I’m not. I’m a day closer to my grave every time the sun sets. In general, watchmaking is a conservative (for the most part) industry which appeals mostly to the “thirty and above” category of consumers. There are plenty young adult collectors in their twenties and plenty that are knocking on death’s door, but I’m wondering about the folks (almost) like me: the spotty, pus-faced strange beings known to all as “teenagers.”
What do teenagers do these days anyway? In my town, the answer is usually deliver babies during exams or doing absolutely nothing at all. South Africans epitomise sloth and lust very well. In fact, as I write this, I have two very important things that I should be doing, but I’d rather attempt to wax lyrical in a blog post which will be published long after the events I am delaying have passed. I am not going to mention anything to do with my lustfulness; that’s for the TER Valentine’s Special 2025.
I’ve always been late to the trends. That’s primarily why I don’t follow them. Most adult readers would be surprised to hear that I am the only one in my clique who knows who Marilyn Manson is. It’s crazy, but eyeliner on men isn’t really the “in thing” anymore, so I’ll have to take full advantage of the seven day return policy of the place I bought my stuff from. I’m twenty years late to the party. The emos of the 2000s are either employed and respected adults or dead. There’s unfortunately no in-between.
I don’t really fit in with other teenagers. Yes, I’m aware that every teenager says that. I’m somewhere between a separatist and pariah. Call me an outcast, but a voluntary one. My friends and I playfully tease each other, me ridiculing them for wearing sneakers with formal wear and them ridiculing me for wearing a tweed blazer to any event more formal than showering. I don’t necessarily see myself as higher than my peers just because I am so disillusioned that I think we’re still living in the 2008 financial crisis. They have their own ways as I have mine. There’s always a level of mutual respect that comes with that.
Despite this, I can’t help but notice a recent, albeit small, influx of younger users on watch collecting fora and platforms. There are quite a few youngsters on WatchCrunch, then you have the Pride and Pinion subreddit, which is chiefly populated by either children or people who behave as such. I don’t know if some of the users there behave as they do in an attempt to lure child predators in some elaborate sting operation or if they simply weren’t spanked growing up.
I think that social media is doing its usual thing: spreading like wildfire. In this, one name rises above the rest: Nico Leonard van der Horst. Say what you will about him as a marketer or YouTuber, but you have to admit that he is entertaining. You can’t deny that he has an appeal and a niche carved out. While I don’t particularly enjoy big personalities and shouty folks in real life, it’s great fun watching them do their thing on camera. I hear Mr van der Horst is actually a rather pleasurable person to be around off-camera and treats his fans well. Maybe he’s the Marilyn Manson of watch YouTube. Either way, watching him “roast” rappers’ diamond-encrusted wristwatches is great fun when I need some background noise while I eat my lunch coming home from a long day.
Who else likes a good bout of “roasting?” Teenagers and children; young folks. Watch collecting is spreading. So why does it feel like there are so few teens into watches?
I could say “ageism,” but the more accurate word is “truth.” I have accepted my immaturity. During the later teen years, one usually thinks that they know the world inside-out. I am at least smart enough to know what I don’t know. What do I at age eighteen know about the world? Positively f*** all! This is why I started being more open about my age on watch social media. I don’t care who takes me seriously or not or if someone paints me as the stereotypical know-it-all teen based on my age, because I’m true enough to myself to know where I stand. I usually prove assumptions like that wrong, and I don’t mean that in an egotistical manner. Hell, if I hadn’t told you that I am a pus-faced hormonal teenager would you have guessed that from my writing?
What I mean to say is that maybe there are “impostors” among us. (That’s a reference to the 2018 mobile and PC game developed by Innersloth that was very popular with the kids not too long ago.)
In the same vain as going into a liquor store, many teenagers may feel the need to hide their age for fear of being seen as immature and being dismissed. I’ve learnt to stop giving a f*** about it. If one is being dismissed as immature, one is either being immature or being dismissed by the immature one. Call me immature and I’ll probably agree with you. This is mostly an abstract fear lurking in some teens’ minds, as I haven’t been dismissed based on my age once in all my time on watch social media.
Maybe watch collecting attracts the outliers like myself: the outcasts and pariahs who resonate more with adults than their peers. Maybe social media has opened the eyes of many youths to watch collecting.
In the end, experience can only be gained with time. You can only attempt to understand the ins and outs of life once you’ve been around the block a few times. With watch collecting, I believe in the same concept, but free of age and bound to experience. A fake watch can catch a novice collector out, be they twelve or twenty-two or ninety-nine. I would have broken and lost watch parts while tearing up my first movements even if I was sixty instead of sixteen.
I write this twaddle about age because this is likely one of the last times it’ll matter (if it even matters currently) in the collecting sphere. Next year will be my last as a teenager, so from then on, while I’ll still sort of be the little brother on TER, I’ll be a lot “closer” to everyone else. I’m glad to have joined this site at such a point in my life, because I think that one day I’ll look back on these trials that I currently face with a smile. Watch collecting and writing is sort of the paper trail when it comes to my maturing as a person. I’ll hopefully be able to track my thoughts and emotions expressed through watches as I transition from boy to “man.”
Closing thoughts: “You can’t be an adult without making adult mistakes and learning from them.” That’s a nice quote, but getting a girl pregnant is probably not the mistake anyone had in mind for me. I guess I’ll break it to the family next time an aeroplane flies overhead, “it’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s actually a girl. Eight months and she’ll be fresh out the oven. I was thinking of naming her ‘Camy,’ short for Camilla, of course, definitely no ulterior motives there, but the missus… well, she’s still ‘miss’ if you want to be pedantic about it, doesn’t like the name. Any thoughts?”
The Escapement Room 