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It\u2019s hard to define a \u201ccollector\u201d without quickly devolving into aphorisms about how you know it when you see it<\/em>.1<\/a> Here\u2019s how Breitling historian Fred Mandelbaum <\/strong>defined a watch collector in our Significant Watches interview<\/strong><\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBeing a collector is not just about owning watches. You start being a real collector when you start to understand how little you know and how much you have to learn. It\u2019s scholarship, it\u2019s research, it\u2019s very often friendship and understanding who to trust. A true collector needs to have an urge to pass it on \u2014 to pass on that scholarship and knowledge. The most important thing is that people can say they trust in your word, and to me that is the definition of a true collector.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n With all the hand-wringing about hype, waitlists, and the usual litany of things we complain about, Fred\u2019s perspective was downright refreshing.<\/p>\n One of Fred\u2019s points is that before you collect watches, you have to collect information and knowledge. This used to come from books, magazines, auction catalogs, and other collectors. Nowadays, it comes from social media, mostly Instagram.<\/p>\n Instagram has changed the watch world in a dozen ways good and bad. But I want to focus on what it\u2019s done to this very deliberate act of \u201ccollecting\u201d \u2014 collecting information, knowledge, watches.<\/p>\n In a world where we can scroll through hundreds of digital photos of rare watches every single day, it\u2019s easy to forget that we have physical relationships with these things. We even have IRL relationships with the little pieces of culture \u2014 books, catalogs, other tchotchkes \u2014 surrounding a watch.<\/p>\n Collecting \u2014 books, watches, whatever \u2014 was once a way of interacting with the world around us, of engaging with it and accumulating a bunch of things that only made sense together because they were yours<\/em>. Owning things is an active<\/em> way of engaging with the world around us. Only you can decide what you own; how it\u2019s organized; what you pull off the shelf to flip through on a Sunday morning.<\/p>\n A couple years ago, Charlie Dunne explained to me<\/strong><\/a> why he enjoyed collecting books:<\/p>\n \u201cRather than going out and searching for an answer on Google, where it\u2019s so accessible and easy, books allow you to stumble upon information and almost naturally find your way to learning. For me, it\u2019s very therapeutic to get lost in a book that I\u2019ve stumbled through numerous times but I might find something interesting that I haven\u2019t found before.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Something about flipping through these books, magazines, and auction catalogs feels personal. Of course, it\u2019s a manual, IRL experience \u2014 like wearing a watch \u2014 in a way that scrolling through 2D images on IG never will be. But it\u2019s more than that.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a deliberate, personal choice \u2014 you, the collector, decide what books you own, which ones you pick up, and what knowledge you compile. There\u2019s no<\/em> algorithm<\/em> intermediating what you see or don\u2019t see.<\/p>\n Instagram is something different<\/strong>. Of course, screaming about the black box of \u201cTHE ALGORITHM\u201d is a punching bag for all the problems that ill society, not just watches. But I wanted to focus on the way in which we offload the function of \u201ccollecting\u201d onto the algorithm.<\/p>\n With Instagram, collecting can easily transform from an active pursuit to a passive one<\/em>. Create an account, follow a few others, start double-tapping, and the algorithm goes to work, serving up an endless stream of mildly-interesting posts. No need for you to ever do anything again if you don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n Ironically, the promise of Instagram is a personalized feed, but what seems to happen is something deeply impersonal: massive aggregation around a few hype watches, and then a long tail of random things getting some traction \u2014 microbrands, independents, obscure vintage brands (to be sure, these are prone to hype too).<\/p>\n While only you can organize the watches, books, and catalogs that you own, on Instagram, what you see is completely subject to the whims of the algorithm, even to the layout of the app itself. You don\u2019t own anything. Remember when Instagram changed the button at the bottom center of the home screen? It swapped out the \u201cNew Post\u201d button for its new Reels feature when Instagram decided video was the future. This was Instagram becoming becoming more passive and less active. \u201cNo, you don\u2019t need to post that avocado toast photo, sit back and watch this Reel of a guy wrist-rolling his Royal Oak to \u2018Big Poppa,\u2019\u201d the change said.<\/p>\n The active choice \u2014 the responsibility \u2014 of collecting<\/em> has been completely removed, all the difficult work of actually having to do something offloaded to some black box of an algorithm that promises to know your tastes better than you know them yourself.<\/p>\n When you read books or flip through magazines, it can be difficult to find your interests. But it\u2019s also a ton of fun. There\u2019s no joy like stumbling on a watch you didn\u2019t know existed and learning more about it. That\u2019s exactly what happened to me when I stumbled on those trippy Falcone watches<\/strong><\/a> I wrote about last week that everyone seemed to love, originally flipping through a 2013 Christie\u2019s catalog looking for something completely different.<\/p>\n But with Instagram, there\u2019s no incentive to do any of that work.<\/p>\n Now, the algorithm itself is the collector<\/strong>, our curator. It takes all the disparate pieces of information and data that we give it and spits out a few wristshots it thinks we might double-tap.<\/p>\n This has been kind of doom-and-gloom so far, huh? I mean, \u201cdeath\u201d is in the title. But I\u2019m actually hopeful there\u2019s not going to be any \u201cdigital death\u201d of the collector.<\/p>\n The truth is, Instagram also exposes us to all kinds of things that we might not have seen otherwise. We don\u2019t have to wait for a bigger publication with a name in all caps to cover something before we find it; with a little bit of work, there\u2019s a whole world of horology right at our fingertips.<\/p>\n What are the odds I would\u2019ve learned about the exciting work of South Korean watchmaker Minhoon Yoo<\/strong><\/a> if not for a few friends stumbling across him on Instagram? Eventually, Minhoon got the HODINKEE treatment<\/strong><\/a>, but not before a few discerning collectors had the chance to slide to the top of his waitlist.<\/p>\n The problem is that the algorithm can make it harder to stumble across these completely off-the-radar watches. Usually, it\u2019s friends or other collectors who introduce me to this type of stuff. That\u2019s the point: your Instagram feed should be just one of many inputs in building your taste as a collector. Otherwise, you\u2019re not a collector. You\u2019re just another passive observer, idling scrolling through the gram and buying whatever it tells you to \u2014 NFTs, APs, those leggings<\/a>.<\/p>\n Before Instagram, we had to decide for ourselves what to own and what to keep close. When collecting is no longer a reflection of an individual and their choices, it completely loses its meaning.<\/p>\n Because Instagram isn\u2019t a collection at all. It\u2019s a beautiful, overwhelming morass of endless information, hype, and wrist rolls. While this accumulation of information allows more and better collecting than ever before, it can also prevent it.<\/p>\n Collecting, at its core, is an active pursuit. Unfortunately, Instagram seems to want us to sit back and watch the wrist rolls. but there\u2019s so much more to be discovered if we dig deeper.<\/p>\n The inspiration for this article was Kyle Chayka\u2019s essay \u201c<\/em>the digital death of collecting<\/em><\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Instagram the Collector<\/h2>\n
Digital Rebirth<\/h2>\n