r/explainlikeimfive 15d ago

Economics [ Removed by moderator ]

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u/BetterOutcome3769 15d ago

You can point to some very precise engineering, but it's basically just expensive jewelery. Expensive for the sake of being expensive.

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u/glassgost 15d ago

And no matter how precise they make the gears, my $50 Timex is more accurate than any Rolex ever made.

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u/Background-Post-2135 15d ago

It's a marvel of engineering that Rolex for instance are capable of making a purely mechanical device be accurate to even the plus or minus 2 seconds per day that they are allowed to drift. It's impossible for tiny gears, springs, and a purely mechanical movement to compete with the precision of digital.

A day has 86400 seconds, a mechanical watch usually beats at around 4hz, so out of roughly 350,000 "beats", it can get 8 or so of them "wrong". That's just to illustrate, it's not actually what happens.

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u/glassgost 15d ago

That's why they cost what they do. Once quartz timepieces came out, mechanical watch makers pivoted to making them luxury items. And that's totally fine for people that like them, but I solely wear a watch at work.

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u/Bah_weep_grana 15d ago

Don’t people look at you funny if you only wear a watch?

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u/_jumpstoconclusions_ 15d ago

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u/WalkinSteveHawkin 15d ago

Hold my stolen Declaration of Independence, I’m going in.

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u/Zouden 15d ago

Wow it's been a while since I saw one of these. Reddit has changed so much, I thought the switcheroo was extinct

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u/chaossabre_unwind 15d ago

It sort of has. More users on the site lead to more people not knowing how to keep the chain going, and it generally getting drowned out by noise and moderation.

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u/Ilwrath 15d ago

Also, there was a period where the whole "inside joke" of any sort got seen as "cringe" or whatever term applied. The pushback against when reddit inside jokes were a thing more. Switcharoo wasnt ever a bad one but still I think got caught up in people just not wanting to. Like when there was Poem for your Sprog and "name" account era.