How interesting; according to the Wiki page on the Hope Diamond, its alleged curse was likely devised as a marketing ploy a la Blair Witch project. There's a list of the previous owners there along with their ages and causes of death, and it all looks standard fare indeed. It also debunks some of the alleged tragic deaths that were associated to its history.
They also claim these sorts of rumors are actually not unusual as a way to add mystique and perceived value to what ultimately are baubles with subjective value only. And as you aptly mention, diamonds in general were arbitrarily made valuable by what can effectively be regarded as speculative rumors.
A modern age version of this phenomenon can be found in retro videogames; every now and then you'll catch news waves of how a boxed first edition cartridge of video games like Super Mario 64 were sold for six figures, and when digging deeper into it, it typically becomes clear that whole situation was likely a speculative marketing ploy to artificially inflate the price of old cartridges, in order to inflate their market value. Same for cryptocurrencies in general (and NFTs in particular), which were likely devised as a highly sophisticated modern day technologically flavored Ponzi scheme.
I find it really fascinating how these thrilling stories stoke the imagination of people so intensely in a way that moves huge amounts of money, which in turn keeps the world moving . I find the meta aspect of this stuff even more fascinating than the actual stories - why the heck do people get so hung up on these stories? Maybe because they appeal to primal goblin-brain-type emotions like greed and fear and lust?
Would love to read your speculations about such matters, in a future article. Here you outlined the "what"; why now outline the "why" in another occasion? Good stuff, well done!
I do get the whole "curses aren't real" mindset, though. The Bermuda Triangle was supposedly cursed. It includes an incredibly popular tourist destination. There's so much fear-mongering noise out there. The Mayan calendar is ending so the world might end? That didn't happen. I might worry about snakes if I'm wandering through the woods. If I'm in my bedroom and nobody said they brought snakes into my house, then I don't worry about snakes. It's just extra energy expended, carefully checking under the sheets for predators before settling down for the night.
Part of it may be that hypervigilance is stressful. I hate long-acting amphetamines, also. Always worrying feels bad, man. Part of it may be that hypervigilance is status lowering. But part of it is that there are a literally *infinite* number of things in this world I can worry about. So remaining sane involves sifting the real threats from the illusory ones and not worrying about those things which are likely bullshit. Sure, there will be some false positives and false negatives in my list. But in a Bayesian sense, unless something might be made of radium and giving all its owners cancer, I assign a a pretty low probability to the notion of something being 'cursed.'
About the macabre. Thank you for posting this and raising the issue of fascination with it.
There is something strange to me about the average person’s attachment to scary tv shows, books, and movies. When I was young I read horror stories. About age 8 I realized they scared me and I didn’t like the feeling of being scared. So I stopped reading those stories.
I do not understand people’s willingness to pay to be scared or see something disgusting (to me). Being raised mostly in NYC, there were enough everyday scary and disgusting things that were unavoidable—rats, roaches, the NY subway system.
Diamonds are a scam. I wear a few small ones for the sparkle. I know Cubic Zirconia is more or less the same. But, it would feel as if I were trying to fool people in some way if I wore them because they are status indicators to many people and I don’t want to play that game either.
We have two different “games” mentioned in your article:
—the ooh that is so scary game!!
—look at me, I’m so rich and fancy
I think of many things as games and my questions to myself are usually: Does this “game” interest me? Is it worth my time?
Many years ago I went down to the Smithsonian & went through different exhibits. Had no idea the Hope diamond was featured. I walked up to the small glass case & looked at the famous Hope diamond.
It was ok. Not as brilliant as one might think a diamond might be. I wasn’t impressed, I didn’t see much of any facets when hit by light. I thought ok, I saw it, what’s the big deal besides that it was a big rock. Read the info about it. Thought I wouldn’t wear it around my neck not because of its mystery but that anyone could grab it and rip it off my neck. In less than 5 seconds I was off to see another exhibit.
Haven’t seen or thought about the Hope diamond since except for reading your post.
Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023Liked by Athena Walker
For myself the only reason I want to get the hope diamond is that it is preceived as valuable. Also I do not believe that curses are real, until someone can prove curses exist AND work as intended with the rigors of something like a double blind experiment they are just a gree-gree.
