Did you see the $900,000 watch that Mark Zuckerberg wore while he announced there will be no more fact-checking on Facebook? It’s a Greubel Forsey ‘Hand Made 1’.
Looking at the watch aesthetically, I don’t understand the value. Half the watch, you can see the gears. That’s kinda cool, I guess. I had a landline phone in the 1990s with a transparent case. That was rad. Although that phone probably cost only $20.
This watch has value because it’s handmade. Only two to three of these watches are made per year. There are lots of tiny gears to put together.
But here’s my biggest beef (aside from spending a ridiculous amount of money on a watch). Check out the screws on the face of the watch. There are four large screw heads. First of all, for a $900,000 watch, you don’t need to see the screw heads exposed. Any $20 watch can hide the screws. These screws were intended to be seen. Therefore, these screws are definitely part of the design.
Again, the value of the watch is in the hand-crafted, attention to detail. But momma mia, these screw heads are GIANT. They are a major part of this design. The screws convey a sense of the handmade quality. They speak of, “yes, this watch was screwed together by a person.”
Check out the lines in the slot of the screw. (Those are called the drive slots). None of those drive slots have any rhyme or reason for their angle. Vertical? No. Horizontal. No. At the same angle? Again, no.
Please. How can this detail be overlooked?
You know the exposed screwheads in your light switchplates? Those drive slots sometimes are on an angle, sometimes they are horizontal. Sometimes they are vertical. I may be in the minority, but do you ever go around your residence with a flathead screwdriver and make all those slots go in the same direction? I’m a vertical slot alignment fan. Here are some of the switchplates in my house.
Yeah, it’s anal. Yeah, it’s OCD. But I like it. It’s intentionality. It’s design. I like having my slots pointing in the same direction.
The face of this watch has four exposed screw heads. None of the drive slots are pointing in any specific direction. It’s driving me nuts.
Now that I look closer, there are three more visible screw heads. None aligned. So that’s seven screw heads that are completely random.
For a $900,000 watch, you’d expect a level of attention to design.
Although it may be fitting that he wore a watch with a random design to announce that Facebook will no longer fact-check. Where facts represent order, precision, and accuracy, this watch’s chaotic screw alignment mirrors Facebook’s new anything-goes approach.
Update
Do I really need to be all particular about some misaligned screws? Can’t some things be random? I explore these thoughts in the next blog post, Misaligned screws and the framework of power.