Opinion: A New Year’s Resolution for the Watch Community, and a More Diverse Instagram Grid

The New Years holiday is typically a time to reflect and set some goals for the upcoming year ahead. Even if you’re not into setting New Year’s resolutions, the turning over of the calendar is a good opportunity to take stock. I’m not normally the type to set New Year’s resolutions myself, so I hope you won’t think it’s presumptuous that I’m about to lay out a goal for the entire watch community.

I’d like to humbly propose that 2024 be the year we collectively abandon a practice that I’ve personally always found a bit strange: the “watch” Instagram account that sits alongside your “regular” account. Two accounts! One just for watches, one for – and I’m gesturing wildly here with both arms – everything else. To me that seems like a lot of work. 

Why do we do this? I’ve heard all kinds of explanations. The most common is that we, as watch collectors, don’t want to endure the weird looks and questions from friends and family when they see regular wrist shots pop up in their feed. To that I say: they already know how weird you are. We should fly our watch freak flags high, with wrist shots alongside pics of your breakfast burritos, gym selfies, and summit photos. 

In 2024, let’s say goodbye to the idea that a watch focused Instagram is somehow not worthy of the views of your non-watch obsessed friends. They should accept you for who you are. And if somehow you’ve kept your watch hobby a secret all these years and timepieces appearing in the grid is what spills the beans to those who are unaware, it’s a great opportunity to test those relationships. A relationship that can’t survive a wrist shot or two never stood a chance. 

There should be no shame attached to watch collecting in 2024. We don’t need to hide our social media away behind a pseudonym, or a profile picture that’s just a closeup of a dial that can barely be identified anyway. Besides, watches are basically mainstream now. My mom knows what a MoonSwatch is. This hobby is less niche everyday. 

My own Instagram didn’t start out as a watch account. I’ve had it since (oh dear God…) 2012. The first thing I ever posted was a falafel that I bought at a joint near my old apartment run by a family of Syrian immigrants. It was better than falafel in Concord, NH has any right to be. Other early subjects of my Instagram include pints of beer, Scrabble boards from games I did and did not win, photos of records I may or may not have been playing at that very moment, and many, many blurry and hard to decipher shots from concerts I attended. These were the years before iPhone cameras could take a respectable photo in low light, and certainly well before I began to experience the phenomenon all aging millennials understand as Concert Fatigue. We just want to sit down at these shows, you know? 

 

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I started posting watches in earnest by 2017. I had been collecting for years by then, but because I’m objectively bad at social media, it didn’t occur to me that there would be a community of watch people sharing photos of our collections until I had been using the platform for half a decade. Scrolling through my history, and seeing the shift toward watches almost exclusively, I can’t help but feel a twinge of nostalgia for the early days when my output was a little more varied and unpredictable. And it makes me realize that even though my watch account is my personal account, it might as well be separate, because it’s the only part of my life you really see. 

So I guess my resolution this year is two-fold. I’d love to see more people embracing a single stream approach for watches and anything else they feel like posting. I love to see the context for collector’s decisions, and see and read about the things that interest them that are adjacent to the hobby we all share. And, yes, I truly think it’s silly that anyone would feel embarrassed to post the things that make them happy.

As for myself, I’ll try to post more snapshots from my own life. Watches are important – I love them! But they’re not the only thing I enjoy. How could including all that other stuff result in anything but a richer experience on this app where we spend so much time?