The 5000 Word Limit

Watch content is hard. There are a couple of reasons for that which are right on the surface of every watch review. Once you get past the specifications you are in the land of subjectivity: do I like its looks or not? Everything else is a superficial gloss of objectivity and buzz words (clichés). There is no real connecting tissue, nothing really to bind together the content. (As a kid when we would pass an Arby’s on a road trip my father would always joke that their roast beef “had binders”, sort of like old Certs ads “with Retsyn”. Industrial binders pushed as “value adds” for food. It was funny.)

I think most “content creators”, either in print or YouTube, have about 5000 words of interesting things to say about watches. That is about the length of a long article in the Atlantic or New Yorker. YouTube is littered with defunct channels started by enthusiastic hobbyists who ran out of steam after a few episodes. They did watch reviews of budget watches filled with specs and opinion (“I like it”). The problem is that after a while very little separates anything with an NH35 inside. It hacks, it has a date or a ghost date, and it is slightly too thick. The folks that tried to incorporate history into their content had a harder time keeping our interest. Are you interested that Elgin purchased Helbros? Do you care that Jules Jurgensen was almost certainly always an “American” brand, despite what the dial may say? I like that stuff, but I am in a minority of a small fraction of a sliver of the shrinking watch market. I watch history lectures on YouTube and Wondrium/The Great Courses. I am that geeky. (Shout out to the great Kenneth Harl, an old professor of mine that I can still learn from on that channel.)

When we try to do research online we run into my 5000-word article limit. So much is inaccurate: the name of the designer of the Patek Philippe Ref. 96, anything regarding the “Quartz Crisis”, the founding date of almost any watch brand, the first dive watch…you get my point, the list is almost endless. But in there are one off blog posts from dead blogs that explain the Voumard 2000, the history of West End, Jaro, or Helbros, the beauty of the Vostok case design and others. These writers had one essay in them in which knowledge is now preserved and retained. We can’t all take a pilgrimage to NAWCC headquarters and sift through their collection. (I wish, and I have said this before, that some wealthy collectors would help them digitize their collection so that the knowledge would be released into the community.)

(Had to include a picture of a watch…)

What prompts all this (besides the need to feed the beast) is the announced departure of Maxwell Ma from WatchCrunch. Max was on my radar back when he was putting up short “Haute Ones” videos on YouTube. I hated the name, but Max’s earnestness made him a semi-regular watch.  I knew after a few episodes that he was a doctor of some sort. Lawyers and doctors are in different tribes, and we know each other’s scent. Doctors are serious and direct. Lawyers play with words and metaphors. We can afford to be sophists, doctors can’t. (Doctors have a antiseptic ambience. Lawyers have the half-concealed musk of questionable ethical decisions.)

Ben’s Watch Club sent me to WatchCrunch and I found myself on WatchUSeek less and less and in Max’s world more and more. I once noted on something of Ben’s in response to some critical comment that “watch content is hard” and he responded and agreed. That, a comment from Andrew Morgan, and a handful of messages from Max on WC are the sum total of my interaction with the watch YouTube literati.

Max’s videos have been less frequent and harder to watch recently. He reached his 5000-word limit. He keeps a small and fairly constant collection. That keeps the “new watch” inspiration low. I don’t always agree with his opinions. I know that he thinks my opinions on Bauhaus are misguided (they are not). When he recently introduced someone else on the WC channel, I knew that he was finished. It was just a matter of when and with what level of grace.

(Since I started writing this Max has dropped his hostage video. He did not spend enough time with lawyers reviewing the contract, natch, typical god complex doctor behavior. The “A” students always need us “B” students when it comes to practical life. He gets to keep the YouTube channel, that’s a “win.” He still wants to hawk his Zero Pass straps (patent pending). I think that it is a solution in search of a problem. Ooh, and a premium Discord channel, be still my beating heart.)

The 5000-word limit may have also come for Mike at This Watch, That Watch. He has been the most interesting newcomer to the watch video space. He brings his management consulting chops to watches. To have him do a pedestrian Vaer review is just feeding the beast. It is content for content’s sake. That is why we have Jody. Jody at Just One More Watch has perfected his review formula. It is the lack of a formula that has made Mike interesting. The problem isn’t Mike, it is the subject matter. The watches and the watch industry are only interesting to very few of us, and once you have said it, there is no reason to keep saying it. (I could write an entire essay on the Rolex/Tudor Industrial Complex of unwatchable video essays on dial and bezel variations for solid but boring watches. For another day.)

How deep is the love of watches that it would keep someone spending hours in writing, videoing, and editing to not want the filthy lucre in the end? The sponsored content, the free watches, the endless disclaimers, all push us away from the content. The bell has tolled. It was a brief moment. You knew that it couldn’t last. The post-pandemic bubble has well and truly burst, and it was fun while (“whilst” for some of you) it lasted. So, pour one out for the Golden Age that has passed and what you have enjoyed. When they talk about the “arc of history” remember the parabolic shape of an arc. An arc always comes back to Earth. The Blue Origins flight has returned Max and Katy Perry back safely. And what was proven, exactly? Well, it was a ride at least.