A tweet urging young men to go into debt to buy a Rolex went viral with 30 million views, and watch dealer Nico Leonard brought it up during his appearance on The Iced Coffee Hour.
The tweet read: “If you’re a guy in your early 20s, buy a Rolex. Go into debt if you have to.”
Another tweet read: “This is not satire. You can get a Rolex for four grand. Having a nice watch communicates status to women in business relationships. And if you buy it right, it will hold its value if not appreciate.”
Nico did not hold back. “I think that’s the biggest load of bollocks I’ve heard in a very long time,” he said.
He did partially agree with the premise that a watch signals status, but drew a firm line at the idea of using it as a business tool.
He said, “I do agree that that watch shows status, but if you need that status to do business, I think you’re overstepping the mark. I think you need to have different talents first.”
When the host pushed back and suggested that four thousand dollars was a relatively low barrier to entry, Nico shifted focus to the debt angle. “Yeah, but if you go into debt for four grand, I think you have other problems to be honest,” Nico said. “So I think you need to solve that first. If four grand gets you into debt, priorities first.”
The claim in the tweet that a Rolex communicates status specifically to women also came up later in the conversation. Nico was direct about what his experience had actually shown him.
“I have never been able to pull a woman with a watch to be honest,” he said, adding that in his experience, “it’s always a bloke” who notices or comments on a watch. “Women absolutely do not care about watches.”
That position was reinforced during a word association segment near the end of the episode. When asked for the biggest lie watch people tell themselves, his answer was: “That you can pull incredible women with watches.”
On the investment argument made in the tweet, Nico had already addressed the point during the conversation. “I don’t think that any watch that you know about will go up in value,” he said. “99% of the watches are not investment. The fact that you would think that that watch is an investment means it passes so many more people.”
