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Comment by thrance | Hacker News Reader

I'm often reminded of this classic tweet:

> it's actually crazy we figured out how to grow real diamonds that are cheaper and better quality than the real thing and so many people are still like, no thanks the suffering is what makes it special.

https://x.com/missmayn/status/1612892354624786444

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It’s kind of surprising that diamonds still have appeal as jewelry at all given the rise of lab-grown. I always assumed that people liked them because they were rare and expensive.

Expensive because they were perceived as rare. Classic article: https://priceonomics.com/diamonds-are-bullshit/

Synthetic has pretty much eaten their lunch now.

People liked them because they’re colorless, sparkly, and hard.

It's marketing plus perception of how expensive it is. Most of diamond purchases are for engagement rings. Nobody wants to appear cheap. The expense and rarity is the point.

> Most of diamond purchases are for engagement rings. Nobody wants to appear cheap. The expense and rarity is the point.

I relate to this. I wasn’t born rich and grew up poor. My parents started a business when I was in my teens, so I worked two jobs, and technically still do because I help them out. My parents instilled a work ethic in me that’s helped me get to where I am in life.

When it came time for me to buy an engagement ring, I went into the process knowing I wanted a natural diamond. My best friend said he could tell the difference between “real” and “fake” and that I shouldn’t be cheap. I didn’t want to be “cheap,” either. I was ready to spend $30,000+ on a diamond.

Instead, I bought a lab grown diamond. I spent $1,600 on a 1.72ct. My buddy thinks it’s real and nobody has even asked whether it’s lab grown or natural. I realized I was spending too much time asking, “why should I get a natural diamond?” The reasons never justified the cost. Spending 18x to 20x more on something that looks exactly the same and serves the same purpose just wasn’t logical to me.

That can be the right call (and is the one I would make) but for situations like this, it may be as much about how you think about something yourself rather than how others view it. If spending more makes it mean something different to you, then that can be a primary function. That being said, blood diamonds are a huge problem, DeBeers is a cartel, and we’d be better off investing our money in other ways that serve a relationship, family, etc.

I'd counterpoint that if one can't make oneself feel good through something other than lighting cash on fire... one isn't thinking hard enough.

In the parent's example, I'd be surprised if anyone can't find another good or activity to also purchase for $25,000 that isn't meaningful.

And you still have a physically identical diamond.

Yes I agree. My point was more generally that the discussion around whether other people can tell ignores how one feels themself. I don’t often hear that point made, that you can’t lie to yourself IF it’s important to you that it’s natural or whatever. It’s way easier to actually not care or prefer lab grown and then move forward feeling great.

>>>Spending 18x to 20x more on something that looks exactly the same and serves the same purpose just wasn’t logical to me.

That's up there with people who brag about only smoking when they drink and vegetarians for moral reasons who eat fish.

You framed a feelings based, adherence to tradition, no basis of actual functionality as a rational, logical decision, just because there was a worse decision to be made.

That’s a silly way to look at it. Surely people can realize that something made through natural processes has more of an appeal than something made in a factory?

That said, most of the gems I’ve purchased in my life have been lab grown.

I'd argue that most people appear to prefer manufactured things these days.

No one's wearing clothes their mothers' spun because mothers' see that their children prefer the "higher quality" that is manufactured in factories.

Few choose to spend their time engaged in walking about in nature and choose instead to gaze endlessly at their factory built device that provides them content ground out in other sorts of factories. (content farms etc).

Something made in nature can be more appealing, but it seems to me that the modern preference is not at all for natural things. Hell, even in the diamonds we're talking about. No one's proposing with a natural diamond. People propose with carefully curated, carefully manipulated, and carefully presented diamonds. There's nothing natural about it, really.

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