So, it turns out scorned women are not the ones to worry about. Scorned divers who wear dive watches on the other hand…. hell’s fury is a light offshore breeze in comparison.
In nearly a decade of gentle agitation on various subjects in the watch space, I have never experienced a wave of hurt feelings and freshly minted haters quite like the day I dared to allege that, and I feel like whispering this, so chastened was I by this experience, people who wear dive watches, by and large, don’t actually dive.
Salty dogs by name and salty commenters by nature.
Like a scuba diver’s tank in a bonfire, the post exploded.
I must point out early on that I have some form here, when it comes to a gentle poking of the watch wearing bear.
And, while the stirring is more of a light whorling of the bear’s nipple hair, it can still pinch enough to raise the heckles.
I mean, I dared to stand up for Hublot on the now retired podcast About Effing Time. I posited that the brand deserves more credit for some of its recent innovations; colored ceramic, sapphire crystal cases and bracelets, the idea to put a rubber strap on a precious metal watch and so on.
Co-host George Bamford responded by covering my face with a giant Hublot wall clock. The camera therefore failed to show my hard eye roll. Adrian Barker reached out to put a steadying hand on my shoulder.
A pretty standard day on the set of AET, basically.
My reputation, my integrity, my very personality being dragged to the depths in the comment section is not a new thing. That Hublot video just ticked over 185,000 views.
Very few of the thousands of up-likes and comments are there to thank me for my hot Hublot take. It’s cool, though. I love it. I stand by both statements and will elaborate on the second one in this column.
But let’s recap the scene of the dive watch diss crime, because it wasn’t a bit of shade on a podcast episode in this case.
It was much more offensive than that. I held up a sign on London’s Regent Street, one of its main shopping thoroughfares, that said exactly what the headline says: “No. I’ve never dived in a dive watch, and neither have you.”
It was posted on social media amongst a gallery of similarly silly signs, including one kindly asking people to “Stop calling Tudor ‘Rolex’s little brother’”.
The purpose of the ‘dude with sign’ campaign was, in fact, all about the last sign of the lot, which mentioned our soon to be opened Watch Discovery Studio in central London.
It’s an alternative retail concept that will bring brands like Studio Underdog, Toledano & Chan and Serica to the city. But it was this dig at desk divers that detonated the comments section.
“Actually…” most of the retorts begin. Many went on to detail the various dives that have been completed with dive watches on.
Several tagged me in diving logs, with a wrist shot. To this day, I am mentioned in posts with watches underwater in some form or another.
The reaction, as self serious as it was, has made me reflect on a couple of things.
Firstly, the no doubt relatively small number of dive watch owners who actually dive with it on DO NOT want to be associated with the great majority of non-diving dive watch wearers. Like me, for example. Never have dived, never will, not bothered.
I discovered a line in the sand on the beach, and I’m on the wrong side of it. “Diving” to the bottom of the Four Seasons pool is as close as I will get to testing a watch’s water resistance. This group are proud of their underwater credentials, and when it comes to a generalisation, they simply won’t have it.
Secondly, it raised the question of purpose and authenticity. Are these submariners onto something? Do watch wearers who use their tool watches for its intended purpose get more kicks? Does a pilot fumbling around with a slide rule on a Navitimer while actually flying a plane enjoy a stronger connection to their Breitling, than I do, wearing a gold one in business class that has the wrong date and the wrong time on it?
Perhaps.
Does a nurse checking on an ill patient feel more of a bond with their pulsometer-printed watch than the patient, wearing the same watch, who doesn’t even know what it does?
Almost certainly.
One indisputable fact is that stories add value to objects. A case study titled the ‘Significant Objects Project’ conducted by two journalists found that thrift store knick knacks worth little to no value could be sold at an average 2,800% higher price when it was offered for sale with a story attached to it.
If a dive watch, or a field watch, or a chronograph has been used as it was intended to be, accruing wild yarns of survival and adventure, then yes – I’ll hand it to you. You and your watch are sexier for your stories.
To wrap it up, the whole experience has humbled me, and I’d like to apologise unreservedly to every single mechanical watch-wearing diver that reads this, even to the sunburnt, soggy visage of Jacques Coustea himself.
Nah, just kidding. The best thing that’s come out of this outburst is the inspiration for my next dude with sign text: “How do you know when someone has actually dived with their dive watch? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.”