i bought some flakey rock from a flea market one time, and after i scrubbed it away i found two garnets, at some point in time i started collecting Lincoln memorial pennies because i think they still have copper in them, that and when i give the materials to a blacksmith and commission a ring i can tell my fiancée i saved every penny for this ring.
According to Wikipedia: "Before World War II, only 10% of American engagement rings contained a diamond." Which would suggest that they merely pushed the popularity and didn't entirely invent it.
Not only that, they followed with the "should cost a monthly salary" after - and when they launched in Japan a couple of years after that, they changed it to "should cost two monthly salaries".
I'm glad my wife refused diamond rings. Her response, and I quote: "Are you crazy? Do you know how much cheese we could buy for this?" I love her so much
Also, the cost of diamonds is artificially inflated. They aren't as rare as you would think, and there is a reason why companies want you to pass down your diamond ring(s), etc. to your kids, as that would lower the chance of people realizing how worthless they are if they try to sell it back.
And, also, child labour is used for digging out those diamonds. No better way to express eternal love than supporting those hard working kids, am I right?
And all because GI's were coming home with LOTS of backpay from the War, and were getting engaged and married! Most effective ad campaign EVER! Also where the 'x months worth' comes from.
gi's as many did in general shouldve listened to some higher ups etc as some did buy rolex's even now it at worst will hold its value, propose with a rolex any smart woman wil say yes
And women want the biggest diamond. Even when you tell them about the brutal slave labor that goes into digging them up Some say they’re the worst gender😂
Yeah no it’s easier to trick someone freshly traumatized that’s been out of the country for a while into buying into something like that. Just blasting them with ads saying “this is the new normal that happened while you were gone, trust us you should go really big and spend ALL of your money on a ring to celebrate surviving the war! Go on, be as impulsive as possible!” It’s actually kind of upsetting to think about like dude, that’s not how you honor the troops
They are often used in tools. The "chocolate diamonds" that came out several years ago, were just repurposed industrial grade diamonds which people now pay 12x the price because of smart marketing.
Absolutely. Afterward they spend a whole bunch of time creating a false scarcity of diamonds. It's all a joke. You want to make your lady something nice. Make her a nice inlaid ring. Use whatever beautiful stone she loves. Amethyst turquoise Ruby if you can get your hands on it etc you'd be surprised how many fragments of things you can get for a reasonable price and then you can turn it into something absolutely fantastic and beautiful. On top of that every time she looks at it she knows you took your time and effort to put that together with her in mind the whole time.
10000% better than just buying something worth four months of rent or your mortgage payment and it be the exact same carbon copy hundreds of millions of women have themselves, make it personalized!
A few generations ago there were infamous strikes in northern Spain because workers here were sick and tired of eating percebes (apparently called goose barnacles in English) for every meal for weeks on end - considered basically worthless slop. Now percebes are considered a local delicacy and cost a massive amount. My family eats them once a year for Christmas, even though there's a pretty high chance one of great-grandparents participated in those strikes.
@@nozyy5684I think it was mostly because a lot of them weren't prepared fresh, so they'd pretty quickly start to decay by the time they'd be cooked resulting in some pretty bad tasting food. Doesn't matter how well you prepare a dish if the key ingredient is actively working against anything one does with it. Then people got to experimenting and found out how to not only prepare it, but also what goes with it... Now it's a fancy dish one pays a premium price for. (And there's also undercooked as well as cooking methods that would ruin the meat outright. Not sure what that would be for lobster, but I'm sure there's a few ways to not cook lobster.)
@@bobluegi7120 The idea of 'rings for love' seems to have been as far back as ancient Egypt, but it has developed through the ages from copper to gold to gemstones etc.. It's extremely hard to pinpoint this.. It could be as far as human history to feel the need to gift something to show affection to another.. Quite an interesting part of history.
Diamond rings did actually exist before. But they were very much an upper class thing, and any gemstone was acceptable. De Beers did seriously change the game though. I recommend the doctoral thesis of DT Cochrane "What's Love Got to Do with It? Diamonds and the Accumulation of De Beers, 1933-55" for a better history than a typical abridged article will get you.
@Jay-kf3od Engagement and wedding rings were a thing (in a certain stratum of society), and about 10% of them had diamonds. What De Beers did is force diamonds on working class people.
Makes for a solid example of how you can manufacture value in something just by saying that it has value often enough... Provided the general public doesn't join together and refute the advertising. Makes me glad that enough people saw NFTs for the worthless rubbish they are. The advertising and conditioning didn't work out, so worthless receipts remain worthless. :3
The one thing diamonds have going for them is that they are pretty. Who in their right mind has ever looked at an NFT and said it's actually pleasing to the eye?
Hey guys! Lapidary is a VERY easy hobby to get started in, and I'd rather give my wife a ring with a stone I shaped and polished by hand! Choose something pretty that you think represents your SO! I like Aventurine, Chrysocolla and Jasper! Don't worry too much about the shape, it's not like a "perfectly cut diamond" actually reflects any of us anyway... The handmadeness of it is more endearing, to me
Ooh that does sound much better. Time and effort seem much more valuable in a relationship than rectangular green paper with several people on them that have been dead for centuries.
"Very easy" If you have a rock/lapidary club nearby that offers access to a lapidary studio. Otherwise, faceting machines are extremely expensive because they're high precision tools; one will easily run you thousands of dollars minimum without even getting into the laps, dops, glues, polish, loupes, rough to practice with, and so on. A club can help shave that down to tens of dollars a session, if that. Most people can definitely learn to cut gemstones for jewellery, but the problem is having access to the equipment to learn on.
Take note that it's the diamond ring, not rings themselves, that were invented by the ad campaign. The concept of using wedding rings can be traced back to Ancient Egypt.
