bacari

I love watches. When I first really started getting into watches at the age of 14, I had my best friend, Marc, to talk to about watches. Back then it was conversations about Tag Heuer, Rolex, Gucci, Movado, and, of course, Swatch. My first watch was a gold tank Seiko with white face and roman numerals. I loved that watch.

Later in my evolving passion for watches, I visited stores – a lot of stores. Then I began to subscribe to watch magazines and buy watch books. Then one day I decided to limp onto the internet and use a search engine to delve into my passion. It seemed like whatever I put into the search engine, one site in particular came up more frequent than any other – watchuseek.com.

In the years following my discovery of this vehicle, I expressed my passion through online watch forums; initially, exclusively through watchuseek.com and more recently I added intlwatchleague.com to my list. I spent so much time on the ladder site; they eventually asked me to be a Moderator – which I remain to this day.

To this day, I have been supremely satisfied with these forums. They have led to local and national get-togethers (GTG’s), watch sales and purchases, many watch events, watch community recognition, online associations and friendships, and ultimately some great in-person friendships. Of course, during this time the social media phenomenon has been growing exponentially. I wanted nothing to do with these new sites outside of my watch forums.

I’ve said this before - I’m not a Facebooker. I do not twit or tweet. That just doesn’t seem like something a grown man would do. I have no desire to be linked in so I won’t join Linkedin. Pinterest I struggle to understand.I just know I have no interest in pins or pens. And until recently, I couldn’t wrap my conservatively conventional mind around Instagram. For some reason, I always thought of some instant variation of Moneygram.

Well, I recently became fairly active on Instagram. What I’ve learned in a relatively short period of time is that Instagram can be heaven for a watch enthusiast like me.

One of the great features of watch forums is theWRUW (What Are You Wearing) today threads. This is where you take a picture of the watch you are wearing that day and post it to the thread. Of course, most of you know this since most people reading this are WIS’s but just in case I thought I’d elaborate. Equally as prevalent on watch forums is a high demand for pictures. Even though the forum is for discussions, many times you will get a message saying, “Pictures or it didn’t happen.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. The discussions can be great but there is a contingency of enthusiasts who prefer pictures over discussions.Which brings me to the point of this post –for those people and for any watch enthusiast, Instagram can be like watch picture heaven! What a great place toview tons and tons of watch pictures. I mean, in the short time I have been on IG I have been so elated by all of the watch-related photos.And what great photos! Sorry.

Of course, I apologize for my enthusiasm. I’m just joining the IG world and I’m starting to get it. Thank you for indulging a consistent late-adopter.

I actually wrote this a few months ago but never posted it. I still like IG though my activity has dwindled in recent months. My user name on Instagram is bacarix since bacari was taken.