Clickbait title: Gifts. Again.

I’ve found myself critical of gift-giving on this blog before, but just as then (and with most things) what I’m really seeking is to justify emotional reactions. But introspecting to that has me thinking about this in wider concept.

I think I could write this as an introduction or a conclusion: It’s good that people interact with each other. No matter what else, there’s some seriously positive things to do anything with others. It will be inevitable that social problems appear, but the correct solution isn’t to then avoid all social interaction. The people around you might suck, but being with people, in general, doesn’t. We have an entire tradition of storytelling of outsiders who finally find “their people” and open up.

This article is described as what I would call actions categorizable as “giving someone something” where the “something” is something concrete if not physical. Taking the trash out isn’t giving something, but sending a YouTube video is.

Gifts

Now gifts. Gifts are very flexible in monetary effort. From nothing to a lot. They are also expected on certain days or after certain actions. But they are also supposed to be kept secret.

There has been a lot of noise about the economic inefficiency of gifts. It has also been argued that the internet destroyed gift-giving, because it has made niche items indexable. But what I want to talk about is the tension that can be built when expectations are not fulfilled.

On the one side you have the gift receiver. The gift receiver has all the societal pressure on their side to get a gift that can be construed as positive. This has forever stressed me out, because it lead me down to having to keep lists of my relatives in my head, effectively creating a negative association about them.

On the other hand, the gift receiver has an important duty towards the gift giver. It is to be grateful. Now you may notice that these expectation games enforce each other. If you are forced to give everyone a gift, you are more likely to give disappointing gifts, as your focus is spread between several people and people who you don’t know.

The monetary aspect of gifts should not be understated here. Depending on how you got brought up, gifts ended up being a sizeable chunk out of someone’s earnings. This makes the price of disappointment so much higher. And of course companies have made a business out of selling you overprized gifts which are shit but which are “standard” to the point nobody can get mad at you for choosing them.

Recommendations

Probably the most vague word here, but I think many people understand me in the concept of “you should read/watch/try out xyz”. So this tends to be a push in the direction of a larger time investment.

I have a lot of respect for recommendations, because they are in some ways the last way to hear about media that hasn’t been optimised by algorithms yet. This often means that most of the media that has enriched my life the most took a recommendation by a friend for me to get into.

That being said, recommendations have a horrible asymmetry. They take a second to make, but dozens of hours to fill. And depending on the person, they will be sad if you end up not liking it (after putting in all the effort!). I do think that this fact alone should make people think twice about recommendations.

Stop sending me Reels

I think it has been a pretty consistent experience, that one has a maybe very good or quite estranged friend who can’t stop sending short-form videos. And I have yet to see one of those friends have good taste (sorry!). The only thing worse is someone who sends hour-long YouTube essays (me).

Now I have not run any studies, but from a surprising number of experiences through others and studying my own behavior, I think this heavy oversharing of everything one sees tends to be linked with loneliness. Now the loneliness of spending so much time on these hell algorithms is one thing, but I think another is that one’s gauge for quality lowers.

Really I think, as we have now reached this level of “giving something” the entire practice has been divorced from the utility of receiving something. I think it is about seeking connection and approval for what you like. It’s about wearing a specific outfit and hoping your friends making oooo and ahhh noises.

Now, I am no stranger to seeking approval from others.

Zooming back out

I think I’ve lead a nice path through this discussion, where I think the crux of the issue stands. Giving something is a special action, because it involves the “giver” deciding what to give. And they are very aware about that, they understand that the gift defines them and their relationship with the person who receives it.

This can make gifts some pretty weird things, for example purely self-interested performance. This is pretty nice if it involves someone getting money when they need it (see e.g. Americans giving servers high tips and hopefully NOT filming it for a video). But it can also lead to someone going into comment sections recommending Finnegan’s Wake.

I think I have a lot of worry wrapped up in gifts, because they are such a concrete act. If you mess it up, it’s something that others can easily and verifily point to, to show what a bad person you are. Of course that never happened to me. But it is more likely to blow up than a simple gesture.

This does of course also mean that gifts in their grandiosity can heavily strengthen bonds. But I’m not sure if I like the bonds strengthened by gifts. Especially gifts given in a public setting, tend to need to stay explainable. People may even have deep passions for something they don’t want everyone in their life to know.

I really like recommendations. I think they have a great non-committal quality to them, where you aren’t foisting responsibility on another person. I do think they lose their effectiveness very quickly as soon as you go out of your circle of people who deeply know you. Something that someone random on social media says is good? Might as well just look at an ad, it probably has a better ethic’s record. This also means I think people should put more into consideration about what they tell others to watch, overdoing it risks weakening your credibility which you need once something actually is really good. (Note that this is all about telling others to consume something without being prompted to do so).

I think a lot people my age and younger than me communicate in large part through internet culture and memetics. I think it’s valueable to talk to others, through any means. That being said, I do think that when people are sending something they should have a moment of reflection of what they’re asking of the other person, implicitly. The time spent will be taken out of their day, often out of things they have chosen for themselves to do. And they will take that time very often, just because they like you.

Word of gratitude

I do hope that I do not come across as ungrateful here. In part, because that is sort of societally unacceptable. But also because I do think my dear friends are on the good side with most of this.