It’s the end of the year, which means it’s the one time on the calendar when you the reader will be able to stand a little naval gazing about the state of watch media. Look, it’s my job to reflect on this stuff constantly, but I also know that in practical terms, it’s not really something most watch enthusiasts necessarily want to hear about. When it comes to our readership one thing is overwhelmingly true: it really is about the watches, and the data bears that out. But it’s also impossible to ignore the titanic shift in how all of this works.
Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed how enthusiasts and collectors interact with watch “stuff” on the internet and social media. Even if you’re not actively using ChatGPT or other services to get your watch related questions answered, it’s happening in the background constantly in ways you may or may not realize. Your search results no longer bring you to websites like ours, but spit out summaries answering your queries that draw from our articles and those of our peers. And the reels and posts (but mostly reels – who’s making static posts these days besides me?) that you see on Instagram are fed to you by an AI fueled algorithm. Is it showing you what you actually want to see? Hard to say.
To that point, a brief aside: have you seen the new feature in Instagram that tells you what your algorithm is feeding you? It’s fascinating(?) but also probably a little useless. Mine says I’m interested in city living, classic sitcoms, and “high-end living,” which I guess captures the luxury watch content I see when I open the app. But I’m not particularly interested in city living per se. This readout was even more unhinged last week when it told me I was really into French pastries. Reader, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of French pastry content on Instagram. I mean, I’d love to be stuck in that corner of the app, but it’s eluded me to this point, in spite of what it might be telling me to my face.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. All of this AI interference has jumbled how people find us and interact with us, and it’s a tricky thing to navigate that websites like ours in the watch space and elsewhere are constantly learning how to navigate. One thing that’s become overwhelmingly clear through all of this is that the “new release” post, where we tell you about the launch of a new product in objective terms as close to the release date as possible, is no longer a post that people seem to care about on the web. There’s a lot more interest for this type of content on Instagram, and our plan is to meet our readers there for those types of relevant, news oriented posts.
The blog, where you’re reading this, is much better served by distinct, personality driven content with a real perspective on watches and watch culture. Reviews, opinion pieces, and research driven informational articles have a way of breaking through the static. And it’s what we’re best at anyway, if I do say so myself. Our strength is in our perspective and our ability to craft articles around it in an interesting way. Even if you don’t agree with our take, content that’s engaging and clearly comes from a real, human brain is, over and over again, the stuff that rises to the top.
And this seems to not just be true for us, but for others who work in the space. This is best examined through the rise of the many Substack newsletters focusing on the watch industry that have sprung up in the last few years. While I’m leery of adding even more subscriptions to my monthly entertainment budget, many of my favorite writers in the watch media space do excellent work that is worth supporting. Tony Traina, Chris Hall, and Stephen Pulvirent and Justin Haast in particular do some really great work, with insightful writing and reporting that is valuable for serious collectors and enthusiasts.
When these Substacks started popping up, I think many of us in “traditional” watch media were skeptical, but I’ve come to understand that there’s a lot we can learn from their apparent rise. Namely, that longform watch writing isn’t dead, but it might have a smaller, more niche audience. There’s something powerful about the way these writers speak directly to their readers – part of it is an intimacy born out of the newsletter format itself. That’s not something a blog can replicate exactly, but nevertheless it represents an opportunity to tell more personal stories about watches and watch culture.
Watch culture is another topic I think about pretty much every single day of my life. It used to be fairly easy to identify where the center of it rests. For most of my time in watches, both personally and professionally, it was based around sports watches, vintage reissues, Rolex, hype watches, the Royal Oak, and similar well trod territory. That period, I think, is over. It’s not that no one cares about Rolex anymore, but it feels like every story has been told a thousand times over, and there’s nothing new under the sun.
The period we’re in now is more uncertain. It feels like we might be at a tipping point moment where small indies and microbrands achieve mainstream cultural adoption in ways we couldn’t have imagined five or six years ago. Attendance at Windup Watch Fair events seem to bear this out, as does footage of John Mayer at the Studio Underd0g booth at Dubai Watch Week last month. I’m not sure how or when this is all going to break through and we’ll have any clarity on what comes next, but it feels like we’re in a genuine age of discovery at the moment, and that’s incredibly exciting.
Zach Kazan
2025-12-26 19:00:00