It has always struck me as strange that I enjoy taking risks, even when there is no reward. I love how it feels to narrowly avoid disaster. (Though, I don't believe in curses so the diamond has no appeal to me). But I wonder how the fuck so many humans evolved to be wired this way? What are the possible survival benefits? I suppose our emotional drivers are just too primitive to distinguish potentially beneficial risk from meaningless risk.
You enjoy skydiving. This is not something unique to neurotypicals.
I was once at an exhibition that featured some kind of trumpet of doom - every time it was blown a local malfunction or disaster hit and somehow it coincided with global events happening soon after. Of course I felt slight sudden urge to blow it! I laughed when I confirmed with my friend who accompannied me that he had the same thought.
I think it might go also with children's tendency to want what is forbidden and dennied (really, tale of Eve and apple is very archetypal) and wanting to see how something works, if it is true, definitely also sense of badassery from meeting a challenge. What-if itches at brain and maybe it ties at tension arisig from uncertainty too. But the potential is just somewhere between actually felt threat right in one's face and mundanity so... Also, somewhere else under some other post, there was a comment about intuition being fed fictional narratives and forgetting they are fictional. I wonder if maybe our culture is saturated with narratives of confronting that stuff.
As for the diamond - the fact it behaves differently from others might take the artificial value a step further and if there was bunch, but not very big bunch of diamonds that behave differently from others, that might be new currency. Not that it could not collapse all the same as tulip speculation in Netherlands did in 17th century. Rare stripey colour combinations were a hit until that market hit some hurdles and people actually stopped buying tulip bulbs.
I am also aesthetic over price, but the fact that it behaves differently than other (red vs blue-green) would be appealing to me alone without talk of curses. Put it on shelf as a curious oddity, that's what I'd do. Now I am reading it comes down to interaction between nitrogen and boron that are in faint amount present in otherwise carbon structure. And that this is not the only one. Just most hyped one. There are also yellow, white and orange glowing diamonds. Could be fun to collect one from each and set up a rainbow sequence on a shelf.
How interesting; according to the Wiki page on the Hope Diamond, its alleged curse was likely devised as a marketing ploy a la Blair Witch project. There's a list of the previous owners there along with their ages and causes of death, and it all looks standard fare indeed. It also debunks some of the alleged tragic deaths that were associated to its history.
They also claim these sorts of rumors are actually not unusual as a way to add mystique and perceived value to what ultimately are baubles with subjective value only. And as you aptly mention, diamonds in general were arbitrarily made valuable by what can effectively be regarded as speculative rumors.
A modern age version of this phenomenon can be found in retro videogames; every now and then you'll catch news waves of how a boxed first edition cartridge of video games like Super Mario 64 were sold for six figures, and when digging deeper into it, it typically becomes clear that whole situation was likely a speculative marketing ploy to artificially inflate the price of old cartridges, in order to inflate their market value. Same for cryptocurrencies in general (and NFTs in particular), which were likely devised as a highly sophisticated modern day technologically flavored Ponzi scheme.
I find it really fascinating how these thrilling stories stoke the imagination of people so intensely in a way that moves huge amounts of money, which in turn keeps the world moving . I find the meta aspect of this stuff even more fascinating than the actual stories - why the heck do people get so hung up on these stories? Maybe because they appeal to primal goblin-brain-type emotions like greed and fear and lust?
Would love to read your speculations about such matters, in a future article. Here you outlined the "what"; why now outline the "why" in another occasion? Good stuff, well done!
I agree that diamonds are over-glorified rocks.
I do get the whole "curses aren't real" mindset, though. The Bermuda Triangle was supposedly cursed. It includes an incredibly popular tourist destination. There's so much fear-mongering noise out there. The Mayan calendar is ending so the world might end? That didn't happen. I might worry about snakes if I'm wandering through the woods. If I'm in my bedroom and nobody said they brought snakes into my house, then I don't worry about snakes. It's just extra energy expended, carefully checking under the sheets for predators before settling down for the night.
Part of it may be that hypervigilance is stressful. I hate long-acting amphetamines, also. Always worrying feels bad, man. Part of it may be that hypervigilance is status lowering. But part of it is that there are a literally *infinite* number of things in this world I can worry about. So remaining sane involves sifting the real threats from the illusory ones and not worrying about those things which are likely bullshit. Sure, there will be some false positives and false negatives in my list. But in a Bayesian sense, unless something might be made of radium and giving all its owners cancer, I assign a a pretty low probability to the notion of something being 'cursed.'
Geezus this is like the story of my life what’s wrong with neurotypical people.
