$599 (Pixel 6), $899 (Pixel 6 Pro)
For someone who hasn’t replaced their iPhone in a little while. By most accounts, this is a very nice phone, and you can easily pass it off as a phone given in earnest—convert them to Android and direct the ire of their group chats toward them once the chat balloons become irreparably green, setting the stage for their eventual departure.
$57 (Beans Trio & Rice Kit, 100 Servings), $867 (3-month supply), $1,597 (6-month supply), $2,987 (1-year supply)
Got an anti-vaxxer relative that’s endangering public health? Give them a supply of self-reliance buckets to remove their need to leave their home, effectively removing them from society. For less than $3000, you can sequester your awful relative for up to a year and effect material benefit for the world.
$25+
Spite them with a charitable donation in their name. For the person in your life that hates Jews, donate to the Jewish Institute for the Blind. Know someone who doesn’t believe in degenerative neurological diseases? Go with a healthy donation to the Alzheimer’s Association. Have to give a gift to a high-level Facebook employee? Donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and do the digital privacy analogue of
I’m praying for you.Return to the 2021 Gift Guide for some suggested charities.
$25.49
Buy as many as you can afford and undermine their bathroom experience for a lifetime with what some say is the most uncomfortable toilet paper that you can buy. The value proposition of this large supply of toilet paper may pit partners against each other and destroy lives—use with caution.
$100+
Find a low-key family restaurant in a distant non-major city that the recipient has seemingly no interest in ever visiting; buy a generous gift card, and attach a note:
I know how much you love traveling and dining out. I’ve heard really great things about this restaurant. Enjoy!. You get to feel good thanks to the fallacy that supporting small businesses is virtuous, and the recipient is left endlessly confused.
$5+
Internet Archive is a digital library dedicated to providing free access to digitized audio, books, movies, software, and more. A major focus of the Internet Archive has been archiving web pages through their Way Back Machine. If, for example, you’ve ever tried to determine how problematic a Bon Appétit recipe was prior to being scrubbed clean, the Way Back Machine has archived it. The Internet Archive is currently hosting 70 petabytes of archived data—that’s 70,000,000 gigabytes—and a donation enables that.
$71.06 (Two, 1-Gallon jugs)
For years I took the the joyless pain of eating Grey Poupon as a point of pride— a tough mustard for tough people. It’s not. Grey Poupon is an awful Dijon mustard with its only flavor being a one-dimensional mustard heat, and the fact that this mustard has defined Dijon mustard for many in the United States is endlessly distressing. Give the gift of two 1-Gallon jugs of Grey Poupon to someone awful. Cite a fear of supply chain issues to explain the volume of mustard. If the recipient notes that they don’t like Grey Poupon, tell them that they haven’t had the good Grey Poupon and that it’s only available through restaurant suppliers, à la hair salons being the only source of high concentration hair products. Note that Grey Poupon needs to be stored in the fridge once it’s opened to maintain its best flavor. Really, you’re awful for doing this, but this whole thing, all of it, should turn them off of you for a while, and that’s the goal, right?
$145
Buy it for that guy who isn’t quite worth the price of men’s clothing. Go with the largest size for the most plausible deniability.
$62.99 (1 Gallon)
This is great quality paint, and this is great for those in a new home in need of interior painting. Get this paint in a dark color, and see if they paint a room with it. If you notice that the recipient used the paint, follow up with a discordant color for the next holiday or birthday, and see if they continue to paint. If they paint again, you should assume that the recipient will paint ad infinitum. Proceed with caution, but probably also proceed with more gifts of paint.
$599 (Pixel 6), $899 (Pixel 6 Pro)
For someone who hasn’t replaced their iPhone in a little while. By most accounts, this is a very nice phone, and you can easily pass it off as a phone given in earnest—convert them to Android and direct the ire of their group chats toward them once the chat balloons become irreparably green, setting the stage for their eventual departure.
