The diamond industry wants you to buy "natural"

The diamond industry wants you to buy "natural". This is the diamond industry's biggest nightmare: real diamonds, grown in a lab over the course of a few days, instead of inside the Earth for billions of years. Lab grown diamonds got super popular during the pandemic, when nobody could go to stores and glitzy online ads lured in buyers who wanted something sparkly for their zoom calls. Since then, lab grown diamonds have taken off. There are diamond dog collars, diamond manicures, diamond phone cases, even diamond toilets. About half of all engagement rings are now lab grown. A lot of couples are opting for bigger, clearer synthetic stones over smaller, natural stones that cost a lot more. Between 2020 and 2023 the average retail price of a one-carat lab-grown stone plummeted from about $3,400 to around $1,200. Now, diamond producers like De Beers are fighting back with ad campaigns, products and branding all meant to convince customers that natural diamonds are different from the ones grown in a lab, emphasizing their connection to nature, to local communities and their history as some of the most ancient, revered, luxurious, precious items on Earth. What do you think? Would you pay more for a natural stone even if you couldn't see the difference?