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Comment by overcast | Hacker News Reader

What I don't understand, is how it wasn't immediately apparent this stuff was junk? You couldn't possibly think that it was equal in quality to much more expensive competitors. I guess it's just the case of not being real, until someone says it.

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My understanding with such apparent truths is that even if its noticeable to an individual its a question of his personal opinion vs prevailing wisdom. so in his mind he runs a quick calculus on the cost of changing other peoples prevailing opinion and possibly alienating them of just giving in and buying the damn thing. Now when it is said out loud by somebody with enough critical weight then that calculation shifts dramatically & it may be worthwhile speaking up again. once that opinion is out there you can move that conclusion out into your model of the world instead of keeping it in your personal model so essentially you are unburdened from having to keep that mental context alive within you and you can more easily move on to the next step from there.

IMHO this is how diamonds have proliferated for so long despite having minimal intrinsic value.

Diamonds, especially the recent craze around discolored ones might be a good comparison. They are valuable mostly because of years of shrewd marketing. If DeBeers started telling the truth, they could drop in value pretty quickly.

I was absolutely floored when I started seeing advertisements for 'chocolate' diamonds a few years back, and even more floored that people I knew just HAD to have them.

I had dealt with 'chocolate' diamonds for years, I currently have hundreds in my wood shop! My father works as a machinist, and brown, low-quality diamonds are their abrasive of choice for many jobs. They're (or rather, they were) super cheap because they were such low quality. I always swiped a handful when I visited him at work as a kid, because they made great pellets (they were exceptionally tiny and really hard) for my slingshot. I had a whole jug of them and just forgot about the things.

And now here we are.

Just look at the mania for wearing torn jeans.

At least jeans manufacturers weren't marketing based on the unblemished workmanship of their jeans. Their typical message is "Jeans are worn by rugged, individualist people. You want to be a rugged independent person, right?" And I think that torn jeans can fit into that. Like, a farmer might rip his jeans and keep wearing them or something, so ripped jeans might make you look even more rugged and individualist.

Chocolate diamonds are a direct contradiction of regular diamond marketing. If you go to great lengths to talk about how important clarity is when justifying your diamonds' prices, it's particularly silly when you start selling the least clear diamonds possible.

Black pearls were worthless until some enterprising jeweler made a thing out of them being black.

Several years ago, my mom ran low on money, so she decided to sell her old wedding ring. She hadn't worn it for years because she and my dad got divorced long ago, so she figured she'd at least get some liquid cash by selling it.

The first shop she took it to offered a little under 10% of what it cost. She thought the shop was trying to scam her, so she went to a bunch of other shops, and they all offered less. So she went back to the first shop a couple of days later, and there was a different guy there who told her that the first guy was an idiot who overvalued the diamond. It was a piece of junk, and it was worth well under 10% of what it cost. The jeweler also pointed out, in detail, that the diamond itself was really shitty even by the standards of wedding rings. But because they already made that offer, they decided to honor it anyway just to avoid any drama. And so my mom sold a ring that cost her and my dad $30k for about $2600.

And I understand that's normal. Retailers mark new diamond rings up like crazy because that's how much people are willing to pay for a wedding ring, even if it's not what the stone is actually worth.

Now I'm curious what the pawn shop sold it for. $5k maybe?

As someone who couldn't tell a sherry decanter from a hole in the wall, I assume it is equal in quality to more expensive competitors; that is to say, more expensive competitors charge more for effectively the same products.

It's a glass bottle, it doesn't leak, it doesn't shatter when you pick it up. Apart from appearance, how much better quality could it usefully be?

Sure, but common sense comes in to play when the one you bought is valued at $1, and everywhere else is $1000. And if everyone knew and didn't care, then why blow it up as if it was some big secret?

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