Guys with Fake Earrings Bumming me Out

Is this an admission of failure or what's going on?

I meet this guy all of the time. The fake diamond earring guy. I see him at restaurants and frequently riding Bird scooters while going against the flow of traffic. I don’t understand it and it bums me out. This guy is going out of his way to advertise that he is, by his definition of success, unsuccessful. His definition of success obviously being someone who wears gaudy earrings. It’s masochistic really.

He obviously looks up to people who wear hundred-thousand-dollar rocks on their ears and places a lot of importance on these superficial objects. But, if these items are as important as he must believe, then his worth as a person, by his own standards, must be very low.

The thing that really trips me out is: You don’t have to wear earrings. There’s zero cultural pressure to do this. If you walked into a bar or a party where you were meeting new people—and you hadn’t previously worn any earrings—absolutely nobody would look at you and go, “Look at that gross guy. He isn’t even wearing earrings of any kind.”

No. Not at all. I don’t care if you’re in a reggae band or working at a headshop or tattoo parlor or even managing a jewelry store which specializes in earrings. Nobody cares if you’re a non-earring guy. It goes without mention or notice. People notice if you do have earrings, not if you don’t. If you wear earrings as a guy, people are going to notice them. And they are going to immediately notice that they are fake. So, this is a really terrible idea when it comes to furthering your social life. There is no possible positive benefit involved.

This is why I am differentiating men from women in this context. First off, you’re going to notice a man’s earrings much more than you would a woman’s because most men don’t wear earrings.

When you see a guy wearing earrings you have to think, at least I do anyway, “He’s really going out of his way here. These must be some badass fuckin’ earrings. I better get a closer look.”

Secondly, women usually have at least some hair covering their ears and their ears and the situation is not as visible. Lastly, in a lot of corners of society women are expected to wear earrings and so I wouldn’t blame them for wearing cheap ones just to satisfy this expectation.

Now, I don’t know anything about diamonds or jewelry whatsoever. But even I can tell the fake ones, and it’s incredibly obvious. Fake diamonds are dull and the hue of Saran wrap. Real ones are glittery and sparkly. The fake ones really throw you off. The way they absorb light is unsettling and takes your brain a minute to register that something is wrong, like seeing a guy who parts his hair on the right side of his head or a dog with a human bone in its mouth.

On a 2009 episode of Hard Knocks, the hilarious Chad Ochocinco had a camera crew follow him into a Claire’s—a store specializing in chintzy jewelry for teenage girls—and bought some ten-dollar earrings which he proceeded to stick into his ears. His reasoning for doing this was, “I make millions of dollars, everyone will assume these are real.” Brilliant.

But there are only a few guys on earth who can pull that off, and if you have a wadded-up Taco Bell wrapper in your backpack—and these dull earring guys are always wearing a backpack for some reason—then you aren’t one of them.

It’s the creating of a problem that irks me the most, but mostly I hate watching people fail miserably at being cool. I have some empathy for them, but mostly it’s cringy and makes me uncomfortable. I just want to sit these guys down and tell them, look,

“If you think earrings are cool and you can’t afford earrings, here is how you handle that situation: Act like you are too cool for earrings. Problem solved. Look at guys who wear earrings and make fun of them. If you are secretly relishing the day when you can buy earrings while you are doing this that’s fine, nobody will know.”

But when you wear the fake ones, we all know that’s what you are doing. It serves as an advertisement that you’re not a baller. Based on the earrings we can tell that your car and apartment are also very budgetary and I’m not criticizing anyone for that, but the point of wearing earrings is to advertise that you are producing huge stacks of money, so what is the ultimate goal here: To attract a chick who thinks your diamonds are real and that this offers a glimpse into your general lifestyle only to disappoint her when you’re paying for her drink in crumpled one-dollar-bills? What if she even made it to your apartment (which she won’t). What’s your excuse for the pet lizard? Tesla stock is down?

Give me a break man. Clearly this hasn’t been thought through, but seriously ditch the earrings. The non-VIP look is depressing, the cool guys aren’t even on the list.