Gift giving is one of the few remaining social acts with immediate and opaque consequences. Offense is taken far more often that it’s articulated and tends to linger in the air like an eggnog fart. That’s why, every Holiday season, thousands of underqualified sub-editors are deployed to help a millions of low-conviction givers to mitigate risk.
The affiliate-linked gift guides now published by seemingly every possible publication – including The Economist1 – rarely surprise. There’s some culinary frippery, some heavily branded aromatics, some elevated basics, and, inevitably, a Dutch over big enough to incubate a Mongolian cashmere goat. The guides are always new, but only kinda. This year we’re getting California Olive Ranch Olio Nuovo (Bon Appétit, $29), Flamingo Estate personalized olive oil (Vogue, $88), followed closely by East Fork plates (Bon Appétit, $360), and the Made In Dutch Oven (Bon Appétit, $230).
The predictability – the Olio Neuvo moment follows on the heals of the Grazia boom – can be explained by Tuscan farmer’s logic: Grow Moraiolos where you know they’ll grow. That is, in essence, what gift guides do. They map the microclimate in which generosity always bears fruit. And it is a micro climate. As the anthropologist Marcel Mauss argued in 1925’s The Gift, presents make a claim about the nature of a relationship. Too generous and they humiliate. Too modest and they dismiss. Too personal and they intrude. Too generic and they insult. Gift guides exist not merely to help people select objects, but to delineate the boundaries of the socially acceptable so givers can avoid offense and, more importantly, avoid fallout.
It would be pushing the metaphor to say that gift guides serve as fertilizer, but it’s close to the truth, which is this: Gift guides are bullshit lists of bullshit presents.
That’s not to say that Astier de Villatte Incense (Architectural Digest, $60–$90), Tekla Poplin Pajamas (GQ, $225–$265) and Riedel Wine Glasses (NYT, $30–$80) aren’t good presents – just that they meet the precise definition of bullshit put forward by Harry Frankfurt in 1986’s On Bullshit (which makes a great present, btw). In that slim book, Frankfurt argues that bullshit is speech indifferent to truth or falsity designed to create a socially acceptable impression under conditions where sincerity is dangerous. Like traditional verbal bullshit, gift giving is often a way of maintaining social equilibrium under conditions of uncertainty.
“What bullshit essentially misrepresents,” writes Frankfurt, “is not the state of affairs to which it purports to refer, but the speaker’s own state of mind.”
The true state of mind of anyone using a gift guide is likely defensive, but gifts like Paravel Packing Cubes (The Strategist, $55–$85) and the OXO Brew Adjustable Temperature Electric Kettle (Wirecutter, ~$100) give the impression of a thoughtfulness. Still, there’s a tell. Two actually. The first is the soft instructional register used by the writers pitching these products, which barely conceals its obvious subtext: “please, don’t hurt me.” The second is that, like most bullshit presents, they require a little explanation.
Olio nuovo is special because it’s first press. The Serapian Full-Grain Leather Notebook is special because it is full-grain (Vogue, $165). The Moccamaster2 is special because it looks like that (GQ, $250). The Rimowa carry-on is special because it’s TWA coded (Vanity Fair, $1,430).
Any explanation that isn’t “I thought this would bring you joy” is bullshit wrapping paper for a bullshit present.
Bullshit wrapping is especially common in asymmetrical relationships – parents and adult children, bosses and employees, hosts and guests – because these are the contexts in which miscalibration carries the highest social cost. This is why so many gift guides are explicitly targeted, framing the act not around desire but around role. The Strategist publishes lists for “Your Boss,” “Your In-Laws,” “Someone You Don’t Know That Well” and even “The Dad Who Doesn’t Want Anything.”
Consider that last one. If we assume – and we pretty safely can – that everyone wants a gift that brings them deep and lasting joy – what Dad is actually trying to opt out of is the symbolic economy of bullshit gifts. He’s not allowed to do so because the asymmetry of the father-child relationship ensures the risk of not giving a gift is greater than the risk of giving a bullshit gift, presumably a shirt some copywriter has deemed “classic” or a new gadget Wirecutter has deemed “indispensable.” Ultimately, he must accept a J.Crew 1988 Rollneck Sweater ($98) or, more likely, a Kindle Paperwhite ($160).
This does not mean the sweater is ugly or the pre-loaded books are dull. It just means caliber has taken a back seat to calibration. There’s a reason the book publishing industry, which refers to the revenue spike in June as “Dads and Grads,” tends to drop David McCullough knockoffs in May. They know what specific kind of bullshit works.
Whereas genuine gifting resists standardization, bullshit gifting tends to be mediated, which invariably results in a kind of convergence. Both Architectural Digest and GQ recommend Loewe candles. Both The Strategist and Wirecutter recommend Brooklinen cashmere throws. Both Dwell and the New York Times recommend the Fellow kettle. Affiliate economics3 reinforce this convergence. At scale, publications learn which products convert. Naturally, these are the products that survive scrutiny without requiring intimacy. Cashmere converts. A familiar political dynamic emerges: Effective bullshit becomes a soft new orthodoxy.4
Again, none of this is to say that these gifts or the gift guides that flog them are useless. If anything, it suggests guides perform a critical function. They protect relationships within the context of a society that pumps out so many products that finding it’s plausible the perfect present exists and impractical if not impossible to find it. They make it feasible to get nice people nice things at a higher cadence than we find things that would give those people genuine joy. They help people say “I was thinking of you” while revealing as little as possible about what they think of you.
Wrapping olive oil is not a failure of imagination. It’s defensive strategy that works pretty good because olive oil is delicious.
