The Stupidity Index
Every piece carries a number between 0.0 and 10.0. It ascends. A watch that scores 9.6 is not worse than one that scores 0.2 — it is more stupid, and stupid is what this publication is for.
The industry rates watches out of ten and calls the result a review. Those numbers claim to measure quality, and quality in a wristwatch was settled decades ago: a quartz movement in a thirty-pound case will outperform almost everything on this site, forever, for the price of lunch. Rating mechanical watches on accuracy is like rating candles on lumens. So we rate the thing that is actually in question.
- 0.0 – 1.9 Sensible
- Solves a problem it actually has. Keeps good time, asks nothing of anybody, and will be replaced without ceremony. We rarely write about these. There is nothing wrong with them, which is the difficulty.
- 2.0 – 3.9 Defensible
- Mechanical, but for reasons that survive being said out loud. A tool that is still roughly a tool.
- 4.0 – 5.9 Compromised
- Does something a cheaper object does better, and is aware of it. Most new releases land here. So does most of the industry.
- 6.0 – 7.9 Committed
- Requires maintenance, attention, or a ritual, and repays none of it in any measurable way. The owner has stopped pretending otherwise.
- 8.0 – 9.4 Properly stupid
- Obsolete at every function it was built for, outperformed by a telephone, and still the correct answer. This is the register the publication was assembled to cover.
- 9.5 – 10.0 Exemplary
- As above, and the obsolescence is the point rather than a side effect. Awarded rarely and without appeal.
What it does not measure: price, rarity, condition, investment prospects, or whether you should buy one. Those are your business and we have said so in the manifesto.
The lowest score this publication has issued is 0.2, to a letter recommending that the correspondent buy a smartwatch. The advice was correct. That is precisely why it scored what it did.
The scale is not calibrated and there is no methodology. The number is assigned by whichever desk filed the piece, in a single pass, and is not open to appeal. Anyone proposing a rubric will be invited to consider what a rubric would be measuring.
— The Editor