OpenTube

Everything Looks The Same. Here's Why.

Doug's Watches

14,578 views

Everything you own looks like everything everyone else owns. The cars, the coffee shops, the phones, the buildings going up in your city centre. Somebody gave this a name a couple of years ago and half the internet nodded along, but almost everyone drew the wrong conclusion from it.

This is a video about why the modern world converged on a single look, why that is not the disaster it appears to be, and what a shark and a dolphin can tell you that the age of average essays missed. It runs from two ice cream vans on a beach through Hotelling's law, MAYA and design by data, makes the honest case for sameness properly before dismantling it, and ends somewhere the age of average and airspace never looked.

This video uses three dive watches to make its case: the rolex submariner, the omega seamaster 300m and the second hour gin clear, an australian microbrand diver, alongside a nomadic diver. It covers why so many modern dive watches share the same silhouette, crown guards, rotating bezel and mid century styling despite running completely different movements, from rolex in house calibres to sellita and eta. If you have ever wondered why everything looks the same in 2026, why watches all look alike, or what the age of average and airspace actually get wrong, this is the essay. Design, Hotelling's law and convergent evolution, explained through the world's most copied watch.

#DesignHistory #Watches #AgeOfAverage #Omega

20 Comments

@tenkasen 1 month ago

I'm pretty sure this means that all dive watches are eventually turning into Crabs?

@dannyhancock9330 1 month ago

Probably your most interesting essay to date Doug. I do believe what you are arguing is essentially Platos' Architypes of form. Aimed squarely at modern marketing trends that themselves hark back to these same principles.

@vladchan 1 month ago (edited)

. Btw the Sub is not a certified diver. It also famously failed the 1958 US Navy trials. It’s a boardroom diver.

@carlospagi 1 month ago

That was a beautifully crafted and written piece. Thanks very much Doug. 🙂

@ianforber 1 month ago

Precisely. The concept of convergent evolution has been recognised for many decades. Swallows and swifts look very similar because they exist in the same environment, doing the same thing (eating flys in-flight while migrating to/from Europe and Africa). Success doing a particular function drives them towards a similar form. Dive watches exist in the same environment, doing the same thing (persuading men they are more attractive to others if they wear that type of watch). Success doing so drives them towards a similar form.

@paddyterhune 1 month ago

Terrific commentary, which applies nicely to the world of YT watch reviewers. Your's is indeed different under the surface and I thank you for it.

@michaelflitcraft7743 1 month ago

Seems you and Mike @thiswatchthatwatch have an observed similar trends, and explained the rational behind them. Well done (both of you)!

@stanlydeen2026 1 month ago (edited)

Well done Doug! You've threaded the needle on entertaining and educational. Thanks

@Konscious311 1 month ago

The internet/social media also plays a large part in this in the sense that there is a global avarage/consensus. Where previously you would have local taste with less influence from the outside, thus creating more unique designs. Nowadays it needs to cater to the world and can’t offend anyones taste.

@ericcosentino2390 1 month ago

Wow! A tour de force!
An application, if I may:
I have grown more and more impatient with anti "homage" watch essays all over YouTube.
(I won't use the derogatory word, "snobs," but I really want to.)
With, perhaps one unique brand as an exception, homage buyers are, and know they are, and don't care who else knows they are, buying a different watch.
Perhaps the most important difference is simply: price.
So what? Price is a big, invisible, component of a watch's "what's inside." It can be the difference between having and not having a watch. Is a less affluent consumer obliged to "stay in his lane; know his place" and only buy something he doesn't like the look of? To satisfy some critic who doesn't know he's alive?

@EEE_MMM 1 month ago

Now that was an excellent video, worded much better saved more extensive than I ever could. I will henceforth direct people to this video when they ask these types of questions.

I tip my hat to you, sir.

@TomOliver-m9c 1 month ago

The hidden dynamics surrounding choice is a good topic for discussion. it is worth remembering that most choices can be reduced to - take it or leave it, which is worth bearing in mind when discussing its relationship to purchasing. It's done me a few favours!

@dunderhay9169 1 month ago

Interesting as always 👍. Everyone scrabbling for the middle ground leaves quite a few buyers disappointed, so smaller adaptable companies are more likely to be noticed and find an audience by deliberately doing it differently, that Paulin is a good example. As a car enthusiast I am dismayed by how dull or even downright ugly many vehicles now are, if you forced me to buy a new car I'd have to buy an MX5, one of the very few affordable vehicles still designed for those who want an attractive car that is fun to drive rather than an automatic box that is more interested in providing a mobile space to look at a huge tablet 🙁

@TheRiverPirate13 1 month ago

All good observations mate. The car and coffee shop analogy is spot on! Every time I see a Rolex on anyone's wrist the first thing I think is it real or fake Rolex? I enjoy my watch hobby, so I notice. Now with so many dive watches looking so much like a Rolex design I don't think anyone else knows or cares! The scene in Casino Royale on the train when Vesper notices James Bond's watch and asks if it is a Rolex and he replied "Omega" that says it all. They look the same until you look at them closely.

@cartilagehead 1 month ago

dolphins ARE technically fish as well though. They are tetrapods, which makes them highly derived fish that left the water and then returned. In that sense, all dive watches derive from the same common ancestor (the wristwatch) and all have convergently evolved to look like Submariners. “Meeting from opposite ends of biology” would be like looking at the convergent evolution of the dive watch and the Apple Watch Ultra, where one traces their lineage back to watches and clocks and the other traces theirs to phones and pocket computers.