Funny thing is not even that really, they only standardized and inflated the cost. Diamond rings for engagement can be traced to the medieval times though there were other gemstones that were commonly used too
I got my wife a ring from the estate section of the store, the second I saw it I knew it was the one, and it's a very dark blue manufactured gem, she loves it, and it was only about a weeks pay.
@@Outerringfuelgod It isn't really obvious that those came from different sources, actually. You would need to know the history to know for certain, and he didn't imply a difference so much as assume it was understood.
I inherited my grandmother's ring. My wife inherited her grandmother's ring. My wife's ring is custom made from both rings stones combined. Despite the fact they lived over a thousand kilometers apart, our grandmother's rings were identical. Because they were bought during the de beers marketing era. We added a big ole amethyst for the central stone to make it symmetrical.
You can grow diamonds in labs now and the diamond corporations already started ranting about only a "real" diamond is a respectful proposal. My friends got engaged when he got her a ring with a pearl because they are her favorite and it's a lovely piecw of jewelry 😊
historically people could exchange various things, or nothing at all! various things included but were not limited to fruit, occasional jewellery (if you were rich), and ornate daggers (objectively the coolest)
U forgot to mention they also created an artificial shortage to cause cost of the diamonds to skyrocket as diamonds can be quite common in certain regions.
I offered my ex a gold ring, she laughed at me in public, said no and said to try again cause, as everyone else and me heard "There's no gem so that's a man's ring" She didn't get a ring lol
I once asked my grandmother why she didn't have an engagement ring. "Oh, we didn't do that back then. If a man wanted to impress you, he bought you something useful. Like a block of cheese!" This was Italy in the 1930s.
Yep! Diamonds are intrinsically worthless, and that's a quote from one of their executives. Of all the gemstones, diamonds are the most bland gem. Their only benefit is their hardness and use in manufacturing and technology.
That's not the worst part, it's the fact that "diamonds are intrinsically worthless" said by the formerly debeer CEO and they own like 80% of the world's diamond mine so they monopolize them to be worth a ridiculous amount.
There were no colored assosications broadly accepted before. If you go way back before modern dyes every baby gets white because dyes used to make other colors would wash out or be pale
@@solsystem1342 There were colored associations, but it was somewhat more recent I guess in the early 1900s, but people were the ones with those associations. Reds were considered more masculine, including pink. Then in the 30's to 40's, corpos noticed some bought pink for girls and started their campaigns to make it widespread and the "norm".
Diamonds are super common, and they are found in a myriad of products outside jewelery like saws, blades, drills, electronics, and high grit polishing creams. Super cheap tbh. Only the "Jewelery" costs anything substantial, and that stuff is mass produced just like the rest in either offshore factories, or in smaller, limited production runs of rotating trends.
When me and my girl talked about this, she said diamonds are dumb because you have to get them professionally cleaned on a regular basis. She just wants an opal, which makes sense because theyre shiny and they look awesome
Do be aware that because genuine Opal contains water that it cannot be taken out into the cold or it will freeze and bust so have a different stone inlayed ring for the colder temps and save the Opal for the warmer temps. Lab grown Opal is fine in all temps though if you want to go that route. Hope this helps and yes Diamonds for jewelry sucks!💙
I bought my wife and myself replicas of The One Ring as wedding rings after we got married when our silver rings got tarnished and stopped fitting as well. She's loved it over the idea of a diamond ring.
In most cases the tradition was giving a piece of your mother’s jewelry. And usually things like turquoise, onyx, sapphires, and even just more common polished stones were very very typical. The de Beers brothers ruthlessly dominated the South Africa diamond and through heavy tactics they found themselves with 90% of the diamond supply. However going into the Great Depression there was not a lot of demand for jewelry, and there was a large amounts that were sold off on the market. So the de Beers company decided that they had to make people think all those other pieces were “not worthy” and so they started hammering generations of people with the idea that diamonds were so much more important. At the same time they heavily cut production and started stockpiling diamonds, thus making demand outstrip supply to arbitrarily set a high value.
@@laurelkeeper Those ARE artificial diamonds, not natural ones. The artificial ones have no inclusions, so are far more resistant and useful for tools anyway.
They ARE somewhat rare, but when 60-70% of all diamonds ever mined are held in vaults by the mining and cutting companies to ensure an inflated price of the few on the market, the pricing IS artificially inflated.
The ring wasn’t common practice but offering things to your partner or their family has been common practice in many societies for millennia and even among other animals
Me and my wife didn't go for diamond rings. Instead we actually picked the other a ring we thought they'd like. We didnt have a lot of money at the time due to being in college So she got me this pitch black ring whilst I got her this lovely cyan one with little shiny metals in it from a local marketer (I forgot what metal, but she loved it.) And now, 6 years later, we still don't regret our choices even though I've asked if she wants to change them for more nicer ones. Rings are special because they have meaning behind them, not if they're expensive or have diamonds in them. Our rings are just as special or irreplaceable as an expensive diamond one. And that's what matters.
Fun fact, breakfast items, specifically bacon, is also something society made up for money gains. Major companies realized their bacon/pork sales were low, so they thought up a campaign saying that eating bacon for breakfast is important and part of a healthy diet throughout your meals. And so bacon and eggs became a “breakfast” staple.
The wedding ring has been around for thousands of years. Everything from bone, leather, metal. The value of the material did have significance in some cultures. He's 100% correct about diamonds. My wife chose a silver band... I had an amethyst stone that I found when I was cub scout/kid at about 10 y/o. The stone was cut & set by a locel jeweler.
The greatest con of all time. Making carbon glass, better suited for industrial applications, as a precious stone meant to symbolize love. Still burns in pure oxygen too.
precious jems have been used and traded as currency for a long time because they last forever and couldnt be replicated or fake they always had value, and were used in jewelry for centuries
I worked in a Pawn Shop for years and telling people that their ring they paid over 3k for was worth like $200 at most and that the stones were pretty much worthless pissed a lot of people off.
