Diamonds Are For…Suckers?

Societal gifting norms are a trip, huh?

Like…nobody exactly demands that someone gathers dead plants on their behalf for Valentine’s Day, but the expectation is certainly there. Being able to pick them up all bundled up at the florist makes it seem more normal, but you’re still collecting flowering herbs like some sort of open-world video game character completing a side quest.

See also—diamonds.

Take out the middleman and you’re basically tunneling into the depths of the earth to retrieve rare gems and drag them back to the surface as a testament to your love and/or appreciation for the recipient.

Weird, right?

Of course, that’s not how it works. What you’re really doing is participating in a tightly controlled commodity market wherein manufactured scarcity and an organized international marketing consortium conspires to prop up prices on something that is essentially just a nicely polished rock which can now be made in a lab for like a dollar.

But you don’t actually see any of that, either. So what you’re really really doing is buying the downstream consumer-grade junk that filters its way through the elaborate hierarchy of retail where your local jeweler and/or big box store gets to pick up the crumbs left over after all the British Royalty and NBA players have had their fill.

Crap. That sounds stupid, too.

Okay fine, there’s really no way to look at this that doesn’t compel some combination of cynicism and despair.

But that doesn’t mean you’re not on the hook to buy someone some diamonds from time to time. (cough, cough Mother’s Day cough) And if someone you care about is expecting diamonds, it’s really not going to matter how rationally you explain the logic behind more objectively worthwhile alternatives like a nice piece of original art or a felony quantity of Chuck E. Cheese tokens.

So yeah. At least try to get out of this thing with as little expense as possible.

And here you go.

$200 retail. $39.99 from us. Your choice of necklace or earrings.

Happy, mom? Sorry about not walking to Mordor and ripping jewels out of a unicorn’s tramp stamp or whatever to make your Sunday next month.