Honestly, fuck the diamond industry

Honestly, fuck diamonds in general. Normalize jewelry with unnatural laboratory gems. The old gems are boring, bring on the synthetic glowy gems.

Edit: damn, you can get chunks of reject sapphire made for F35 fighter jet windows on their new store. They've got some pieces over 1kg.

Please Gen Z, finish killing this Industry off.

The diamond industry sucks don't get me wrong. But the real culpurists are the dumbfuck diamond buyers.

My friend is a diamond salesperson and told me a story about one of their customers. They were looking at different pieces and the customer kept asking about the purity of the diamonds in the piece. Whenever my friend said it's "SI," the customer would be visibly disappointed and would ask for "VS" or "VVS" which are purer. My friend then got annoyed a bit and told the customer that purity doesn't matter once you reach "SI" since the impurities are not really visible by the naked eye. He even showed the customer 2 pieces with one looking 10 times better than the other but has SI diamonds and the non-pretty piece has VS diamonds. He asked the customer to tell him which is which and the customer wrongly said the SI one was more pure. Even after he revealed his ruse and showed that purity doesn't matter much, the customer kept asking for more pure pieces as if nothing happened.

These "people" literallly are willingly being lied to, and they like it. If a diamond buyer saw a piece, told you they love it, told you they would buy it, then you told them it's a synthetic, they would be disgusted. It's bullshit from all sides and they deserve eachother.

But if you don’t buy her a real blood diamond how will she know that you love her enough to support slave labor?

Look up moissanite. It’s literally the cheaper, superior diamond. The fact that it exists just goes to show how inflated the diamond market is

If your significant other would be upset with a brass ring for an engagement ring, I don't pity the misery that will be both of your lives.

Opals are the superior stone and they actually look awsome. Transparent glass like stones are so boring. They are also much cheaper and not harvested with child labor.

The Kimberley certification process for diamonds has been entirely co-opted and no longer serves the purpose of ensuring you are not buying blood diamonds. All the NGOs that matter have already walked away considering it a lost cause.

If you buy natural diamonds, there is a good chance you are supporting criminal enterprise and warlords.

Technically man-made diamonds are also the diamond industry.

My gf asked me to not give her a ring when I'll propose, but a zweihander instead :D

I got my wife a moissanite ring. Looks great and just about as strong as diamond. It is time to use advertisements as guide what not to buy.

Blood diamonds "the suffering makes them special!"

we can achive what the earth can in a matter of months or we can chuck kids in a pit ...humanity chose

has anyone else been getting tons of ads (on streaming services mostly) literally about this? i keep getting these ads about how you should only purchase natural diamonds because only they matter or something and put some pretty woman in the ad to convince you. it's pretty disgusting to make a commercial promoting diamonds stolen from the global south and brushing off synthetic diamonds even if they are literally the exact same rock.

But it's the dried up blood from the child slaves that dug them that make diamonds so pretty!

I bet they are selling real diamonds as lab diamonds.

The DeBeers grift is a constant reminder that if space billionaires actually did start reeling in asteroids to mine, that wealth is not going to magically bring post-scarcity the way space bazingas dream that it will. It would be more hoarded resources and a lot more pollution to push out of whatever those resources get made into for profit.

You spelled Diamond Mafia wrong.

Quality synthetic diamonds are still bloody expensive.

No, no, they are just earning less.

They look tacky as shit regardless of whether they are mined, synthesized or fake.

And the absurd thing is that we probably should use natural diamonds for jewelry, as it is a waste to synthesize such a common rock. If they weren't hoarded and aggressively marketed as something you have to have, they could just be a neat rock some people are into, there wouldn't be child slaves dying to dig them out of the ground.

If anyone wants a really deep dive into the diamond industry, a recent episode of Search Engine (podcast by PJ Vogt, for anyone familiar with Reply All) is all about this: https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/why-are-we-still-buying-diamonds

It’s a fantastic episode.

I bought my wife a 'fake ' diamond ring for the engagement ring.

She couldn't tell her snooty friends that though, so she went and bought herself a very expensive ring with real diamonds.

She had the ring I bought her melted into my wedding band. I hate jewellery though so had no intention of wearing it. I agreed to wear it for a week after we got married. I've never worn it again. I haven't even seen it since that first week. Over a decade. I wonder if it's just lost, or she has it somewhere still.

I don't care enough to ask.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/195430621450

Do I trust ebay? Not really. Is this a fair sized diamond, cut, for $10? It claims to be.

edit: my bad, synthetic diamonds are also known as moissanite and aren't actually diamonds. Here's a link to two lab grown diamonds, cut, for like $30

https://www.ebay.com/itm/126018751890

DeBeers have massive investments in the synthetic diamond industry. They are actually world leaders and have known that it's possible to produce higher quality diamonds at a much lower cost. They make a killing selling synthetic diamonds to industry.

the alchemists could've been successful, and all the gold mine barons would've been: so, actually, well, you can't see it, but I assure you, and the experts will agree, that there is actually a very fine, yes, a very fine distinction (if you can notice it, it really means you have a refined sense of taste, yes) in shimmer between ersatz, synthetic gold from the alchemist, and that the rare, natural from the earth. Ah . . . . well yes, you're right, the natural gold is ever so slightly duller, but, you see

Nerevar, you foolish mortal! I have heard your lamentations about the cost of diamonds and how they are too expensive for how common they are. I agree, and I know who to blame. The Bear Company, which holds a monopoly on the diamond industry, is rigging the supply to keep prices high. They use propaganda to create a demand that is disproportionate to the real value of diamonds. What fools they are to think that they can hide such deception from me. I, Lord Dagoth, master of these lands, see through their shallow deceit and call for justice. Now please leave. I have to write upset words on this piece of parchment to show the world how angry i am. Nerevar, do you have a stick with you? Maybe also a stapler? Nerevar please go to the next trader and aquire a new Edding for me. I have let the cap open for too long and now my Edding has dried out.

My nightmare of a previous boss called my moissanite engagement ring "cheap" and "trashy," and treated us to a 30-minute speech about how if it's not "real" diamond, it doesn't count.

I hope sucking down those Marlboro blacks takes care of that problem of a woman sooner, rather than later, and in the meantime the gorgeous rainbow sparkle of my pretty ring is made all the more beautiful for the complete lack of child slavery that went into making it!

... I also just realized that horrible harridan didn't have an engagement ring, or even a boyfriend, and now some things make sense.