Zoo Station

Anil Dash just got married. So, congratulations are in order to the most prominent blogger of Indian extraction and his wife, Alaina Browne, a foodie like few else. In his lovely post announcing his wedding, he links to a piece he had written in 2003, which I had not seen earlier. It is a scathing attack on the diamond trade, something that connects directly with a recent post of mine. Dash lines up a different set of reasons from the usual.

The people selling them are fucking pigs. They're heavily invested in selling a world where men are insensitive, thick-headed incompetents transparently trying to dupe women who are vain, superficial, materialistic fools. I typically tend to be on the "eh, it's just a joke" side of things, but the sheer repetitive insistence of the cynical stereotypes in diamond advertising is astonishing.

I took a couple of pictures around town. The taglines range from creepy to blatantly misogynist. "Reduce the entire English language to three syllables. I love you." I suppose that's trying to be romantic, but if your significant other finds that their expressions of love are only prompted by being handed a rock, it seems that one of the 4 Cs you might want to worry about is "communication".

There are some that are just pathetic. "Get ready to hear one more tearful acceptance speech." "Never have to plagiarize another poem as long as you live." Who are these guys? Who does this appeal to? What hapless, undemonstrative loser identifies with stealing poetry as a subsititute for romance? Who finds the effort of copying someone else's sentiments so strenuous that he'd rather spend ten percent of his annual income on a pair of earrings?

Yeah, go on and click that last link, if you don't believe the sheer cynicism of the DeBeers cartel. Dash also links to an MUST-READ story in Salon that makes the same point I made earlier on why buying diamonds is a terrible idea, no matter how you look at it.

Despite its elite status, the diamond, which can be found in abundance from southern Africa to Australia to northern Canada, is not the rarest of gems. With no intrinsic value, all a gem-quality diamond has to offer is the perception of its preciousness. As a symbol of eternal love, the tradition of the diamond engagement ring has become so pervasive that it's hard to believe that this is a fairly recent phenomenon. And an extremely calculated one -- the result of a marketing campaign developed at a time when the demand for diamonds had sunk to an all-time low and an increasing supply threatened the precious (as opposed to semiprecious) nature of the stones.
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As Edward Jay Epstein outlined in his 1982 book "The Rise and Fall of Diamonds," N.W. Ayer saw the challenge as one rooted in mass psychology, meticulously researching the attitudes of American men and women about romance and gift giving. From this research, the slogan "A Diamond Is Forever" was born, launching one of the most brilliant, sophisticated and enduring marketing campaigns of all time. Without ever mentioning the name De Beers, the campaign set out to seduce every man, woman and child in America with the notion that no romance is complete without a rock -- and the bigger the rock, the better the romance. That men also now had a way to show the world how much money they made was an added bonus.
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The slogan "A Diamond Is Forever" was also designed to convince the purchaser that although a diamond is a good investment, for sentimental reasons no rock should ever be resold. Given the continuous mining of new stones -- not to mention the half-billion or so carats that will never rust, break or wear out walking around on the hands, necks, ears and lapels of hundreds of millions of women -- the last thing De Beers wants is to have previously sold stones coming back onto the market.
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De Beers has also manipulated an artificial sense of the diamond's scarcity by buying up new mines, freezing out challengers and mopping up excess supply. Through a web of intricately intertwined businesses, De Beers successfully created a cartel in the strictest sense of the word, staving off dreaded price fluctuations by controlling everything from the stones' removal from the ground to their delivery into the hands of jewelers.

Then there's the little matter of how this vain indulgence fuels genocide and war in sub-Saharan Africa. And as my friend Rob Fogler told me, DeBeers has now started a campaign called Right Hand Rings, which is trying to sell the idea that a woman now needs a rock on the right hand as well, to signify "the strength, success, and independence of women." YEAH, RIGHT!!!

It's not so much that I care about people spending a ridiculous amount of money to pay monopoly rents to the cartel, but that they do it out of sheer ignorance. Most people buy into the crap that diamonds are somehow scarce and what not. No, people, diamonds are not scarce. They have very special properties, but properties that are easily replicable in artificial diamonds (which are also bought out of the market by DeBeers). The obnoxious prices you pay for diamonds is because DeBeers controls the supply of diamonds. And yes, in the process of paying these exorbitant sums, you are also doing your bit to fuel wars in Africa. So, think about it the next time you're tempted to pay through your nose to prove your love. Instead of buying blindly and UNIMAGINATIVELY into a perverse ad campaign, think up a creative way to show your love. And if you want to buy a rock anyway, give Moissanite a look. If nothing else, you won't have to rob the bank to pay for it.