$100+
Find a low-key family restaurant in a distant non-major city that the recipient has seemingly no interest in ever visiting; buy a generous gift card, and attach a note:
I know how much you love traveling and dining out. I’ve heard really great things about this restaurant. Enjoy!. You get to feel good thanks to the fallacy that supporting small businesses is virtuous, and the recipient is left endlessly confused.
$145
Buy it for that guy who isn’t quite worth the price of men’s clothing. Go with the largest size for the most plausible deniability.
$57 (Beans Trio & Rice Kit, 100 Servings), $867 (3-month supply), $1,597 (6-month supply), $2,987 (1-year supply)
Got an anti-vaxxer relative that’s endangering public health? Give them a supply of self-reliance buckets to remove their need to leave their home, effectively removing them from society. For less than $3000, you can sequester your awful relative for up to a year and effect material benefit for the world.
$5+
Internet Archive is a digital library dedicated to providing free access to digitized audio, books, movies, software, and more. A major focus of the Internet Archive has been archiving web pages through their Way Back Machine. If, for example, you’ve ever tried to determine how problematic a Bon Appétit recipe was prior to being scrubbed clean, the Way Back Machine has archived it. The Internet Archive is currently hosting 70 petabytes of archived data—that’s 70,000,000 gigabytes—and a donation enables that.
$62.99 (1 Gallon)
This is great quality paint, and this is great for those in a new home in need of interior painting. Get this paint in a dark color, and see if they paint a room with it. If you notice that the recipient used the paint, follow up with a discordant color for the next holiday or birthday, and see if they continue to paint. If they paint again, you should assume that the recipient will paint ad infinitum. Proceed with caution, but probably also proceed with more gifts of paint.
$25+
Spite them with a charitable donation in their name. For the person in your life that hates Jews, donate to the Jewish Institute for the Blind. Know someone who doesn’t believe in degenerative neurological diseases? Go with a healthy donation to the Alzheimer’s Association. Have to give a gift to a high-level Facebook employee? Donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and do the digital privacy analogue of
I’m praying for you.Return to the 2021 Gift Guide for some suggested charities.
$71.06 (Two, 1-Gallon jugs)
For years I took the the joyless pain of eating Grey Poupon as a point of pride— a tough mustard for tough people. It’s not. Grey Poupon is an awful Dijon mustard with its only flavor being a one-dimensional mustard heat, and the fact that this mustard has defined Dijon mustard for many in the United States is endlessly distressing. Give the gift of two 1-Gallon jugs of Grey Poupon to someone awful. Cite a fear of supply chain issues to explain the volume of mustard. If the recipient notes that they don’t like Grey Poupon, tell them that they haven’t had the good Grey Poupon and that it’s only available through restaurant suppliers, à la hair salons being the only source of high concentration hair products. Note that Grey Poupon needs to be stored in the fridge once it’s opened to maintain its best flavor. Really, you’re awful for doing this, but this whole thing, all of it, should turn them off of you for a while, and that’s the goal, right?
$35+
Make a donation to contribute to care, support, and research for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
$25.49
Buy as many as you can afford and undermine their bathroom experience for a lifetime with what some say is the most uncomfortable toilet paper that you can buy. The value proposition of this large supply of toilet paper may pit partners against each other and destroy lives—use with caution.
Next up in Vapid Consumerism
The 2018 Holiday Gift Guide
Tried and tested by the Richard Eaglespoon team, or not, but still pretty good too.
Tried and tested by the Richard Eaglespoon team, or not, but still pretty good too.
The Latest
How to Union Bust
A campaign of union busting by restaurateur Ann Kim and a campaign of bullying and intimidation by the Star Tribune to remove my work reporting on the union busting.
A campaign of union busting by restaurateur Ann Kim and a campaign of bullying and intimidation by the Star Tribune to remove my work reporting on the union busting.
Diet Prada’s Antisemitism Problem
Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler’s abject failure in reckoning with antisemitism.
Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler’s abject failure in reckoning with antisemitism.