1477 was the first recorded diamond engagement ring. They gained popularity in the 1700 with the discovery of more diamonds. The stone was really just too expensive for most until the post WW2 economic boom.
Reminds me of (parroting this off of a video I saw) how car companies made like videos on how pedestrians should make way for cars, instead of the other way around.
This is why I'm going to carve a Love Spoon. It's a very old Welsh/Celtic tradition and I think something carved with my own hands is far more meaningful than purchasing a shiny rock.
we got matching stainless steel bands, no engravings, no gems, just something physical that represents our bond, that's it. She also picked her engagement ring in a random stall in some festival, it was dirt cheap, and she said "you should buy me that one and propose with it" and I did right there, we've been together for 10 years.
I have a similar gripe with lightbulbs. It is entirely possible to create a lightbulb that can be used forever. The only reason the corps won't, is because they would make themselves obsolete.
theres also similiar tradition in japan where japanese people buying KFC in christmas. back in 1970 KFC 1st branch open up in japan but since their store is bright red and white with only english text (who speak english in 1970 japan lol) people mistakes KFC for barber or candyshop. so KFC launch an ad campaign that said "buying KFC in christmas is an american culture" which is totally fabricated and yet it works and still a thing to this day. CMIIW
There's other similar things such as Christmas ims for couples, instead of families. And I bet a lot of the trraditions in Europe around Christmas as they vary country to country have been manipulated by companies trying to unload stuff, like coal for naughty children (coal was cheap and needed for keeping the houses warm.
This is mostly true, although De Beers did not actually come up with this idea, just repopularized something that was common among the aristocratic class in certain parts of Europe which went back several centuries. One other thing worth noting is that for a long time diamond was actually a lot more scarce, in Europe and North America at least, so that is where this idea that diamonds are super rare and valuable comes from originally, and is a big part of the reason that this marketing actually worked. The discovery of abundant diamonds to be mined in South Africa, among other places, changed that significantly.
i have few reasons to buy engagement sword instead: 1. doesn't support exploitation 2. looks cool af (I like swords) 3. I can stab intruders 4. I'm a lesbian
I think my favorite is Santa wearing red and white because of Coca-Cola. And not because that's a fact, but because it's so debatable if it's true or not that it keeps causing the name Coca-Cola to rise up in conversation during Christmas time.
People think that they're enlightened when they find out that diamonds are worthless and that we assign value to them.. Imagine how they're gonna feel the day they realize that absolutely nothing has "monetary" value. The only thing in this world that has any form of value is time and people.
DeBeers was so monumentally successful that at one point they mined 90 percent of diamonds in the world and the founder, Cecil Rhodes, ran South Africa (as a colony) and essentially bankrolled colonial action in the region. He had way bigger plans, though. He intended to build a railway from South Africa to Egypt
While it was DeBeers who paid for the advertising campaign, it was Edward Bernays who conceived and executed that campaign. He's possibly the most successful Marketter of all time. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and used what he learned from him to craft ad campaigns that shaped 20th Century American culture. You're surely familiar with his other work: • For the Pork industry, he got Americans to eat Bacon & Eggs for Breakfast, extolling the virtues of a "hearty breakfast". • He popularized the use of disposable paper products, such as paper cups. • Standardized inclusion of Fluoride in Drinking water was his work. • He got women to start smoking, with his "Torches of Freedom" campaign. • Later, the health industry paid him enough to work for them, instead of the tobacco industry. The Anti-Smoking movement that started in the 60s/70s was his work. Edward Bernays is possibly the single most influential man in American history.
The diamond ring is worth as much as you bought it for pretty much. The idea of the engagement ring is almost like saying "I can provide for you." So, while yhere was a marketing boom in the early 1900's the idea of "I can provide for you" is still the same as the last 9-1800 years. The concept of a "band" specifically is the loop that represents endless fidelity to each other.
Same companies are also trying to call Lab Grown diamonds fake or inferior, when there is no physical, chemical or any other way according to the FTC. Here is the main difference between mined and lab diamonds: the price. Lab diamonds are anywhere from 30%-99% cheaper than mined. Same variety of cuts, clarity, color, and carats as mined.
Something interesting I've learned, the definition of a mineral includes that it would have to be manmade. Even though lab-grown diamonds are exactly the same as natural ones, aside from the name, lab-grown diamonds by that definition would not be considered a mineral. Weird, huh?
Years ago, in a series called “Adam Ruins Everything”, Adam Conover discussed diamond engagement rings as well as a number of other ideas invented or heavily promoted by corporations in order to make more money. Another example that struck out to me was razor companies promoting women’s beauty standards that required shaving. Nowadays, a lot of people consider body hair on women to be disgusting. At the time, though, shaving was seen as unnecessary or even indecent because most women dressed modestly and didn’t show their legs or armpits.
Well, that's a slight misconception. There were documented cases of such rings (as a wedding rings) earlier, like in 1477, BUT yes, it's became sort of a tradition after De Beers.
just because Upperclass people sometime offered diamong ring amount any other gemmed ring mean it was the standard for everyone lile what thor is saying
Gem quality diamonds are also, relatively speaking, very common. They're "rare" and expensive because literally a few huge cartels own the entire global mining and wholesale supply chain for them and collude for price fixing and artificial scarsity.
Hell yeah, that is why my wife and I made her ring out our own found sapphires. We went and panned our own stones and payed to design and manufacture the ring after we got the stones we liked the best cured and cut. About the same price as a "great" diamond ring but about 1000x more meaningful imo.
Diamonds have been worth money for centuries upon centuries. Ring giving as a sign of matrimony has been around for millennia. Damonds have been a subset of many stones being embedded into wedding rings De beers just made it prominent to push the sales of their diamonds. They didn’t invent the concept!!!