Why do they crave this sort of chaos?
About the macabre. Thank you for posting this and raising the issue of fascination with it.
There is something strange to me about the average person’s attachment to scary tv shows, books, and movies. When I was young I read horror stories. About age 8 I realized they scared me and I didn’t like the feeling of being scared. So I stopped reading those stories.
I do not understand people’s willingness to pay to be scared or see something disgusting (to me). Being raised mostly in NYC, there were enough everyday scary and disgusting things that were unavoidable—rats, roaches, the NY subway system.
Diamonds are a scam. I wear a few small ones for the sparkle. I know Cubic Zirconia is more or less the same. But, it would feel as if I were trying to fool people in some way if I wore them because they are status indicators to many people and I don’t want to play that game either.
We have two different “games” mentioned in your article:
—the ooh that is so scary game!!
—look at me, I’m so rich and fancy
I think of many things as games and my questions to myself are usually: Does this “game” interest me? Is it worth my time?
OMG sometimes your so funny!
I don't believe in curses, so there's that.
I am attracted to sparkly things and like blue diamonds, but I prefer the greenish blue ones. So the hope diamond wouldn't be my thing.
Your right in that the setting is boring.
Plus it would just be to Gody to wear.
I wouldn't want the attention it would bring either.
On the other hand if I had it, I'd sell it, put the money in the bank and live off the interest.
If it were in some artistic and beautiful setting, it might be something I'd want, but it's not.
The red glow is interesting though, I wasn't aware it did that. I'll have to check out my blue diamond now to see if it glows.
Many years ago I went down to the Smithsonian & went through different exhibits. Had no idea the Hope diamond was featured. I walked up to the small glass case & looked at the famous Hope diamond.
It was ok. Not as brilliant as one might think a diamond might be. I wasn’t impressed, I didn’t see much of any facets when hit by light. I thought ok, I saw it, what’s the big deal besides that it was a big rock. Read the info about it. Thought I wouldn’t wear it around my neck not because of its mystery but that anyone could grab it and rip it off my neck. In less than 5 seconds I was off to see another exhibit.
Haven’t seen or thought about the Hope diamond since except for reading your post.
For myself the only reason I want to get the hope diamond is that it is preceived as valuable. Also I do not believe that curses are real, until someone can prove curses exist AND work as intended with the rigors of something like a double blind experiment they are just a gree-gree.
It has always struck me as strange that I enjoy taking risks, even when there is no reward. I love how it feels to narrowly avoid disaster. (Though, I don't believe in curses so the diamond has no appeal to me). But I wonder how the fuck so many humans evolved to be wired this way? What are the possible survival benefits? I suppose our emotional drivers are just too primitive to distinguish potentially beneficial risk from meaningless risk.
You enjoy skydiving. This is not something unique to neurotypicals.
I was once at an exhibition that featured some kind of trumpet of doom - every time it was blown a local malfunction or disaster hit and somehow it coincided with global events happening soon after. Of course I felt slight sudden urge to blow it! I laughed when I confirmed with my friend who accompannied me that he had the same thought.
I think it might go also with children's tendency to want what is forbidden and dennied (really, tale of Eve and apple is very archetypal) and wanting to see how something works, if it is true, definitely also sense of badassery from meeting a challenge. What-if itches at brain and maybe it ties at tension arisig from uncertainty too. But the potential is just somewhere between actually felt threat right in one's face and mundanity so... Also, somewhere else under some other post, there was a comment about intuition being fed fictional narratives and forgetting they are fictional. I wonder if maybe our culture is saturated with narratives of confronting that stuff.
As for the diamond - the fact it behaves differently from others might take the artificial value a step further and if there was bunch, but not very big bunch of diamonds that behave differently from others, that might be new currency. Not that it could not collapse all the same as tulip speculation in Netherlands did in 17th century. Rare stripey colour combinations were a hit until that market hit some hurdles and people actually stopped buying tulip bulbs.
I am also aesthetic over price, but the fact that it behaves differently than other (red vs blue-green) would be appealing to me alone without talk of curses. Put it on shelf as a curious oddity, that's what I'd do. Now I am reading it comes down to interaction between nitrogen and boron that are in faint amount present in otherwise carbon structure. And that this is not the only one. Just most hyped one. There are also yellow, white and orange glowing diamonds. Could be fun to collect one from each and set up a rainbow sequence on a shelf.