Worn & Wound
Year in Review: the Changing Shape of Watch Media, and the Center of Watch Culture
It’s the end of the year, which means it’s the one time on the calendar when you the reader will be able to stand a little naval gazing about the state of watch media. Look, it’s my job to reflect on this stuff constantly, but I also know that in practical terms, it’s not really something most watch enthusiasts necessarily want to hear about. When it comes to our readership one thing is overwhelmingly true: it really is about the watches, and the data bears that out. But it’s also impossible to ignore the titanic shift in how all of this works. Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed how enthusiasts and collectors interact with watch “stuff” on the internet and social media. Even if you’re not actively using ChatGPT or other services to get your watch related questions answered, it’s happening in the background constantly in ways you may or may not realize. Your search results no longer bring you to websites like ours, but spit out summaries answering your queries that draw from our articles and those of our peers. And the reels and posts (but mostly reels – who’s making static posts these days besides me?) that you see on Instagram are fed to you by an AI fueled algorithm. Is it showing you what you actually want to see? Hard to say. To that point, a brief aside: have you seen the new feature in Instagram that tells you what your algorithm is feeding you? It’s fascinating(?) but also probably a little useless. Mine says I’m interest...