As far as I know, you take a wedding ring without any added decoration, because the endless ring stands for the endless/ eternal love between those two people. But hey, moneymoneymoney
My wife's engagement ring has a few small diamonds on it but bigger sapphires because her birthday is in September and it's her birthstone. The wedding rings were made by us at jewellers who offered a teaching day course where you smelt and make the ring yourselves. So much better than just buying an overpriced ring from the shop.
It's also crazy how diamond retailers can not actually verify whether you are purchasing a "blood diamond" or not. They'll tell you that they know but they aren't given that information from the suppliers. ( I mean who would admit they sourced unethically)
Also, the song "diamonds are forever" was part of the marketing to deter resale. Partly because it would mean DeBeers couldn't control supply, but also so people wouldn't find out just how much their diamond deprecated
It’s also very interesting the corporations involved and countries involved in the diamond trade. Antwerp is very well known for diamonds and other such curiosities of cultures.
At this point a lot of people know this. And yet. If you dont propose with an expensive diamond, there are people who will reject the proposal on those grounds. Thats real neat psychology
It worked well and became an integral part of western society (and now global society) because it filled a role that was lost as the world was moderninzing : how to identify if someone is married or not. Some cultures still have certain ways (for example, muslim and jewish men who grow their beards when they get married).
Now that flawless diamonds are easy to make artificially they're starting to say that the flaws in natural diamonds are the real reason you should be paying more lmao. I can't wait for the industry to die.
Information for reference:
theeyeofjewelry.com/de-beers/de-beers-jewelry/de-beers-most-famous-ad-campaign-marked-the-entire-diamond-industry/
Back in the day it was a dowry, you had to give a whole ass piece of land lol or a horse xD
i bought some flakey rock from a flea market one time, and after i scrubbed it away i found two garnets, at some point in time i started collecting Lincoln memorial pennies because i think they still have copper in them, that and when i give the materials to a blacksmith and commission a ring i can tell my fiancée i saved every penny for this ring.
"My source is I made it the f- actually here, this is my source. Go wild"
According to Wikipedia: "Before World War II, only 10% of American engagement rings contained a diamond." Which would suggest that they merely pushed the popularity and didn't entirely invent it.
Rings have existed since Roman times. It was the diamond that is new.
Not only that, they followed with the "should cost a monthly salary" after - and when they launched in Japan a couple of years after that, they changed it to "should cost two monthly salaries".
Now it’s suppose to be 3 months wtf
Hand made brass ring/copper/tin ring
@@liquidsleepgames3661ANY hand made ring is so much better.
@@liquidsleepgames3661gotta be careful. I made some copper rings and they died my fingers green
@zacharyherman8437 that is because of a reaction not everyone goes through it there are work arounds.
I'm glad my wife refused diamond rings.
Her response, and I quote:
"Are you crazy? Do you know how much cheese we could buy for this?"
I love her so much
She really knows what matters, copious amounts of cheese.
Rejects Diamonds? Appreciates cheese? Respect.
"You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese" is an actual thing in a medieval "spellbook"
I think that would work well on your wife!
Did you buy the cheese?
@@tsgnexus1753but really, did you?!?
Also, the cost of diamonds is artificially inflated. They aren't as rare as you would think, and there is a reason why companies want you to pass down your diamond ring(s), etc. to your kids, as that would lower the chance of people realizing how worthless they are if they try to sell it back.
That’s the sad truth, that not enough people know about.
Want a precious stone with real scarcity? Buy her a black opal ring.
I remember my materials engineering professor telling the class the diamonds are 10x more common than emeralds.
@@medicineman152 Plus, that shit looks gorgeous af.
And, also, child labour is used for digging out those diamonds. No better way to express eternal love than supporting those hard working kids, am I right?
And all because GI's were coming home with LOTS of backpay from the War, and were getting engaged and married! Most effective ad campaign EVER! Also where the 'x months worth' comes from.
gi's as many did in general shouldve listened to some higher ups etc as some did buy rolex's even now it at worst will hold its value, propose with a rolex any smart woman wil say yes
And women want the biggest diamond. Even when you tell them about the brutal slave labor that goes into digging them up Some say they’re the worst gender😂
Yeah no it’s easier to trick someone freshly traumatized that’s been out of the country for a while into buying into something like that. Just blasting them with ads saying “this is the new normal that happened while you were gone, trust us you should go really big and spend ALL of your money on a ring to celebrate surviving the war! Go on, be as impulsive as possible!”
It’s actually kind of upsetting to think about like dude, that’s not how you honor the troops
@@riverstyx7251so basically they stole money from patients
@@riverstyx7251 DeBeers is a literal monopoly, they own the mines and collect all the diamonds and have a warehouse with all the rocks in them
She doesn't want a ring, she wants you to overthrow the government and get her a puppy.
A person after my own heart
As long as I can get some creepy crawlies too. Can't have a swarm queen without a swarm 🤭
@solsystem1342 creepy crawlies are always welcomed
Who is she and is she interested in dinner at 7:00 this Saturday? Restaurant policy will be BYOS - Bring Your Own ⚔️
@@N0hN4me she might bring 🕷️ and ⚔️
Be still, my heart. Make that a kitten or two and woah am i woo'ed.
I'm wondering whether diamonds would be more useful in manufacturing tools.
They are used in manufacturing industrial equipment, but primarily the ones used there are artificially created diamonds
@toddoverholt4556 probably cheaper than buying the real ones
Natural ones are far more fragile than artificial ones due to inclusions, so in modern manufacturing, no.
They are often used in tools. The "chocolate diamonds" that came out several years ago, were just repurposed industrial grade diamonds which people now pay 12x the price because of smart marketing.
@@toddoverholt4556That's because lab grown diamonds are nearly indistinguishable and way cheaper.
