Somewhere in America right now, a 26-year-old is crying in a parking lot because a florist quoted her $4,200 for centerpieces she'll look at for three hours.
She thinks she's planning a wedding. She's actually the final step in a century-long psychological operation, and she's paying for the privilege of being the last one to notice.
Let's start with the ring.
**The Most Successful Ad Campaign in Human History**
In 1938, the De Beers cartel was drowning. Diamonds were piling up in vaults, demand was soft, and the whole "rare gemstone" story was, to put it gently, a lie. Diamonds aren't rare. They're one of the most common gemstones on Earth. The scarcity was manufactured, hoarded, and enforced by a company that controlled roughly 90 percent of global supply for most of the 20th century.
So they hired N.W. Ayer, a Philadelphia ad