I Was The Watch Snob

Taking off the mask, after over a decade

“I am a snob about watches. I have, shall we say, rather discerning opinions about timepieces. Watchmaking is a centuries-old art form, and I consider that it deserves to be honored as such. This means those who deign to call themselves watchmakers should be honest about the craft and push forward the limits of mechanical timekeeping without losing sight of their lineage. I hold no quarter for watch brands that claim to be what they are not, and for those who peddle stories instead of timepieces.” — The Watch Snob, AskMen.com, September, 2013

Back in the early twenty-teens, I lived a double life. On the one hand, I was a freelance writer, covering gear, adventure travel, and wristwatches for Gear Patrol, Hodinkee, and Revolution. I was well into my career as an underwater wrist model, and the “test pilot for the world’s most illustrious underwater timepieces” (The New York Times’s words, not mine). But on the other side, I was an anonymous columnist, writing under a pseudonym, dispensing pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, elitist opinions—often scathingly—to readers of the then popular website, AskMen.com. My nom de plum was The Watch Snob, and became a sort of alter ego with which I took some perverse pleasure, but also wincing pains, to write every week. It’s been over a decade, so I feel I can emerge from witness protection and take off my mask.