Absolutely. Afterward they spend a whole bunch of time creating a false scarcity of diamonds. It's all a joke. You want to make your lady something nice. Make her a nice inlaid ring. Use whatever beautiful stone she loves. Amethyst turquoise Ruby if you can get your hands on it etc you'd be surprised how many fragments of things you can get for a reasonable price and then you can turn it into something absolutely fantastic and beautiful. On top of that every time she looks at it she knows you took your time and effort to put that together with her in mind the whole time.
10000% better than just buying something worth four months of rent or your mortgage payment and it be the exact same carbon copy hundreds of millions of women have themselves, make it personalized!
@@ashermack2543hehe “carbon”
@@ashermack2543 "carbon" copy lmao (diamonds are made of compressed carbon)
@@jer26705 definitely not intended but i will roll with it
This also adds the value of craftsmanship and artistry. A truly skilled jeweler can create beauty from anything that shines.
Is like what happen with lobsters. It was a "poor people food" until some rich pig started to sell them as "premium food".
Also depends how it's prepared. Lobster tastes absolutely horrid if not cooked properly.
A few generations ago there were infamous strikes in northern Spain because workers here were sick and tired of eating percebes (apparently called goose barnacles in English) for every meal for weeks on end - considered basically worthless slop. Now percebes are considered a local delicacy and cost a massive amount. My family eats them once a year for Christmas, even though there's a pretty high chance one of great-grandparents participated in those strikes.
@@river-t4y tbf idk what youd call not properly cooked maybe overcooked? but lobster is simple to cook
Partly I believe this is due to the collapse of the fisheries, so after some time it DID become a more rare foodstuff.
@@nozyy5684I think it was mostly because a lot of them weren't prepared fresh, so they'd pretty quickly start to decay by the time they'd be cooked resulting in some pretty bad tasting food.
Doesn't matter how well you prepare a dish if the key ingredient is actively working against anything one does with it. Then people got to experimenting and found out how to not only prepare it, but also what goes with it...
Now it's a fancy dish one pays a premium price for.
(And there's also undercooked as well as cooking methods that would ruin the meat outright. Not sure what that would be for lobster, but I'm sure there's a few ways to not cook lobster.)
Rings have been used for thousands of years. Engagement rings have not
engagement rings have been actually. Since the Renassaince Period they have used diamonds.
@@Ivyteasource ?
@@bobluegi7120 Maximilian I
@@bobluegi7120 google. I'm sure wikipedia will say the same.
@@bobluegi7120 The idea of 'rings for love' seems to have been as far back as ancient Egypt, but it has developed through the ages from copper to gold to gemstones etc.. It's extremely hard to pinpoint this.. It could be as far as human history to feel the need to gift something to show affection to another.. Quite an interesting part of history.
Diamond rings did actually exist before. But they were very much an upper class thing, and any gemstone was acceptable. De Beers did seriously change the game though.
I recommend the doctoral thesis of DT Cochrane "What's Love Got to Do with It? Diamonds and the Accumulation of De Beers, 1933-55" for a better history than a typical abridged article will get you.
@@watcher314159 i don't think he was saying diamond rings didn't exist, just that them being used in wedding and engagement rings wasnt a thing.
@Jay-kf3od Engagement and wedding rings were a thing (in a certain stratum of society), and about 10% of them had diamonds. What De Beers did is force diamonds on working class people.
@@watcher314159 yeah but also back in older times, other gems were more frequently used in jewelry like emeralds and sapphires
@watcher314159 dude your trying to argue a point that was never made.
@@Jay-kf3od It's a nitpick that was addressed in the linked article, but Thor did make an inaccurate claim in the video.
Makes for a solid example of how you can manufacture value in something just by saying that it has value often enough... Provided the general public doesn't join together and refute the advertising.
Makes me glad that enough people saw NFTs for the worthless rubbish they are. The advertising and conditioning didn't work out, so worthless receipts remain worthless. :3
The one thing diamonds have going for them is that they are pretty. Who in their right mind has ever looked at an NFT and said it's actually pleasing to the eye?
There are NFT that look good BUT the Ape shit killed it quickly with its wave of garbage
@@Bajuvare14 No NFT looks good, because they are NFTs lol.
":3" sleeper agent activated
@@Bajuvare14 only good ones I ever saw were the joke NFTs made by Nerrel as a gag at the end of his N64 controllers video
Hey guys! Lapidary is a VERY easy hobby to get started in, and I'd rather give my wife a ring with a stone I shaped and polished by hand! Choose something pretty that you think represents your SO! I like Aventurine, Chrysocolla and Jasper!
Don't worry too much about the shape, it's not like a "perfectly cut diamond" actually reflects any of us anyway... The handmadeness of it is more endearing, to me
Any tips on where to start? Anything would be appreciated!
This is actually way cooler and I'd scream if my bf did that
I like this attitude.
Ooh that does sound much better. Time and effort seem much more valuable in a relationship than rectangular green paper with several people on them that have been dead for centuries.
"Very easy" If you have a rock/lapidary club nearby that offers access to a lapidary studio. Otherwise, faceting machines are extremely expensive because they're high precision tools; one will easily run you thousands of dollars minimum without even getting into the laps, dops, glues, polish, loupes, rough to practice with, and so on. A club can help shave that down to tens of dollars a session, if that.
Most people can definitely learn to cut gemstones for jewellery, but the problem is having access to the equipment to learn on.
Take note that it's the diamond ring, not rings themselves, that were invented by the ad campaign. The concept of using wedding rings can be traced back to Ancient Egypt.
@@claytoniusdoesthings9598 thank you for that, that's exactly what I was looking at comments hoping to find, much appreciated.
