... that is the point.

A savings bond, or even a symbolic gold chain... provided that the price is reasonably represented in gold weight.

Dowries are/were a symbolic and real proof of financial fortitude, intent. They often a represent real safety net. In some cases, increase the woman (or man's) ability to leave a marriage, a liberty and power balance function.

So much of our modern culture is a corrupt cargo cult. We are completely removed from the meaning behind our symbolisms, both intellectually and culturally.

China's adoption of Christmas and Christmas-like festivities for retail purposes is my favourite example. A copy of a copy with all meaning distilled to "winter shopping."

Anyway... there's no inherent reason for engagement rings, gifts or donations. If we like the traditional/cultural aspects... use them. Otherwise, why so sheep?

[helsinkiandrew]

Advertising!

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...

> In 1938, amid the ravages of the Depression and the rumblings of war, Harry Oppenheimer, the De Beers founder’s son, recruited the New York–based ad agency N.W. Ayer to burnish the image of diamonds in the United States, where the practice of giving diamond engagement rings had been unevenly gaining traction for years, but where the diamonds sold were increasingly small and low-quality.

> Meanwhile, the price of diamonds was falling around the world. The folks at Ayer set out to persuade young men that diamonds (and only diamonds) were synonymous with romance, and that the measure of a man’s love (and even his personal and professional success) was directly proportional to the size and quality of the diamond he purchased. Young women, in turn, had to be convinced that courtship concluded, invariably, in a diamond.

[rjzzleep]

For most people those 40k(or a lot more than that depending on where you are) that go into a wedding would be better served with a dinner at a nice restaurant and a down payment for an appartment/house.

[kikokikokiko]

I don't know if it's just another example of my complete immunity towards advertising and marketing in all of it's forms, but one of the requirements I set early on when I started to think seriously about settling down was "she can't give any value, at all, to useless things like an idiotic ring with a dumb whisperer's rock on it". I found my girl thank God. Not being an american neither having lived in the US at any point in my life, it always amazed me that your society accepted as common knowledge that "you must spend X months of your salary on a dumb whisperer's rock to prove to your woman that you value her. The DeBeers corporation sure did a good job on you guys.

[wodenokoto]

My mom is absolutely certain her wedding ring has appreciated.

And it’s my “I read it online” vs hers “I talked with a jeweler”

Which to be honest I’d call a draw.

[Mizoguchi]

The way some diamonds (say a 2 carat round VSS1) refract light is pretty damn spectacular, no other rock or material can match it, so that may be a reason why some people want them.

[corethree]

You don't need research. It's common sense. You're human so it's easy to figure out. It's possible that our modern woke culture makes this harder analyze because it's very one sided in terms of gender. It's completely obvious why diamonds are coveted, but you'll still see a lot of attempts by to rationalize a different reason. What I'm about to describe is something that is completely obvious to everyone and something you likely already know but find hard to articulate:

Desire for diamonds is centered around women. It's part of human mating rituals.

A lot of women demand sacrifice or some sort of proof that the man loves her and is willing to sacrifice resources to take care of her. Romance is 100 percent what this is. It's always a man putting in a romantic gesture and a woman making a practical decision based on that gesture(s). Society often gets these roles reversed but in actuality: men are the romantic sex, women are the practical sex. I like to note here that a woman is not consciously thinking this is a practical choice, but rather her instincts drive her in this direction as much as a man's instincts drive him to make irrational tributes to her.

One form of this sacrifice comes in the form of material jewelery. First the sacrifice needs to be a literal "sacrifice" or basically useless in terms of utility. Second it needs to be "showable" meaning the woman can use the thing and "show" other people that a man sacrificed a huge amount of money just for her.

Diamonds fulfill the above request more than anything else. If a woman has a house it's not clear whether the house was a sacrifice just for her or for him as well, but if she has a diamond it is 100 percent clear it was for her and nothing else. This is why the zero utility aspect is important. It is the ultimate way to communicate the nature of the "sacrifice". It is not a coincidence why a bouquet flowers also fills this role of "tribute". Cut Flowers are both useless and ephemeral communicating the act of "sacrifice" unequivocally.

So that's where it comes from. Human mating rituals. Diamonds are pleasing to the eye but there plenty of cheap forms of gemstones that are pleasing to the eye too and you don't see women coveting that stuff. The rarity and mostly zero utility nature of a diamond ring makes it an object ideal for tribute.

It is a shame, but you can't deny human nature. Women want tribute from men and they want to put that tribute on display to show off their status. Men will as a result fight tooth and nail for the status and the ability to provide a high value woman with that tribute. Entire businesses will spawn and form around this human behavioral quirk and one of these industries is the diamond industry.

That's the way the world works. Let me be clear though. If diamonds didn't exist... something else would fill this role of tribute. There will be an entire industry spawned around some other useless thing and women will highly covet that thing as tribute. It's not purely the fault of the diamond industry as many people seem to think. The diamond industry is simply filling a niche that if they didn't fill, would've been filled by something else.

[hyperliner]

Not everybody has $5k to give away to charity, but they have $5k to give to De Beers.

[max_]

The luxurious value of a diamond comes from the fact that it is expensive.

Making a cheap diamond maybe useful for industrial applications, but for luxurious purposes (engagement rings & jewellery et al) it's counter productive.

[mpsprd]

I disagree. As someone who doesn't own jewelry, I must admit nothing blings like diamond.

Go to the London tower and look at the crown jewels. It's jaw dropping.

It's of course a way of displaying your wealth, but it also reflects and scatters light in an incredible way.

[bafe]

I got a natural diamond for my fiancé but with a twist: it's an old stone that the jeweler I choose recycled from old jewelry. Same for the gold, she's used old gold

[slaw]

Old gold as opposed to a newly made gold from a fresh supernova?

[markisus]

Do you think that autographed memorabilia should not be worth more than un-autographed counterparts? Or original paintings vs reproductions?

[isykt]

Neither autographed memorabilia nor original paintings are regularly produced through the systematic exploitation and murder of entire populations, and neither autographed memorabilia nor original paintings had their value fabricated through a sales campaign which leveraged romantic conventions of western culture.

It’s not really a reasonable comparison.

[thaumasiotes]

> I am amazed by how inexpensive synthetic diamonds have become. Back in 2015 I paid for a natural stone. Prices then were nuts. You can get so much more weight, color, and clarity now.

I used to get synthetic cut rubies and sapphires (same mineral) from a bulk supplier. 12mm sapphires were about $12 each. Rubies were a lot cheaper than that.

[hardware2win]

Ppl pressuring on natural diamonds are, uh...