Funny thing is not even that really, they only standardized and inflated the cost. Diamond rings for engagement can be traced to the medieval times though there were other gemstones that were commonly used too
No shit obviously he's talking about engagement rings not wedding rings
I got my wife a ring from the estate section of the store, the second I saw it I knew it was the one, and it's a very dark blue manufactured gem, she loves it, and it was only about a weeks pay.
@@Outerringfuelgod It isn't really obvious that those came from different sources, actually. You would need to know the history to know for certain, and he didn't imply a difference so much as assume it was understood.
Fun fact: Coca Cola's ad campaigns is the main reason Santa Claus' design is associated with Red and White, the same colours used for their cola.
Before coca cola, Santa was actually green.
Snopes says this is false, but after some reading I do think they at least cemented the design.
"Santa"s clothes were blue. Also it's Saint Nicholas.
This is patently untrue, but they did bring about the fat jolly santa.
Take note that the ad campaign invented the diamond ring rather than the rings themselves. The use of wedding bands dates back to ancient Egypt.
wild pfp you got there 💀
Bot copying another comment.
@@matthewrayner571 i figured as much, reported it all the same 💀
I had a choice between engagement ring or lego super star destroyer. We joke often about our engagement star destroyer 😂
I inherited my grandmother's ring. My wife inherited her grandmother's ring. My wife's ring is custom made from both rings stones combined. Despite the fact they lived over a thousand kilometers apart, our grandmother's rings were identical. Because they were bought during the de beers marketing era. We added a big ole amethyst for the central stone to make it symmetrical.
You can grow diamonds in labs now and the diamond corporations already started ranting about only a "real" diamond is a respectful proposal.
My friends got engaged when he got her a ring with a pearl because they are her favorite and it's a lovely piecw of jewelry 😊
historically people could exchange various things, or nothing at all!
various things included but were not limited to fruit, occasional jewellery (if you were rich), and ornate daggers (objectively the coolest)
The Swords take the cake for me, though. I think there were ceremonies where swords were exchanged, but I could be wrong.
Fun fact: all the studies that say “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” are done by Kellogg’s
U forgot to mention they also created an artificial shortage to cause cost of the diamonds to skyrocket as diamonds can be quite common in certain regions.
I know DeBeers is terrible company and all, but their plan was absolutely genius.
Literally the last short I watched was Thor dropping the iLadies joke, now it’s this? Please, never change Thor
The president of de beers has gone on record saying that diamonds are "intrinsically worthless"
I offered my ex a gold ring, she laughed at me in public, said no and said to try again cause, as everyone else and me heard "There's no gem so that's a man's ring"
She didn't get a ring lol
Which is why I much prefer proposal/marriage swords
I once asked my grandmother why she didn't have an engagement ring. "Oh, we didn't do that back then. If a man wanted to impress you, he bought you something useful. Like a block of cheese!" This was Italy in the 1930s.
Yep! Diamonds are intrinsically worthless, and that's a quote from one of their executives.
Of all the gemstones, diamonds are the most bland gem. Their only benefit is their hardness and use in manufacturing and technology.
That's not the worst part, it's the fact that "diamonds are intrinsically worthless" said by the formerly debeer CEO and they own like 80% of the world's diamond mine so they monopolize them to be worth a ridiculous amount.
Marketing is wild. Bacon for breakfast, KFC for christmas in Japan, all just successful marketing
It's the same as Pink being for Girls and Blue for Boys. Completely designed by corpos when it used to be the opposite way traditionally.
There were no colored assosications broadly accepted before. If you go way back before modern dyes every baby gets white because dyes used to make other colors would wash out or be pale
@@solsystem1342 There were colored associations, but it was somewhat more recent I guess in the early 1900s, but people were the ones with those associations. Reds were considered more masculine, including pink. Then in the 30's to 40's, corpos noticed some bought pink for girls and started their campaigns to make it widespread and the "norm".
Diamonds are super common, and they are found in a myriad of products outside jewelery like saws, blades, drills, electronics, and high grit polishing creams.
Super cheap tbh.
Only the "Jewelery" costs anything substantial, and that stuff is mass produced just like the rest in either offshore factories, or in smaller, limited production runs of rotating trends.
Im from South Afirca, and hearing this made me smile😂😂
When me and my girl talked about this, she said diamonds are dumb because you have to get them professionally cleaned on a regular basis. She just wants an opal, which makes sense because theyre shiny and they look awesome
Do be aware that because genuine Opal contains water that it cannot be taken out into the cold or it will freeze and bust so have a different stone inlayed ring for the colder temps and save the Opal for the warmer temps. Lab grown Opal is fine in all temps though if you want to go that route. Hope this helps and yes Diamonds for jewelry sucks!💙
I bought my wife and myself replicas of The One Ring as wedding rings after we got married when our silver rings got tarnished and stopped fitting as well. She's loved it over the idea of a diamond ring.
In most cases the tradition was giving a piece of your mother’s jewelry. And usually things like turquoise, onyx, sapphires, and even just more common polished stones were very very typical. The de Beers brothers ruthlessly dominated the South Africa diamond and through heavy tactics they found themselves with 90% of the diamond supply. However going into the Great Depression there was not a lot of demand for jewelry, and there was a large amounts that were sold off on the market. So the de Beers company decided that they had to make people think all those other pieces were “not worthy” and so they started hammering generations of people with the idea that diamonds were so much more important. At the same time they heavily cut production and started stockpiling diamonds, thus making demand outstrip supply to arbitrarily set a high value.
Diamonds aren’t even that rare! Any scarcity is created artificially by the cooperations! Huzzah for capitalism!
…and there’s not much scarcity, seeing as I can get diamond blades on my tools pretty cheaply with minimal difficulty
@@laurelkeeper Those ARE artificial diamonds, not natural ones. The artificial ones have no inclusions, so are far more resistant and useful for tools anyway.
They ARE somewhat rare, but when 60-70% of all diamonds ever mined are held in vaults by the mining and cutting companies to ensure an inflated price of the few on the market, the pricing IS artificially inflated.
Exactly why ever since I was a child I hated diamonds. So much minerals and rocks that look better.
The ring wasn’t common practice but offering things to your partner or their family has been common practice in many societies for millennia and even among other animals
Me and my wife didn't go for diamond rings.
Instead we actually picked the other a ring we thought they'd like. We didnt have a lot of money at the time due to being in college
So she got me this pitch black ring whilst I got her this lovely cyan one with little shiny metals in it from a local marketer (I forgot what metal, but she loved it.)
And now, 6 years later, we still don't regret our choices even though I've asked if she wants to change them for more nicer ones.
Rings are special because they have meaning behind them, not if they're expensive or have diamonds in them.
Our rings are just as special or irreplaceable as an expensive diamond one.
And that's what matters.
the wedding ring was not advertised into existence. the diamond engagement ring was
Literally what was said lmao
The collegehumor sketch mocking debeers for this is so good.
Fun fact, breakfast items, specifically bacon, is also something society made up for money gains. Major companies realized their bacon/pork sales were low, so they thought up a campaign saying that eating bacon for breakfast is important and part of a healthy diet throughout your meals. And so bacon and eggs became a “breakfast” staple.
The wedding ring has been around for thousands of years. Everything from bone, leather, metal. The value of the material did have significance in some cultures. He's 100% correct about diamonds. My wife chose a silver band... I had an amethyst stone that I found when I was cub scout/kid at about 10 y/o. The stone was cut & set by a locel jeweler.
The greatest con of all time. Making carbon glass, better suited for industrial applications, as a precious stone meant to symbolize love. Still burns in pure oxygen too.
They completely changed the human timeline forever.
precious jems have been used and traded as currency for a long time because they last forever and couldnt be replicated or fake they always had value, and were used in jewelry for centuries
I worked in a Pawn Shop for years and telling people that their ring they paid over 3k for was worth like $200 at most and that the stones were pretty much worthless pissed a lot of people off.
1477 was the first recorded diamond engagement ring. They gained popularity in the 1700 with the discovery of more diamonds. The stone was really just too expensive for most until the post WW2 economic boom.
Reminds me of (parroting this off of a video I saw) how car companies made like videos on how pedestrians should make way for cars, instead of the other way around.
This is why I'm going to carve a Love Spoon. It's a very old Welsh/Celtic tradition and I think something carved with my own hands is far more meaningful than purchasing a shiny rock.
The diamond thing i understand. But the tradition of giving rings for engagement and then marriage is thousands of years old.
My grandpa bought a watch after the war. That watch is now worth an insane amount of money. I just hope the family never fights over it.
Are you telling me we could've EXCHANGED SWORDS INSTEAD?!
Diamonds are forever and diamonds are a girl’s best friend are some of the most successful ad slogans ever.
we got matching stainless steel bands, no engravings, no gems, just something physical that represents our bond, that's it.
She also picked her engagement ring in a random stall in some festival, it was dirt cheap, and she said "you should buy me that one and propose with it" and I did right there, we've been together for 10 years.
I have a similar gripe with lightbulbs. It is entirely possible to create a lightbulb that can be used forever.
The only reason the corps won't, is because they would make themselves obsolete.
I love this guys shorts, i learn things i would never wonder to observe myself 😂
theres also similiar tradition in japan where japanese people buying KFC in christmas. back in 1970 KFC 1st branch open up in japan but since their store is bright red and white with only english text (who speak english in 1970 japan lol) people mistakes KFC for barber or candyshop. so KFC launch an ad campaign that said "buying KFC in christmas is an american culture" which is totally fabricated and yet it works and still a thing to this day. CMIIW
There's other similar things such as Christmas ims for couples, instead of families. And I bet a lot of the trraditions in Europe around Christmas as they vary country to country have been manipulated by companies trying to unload stuff, like coal for naughty children (coal was cheap and needed for keeping the houses warm.
This is mostly true, although De Beers did not actually come up with this idea, just repopularized something that was common among the aristocratic class in certain parts of Europe which went back several centuries. One other thing worth noting is that for a long time diamond was actually a lot more scarce, in Europe and North America at least, so that is where this idea that diamonds are super rare and valuable comes from originally, and is a big part of the reason that this marketing actually worked. The discovery of abundant diamonds to be mined in South Africa, among other places, changed that significantly.
I think it's genuinely crazy not to prefer a coloured gemstone. Far more unique, and often prettier too!
i have few reasons to buy engagement sword instead:
1. doesn't support exploitation
2. looks cool af (I like swords)
3. I can stab intruders
4. I'm a lesbian
In Germany Diamond rings are not so common.
Wedding rings are usually plain gold or silver rings.
As a gem cutter I can say this man is 100% correct. People used to use whatever stone the woman wanted. Could be Opal or Turquoise didn't matter.
"Hey honey, if you could have any gem on a ring, what would you choose?"
"Uranium-235."
"...What about a sapphire?"
I did a report in high school on how these companies also artificially restricted the diamond supply to hike prices despite having plenty
I think my favorite is Santa wearing red and white because of Coca-Cola. And not because that's a fact, but because it's so debatable if it's true or not that it keeps causing the name Coca-Cola to rise up in conversation during Christmas time.
People think that they're enlightened when they find out that diamonds are worthless and that we assign value to them.. Imagine how they're gonna feel the day they realize that absolutely nothing has "monetary" value. The only thing in this world that has any form of value is time and people.
DeBeers was so monumentally successful that at one point they mined 90 percent of diamonds in the world and the founder, Cecil Rhodes, ran South Africa (as a colony) and essentially bankrolled colonial action in the region. He had way bigger plans, though. He intended to build a railway from South Africa to Egypt
While it was DeBeers who paid for the advertising campaign, it was Edward Bernays who conceived and executed that campaign. He's possibly the most successful Marketter of all time. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and used what he learned from him to craft ad campaigns that shaped 20th Century American culture. You're surely familiar with his other work:
• For the Pork industry, he got Americans to eat Bacon & Eggs for Breakfast, extolling the virtues of a "hearty breakfast".
• He popularized the use of disposable paper products, such as paper cups.
• Standardized inclusion of Fluoride in Drinking water was his work.
• He got women to start smoking, with his "Torches of Freedom" campaign.
• Later, the health industry paid him enough to work for them, instead of the tobacco industry. The Anti-Smoking movement that started in the 60s/70s was his work.
Edward Bernays is possibly the single most influential man in American history.
The diamond ring is worth as much as you bought it for pretty much.
The idea of the engagement ring is almost like saying "I can provide for you." So, while yhere was a marketing boom in the early 1900's the idea of "I can provide for you" is still the same as the last 9-1800 years.
The concept of a "band" specifically is the loop that represents endless fidelity to each other.
Same companies are also trying to call Lab Grown diamonds fake or inferior, when there is no physical, chemical or any other way according to the FTC.
Here is the main difference between mined and lab diamonds: the price.
Lab diamonds are anywhere from 30%-99% cheaper than mined. Same variety of cuts, clarity, color, and carats as mined.
Something interesting I've learned, the definition of a mineral includes that it would have to be manmade. Even though lab-grown diamonds are exactly the same as natural ones, aside from the name, lab-grown diamonds by that definition would not be considered a mineral. Weird, huh?
Years ago, in a series called “Adam Ruins Everything”, Adam Conover discussed diamond engagement rings as well as a number of other ideas invented or heavily promoted by corporations in order to make more money.
Another example that struck out to me was razor companies promoting women’s beauty standards that required shaving. Nowadays, a lot of people consider body hair on women to be disgusting. At the time, though, shaving was seen as unnecessary or even indecent because most women dressed modestly and didn’t show their legs or armpits.
I love scrolling and seeing a tidbit of cool information from you. It's heart warming brother. Keep it up
Well, that's a slight misconception. There were documented cases of such rings (as a wedding rings) earlier, like in 1477, BUT yes, it's became sort of a tradition after De Beers.
just because Upperclass people sometime offered diamong ring amount any other gemmed ring mean it was the standard for everyone lile what thor is saying
Gem quality diamonds are also, relatively speaking, very common. They're "rare" and expensive because literally a few huge cartels own the entire global mining and wholesale supply chain for them and collude for price fixing and artificial scarsity.
Turning diamonds into gold, Alchemy does exist and it's called Marketing.
When I propose, I'm getting a ring with cubic zirconia. It looks the same as diamond and it's a fraction of the price
Hell yeah, that is why my wife and I made her ring out our own found sapphires. We went and panned our own stones and payed to design and manufacture the ring after we got the stones we liked the best cured and cut. About the same price as a "great" diamond ring but about 1000x more meaningful imo.
Diamonds have been worth money for centuries upon centuries. Ring giving as a sign of matrimony has been around for millennia. Damonds have been a subset of many stones being embedded into wedding rings De beers just made it prominent to push the sales of their diamonds. They didn’t invent the concept!!!
As far as I know, you take a wedding ring without any added decoration, because the endless ring stands for the endless/ eternal love between those two people. But hey, moneymoneymoney
The next ad from this video was for diamonds 😂
My wife's engagement ring has a few small diamonds on it but bigger sapphires because her birthday is in September and it's her birthstone. The wedding rings were made by us at jewellers who offered a teaching day course where you smelt and make the ring yourselves. So much better than just buying an overpriced ring from the shop.
It's also crazy how diamond retailers can not actually verify whether you are purchasing a "blood diamond" or not. They'll tell you that they know but they aren't given that information from the suppliers. ( I mean who would admit they sourced unethically)
same thing with breakfast. basically didnt exist until cereal companies ran campaigns about it being “the most important meal of the day”
Also, the song "diamonds are forever" was part of the marketing to deter resale. Partly because it would mean DeBeers couldn't control supply, but also so people wouldn't find out just how much their diamond deprecated
Debeers can't even directly sell to the US market due to anti-trust laws, they have to sell uncut diamonds to US diamond cutters
Showing this to my fiancé: “See honey, I’m not cheap, I’m traditional”
It’s also very interesting the corporations involved and countries involved in the diamond trade. Antwerp is very well known for diamonds and other such curiosities of cultures.
These days, rings without gems at all are increasingly more common. Cheaper, tougher, and easy to repair.
At this point a lot of people know this. And yet. If you dont propose with an expensive diamond, there are people who will reject the proposal on those grounds. Thats real neat psychology
When life gives you lemons, start feeding the population salt
It worked well and became an integral part of western society (and now global society) because it filled a role that was lost as the world was moderninzing : how to identify if someone is married or not. Some cultures still have certain ways (for example, muslim and jewish men who grow their beards when they get married).
Now that flawless diamonds are easy to make artificially they're starting to say that the flaws in natural diamonds are the real reason you should be paying more lmao. I can't wait for the industry to die.
So we have diamond rings for the same reason Japan eats KFC on Christmas 😂
Santa's iconic red outfit was solidified by a Coca-Cola ad campaign.
Merry Christmas.
Santa Claus and Father Christmas are not the same.
I worked on the refit of their london site. Vaults , strong reinforced rooms and a diamaond display room.
Cameras and hidden mics everywhere.
Right up there with Coke's interpretation of Santa Claus
When my now husband asked if I wanted a ring, I told him I rather you buy me a new computer or take me on vacation.
Niagara Falls was amazing!
"Diamonds. She'll pretty much have to."
The modern representation of Santa Claus is 100% based on Coca Cola's Santa from an ad campaign.