The hyper-specific gift guides of TikTok

Non-influencers are making gift guides, and they're weirdly entertaining. The Tuesday edition of the Goods newsletter is all about internet culture, brought to you by senior reporter Rebecca Jennings. 🎁 Welcome to GiftTok 🎁 Your 11-year-old gamer girl niece. Your 32-year-old hypebeast son. Your friend with extremely expensive taste. These are all people who, for most of the year, you love and cherish but, come December, fall into the bothersome category of “difficult to shop for.” Practically everyone has at least one person in their life who fits this description, and despite the thousands of articles that come up when I Google “hard-to-shop-for gift guide,” somehow it does not make finding a suitable present for an adult man that is not “whiskey stones” any easier. For [Nolan White](, a 20-year-old college student and content creator in Ontario, that “difficult to shop for” person is, typically, himself. Nolan is stylish with a specific flavor of cool-guy taste; he is the kind of person who [decks out their bedroom in ambient lighting]( and knows how to [care for vintage wristwatches](. He started making TikToks in January as a way to experiment with outfit styling away from the prying eyes of sites like Instagram where people who know you in real life can watch your every move, and before long, commenters began asking for recommendations and how-tos. For the past few weeks, he’s been making TikTok gift guides, where he recommends products for people like him, “the sort of guy who buys everything that he wants for himself the second he thinks of it.” Nolan is one of the many, many creators on TikTok who, for the past few years, have been publishing their own wish lists and gift guides in video form, less as a sneaky method of informing their loved ones what they want than as a way to offer ideas for struggling shoppers. There’s one called [“gift guide for granola girls](” that includes things like Patagonia fanny packs and washable toilet paper; one for [older sisters;]( an [under-$50 list for the “extra” girl]( and the [cool girl]( and the [“That Girl.”]( There are entire accounts devoted to hyper-specific gift guides like [@LeahsGiftGuide](, which has more than half a million followers. Do you have a “fucc boi little brother?” There’s a [TikTok gift guide]( for that. TikTok’s audience skews young, so naturally there are lots more gift ideas for the teens and 20-somethings demographic than others, but there are also plenty for kids, categorized by [age]( and cost (such as [fancy kids' gifts under $250”](), for moms [who say they “don’t need anything,”]( for [in-laws](, and for [non-tech-savvy grandparents](. Nolan, for instance, has recently been interviewing his mom in preparation to make a parent-focused gift guide. “My philosophy overall is to try and find items that almost anybody could enjoy but very few people would buy for themselves,” he says. Another philosophy: Don’t pretend you know more about someone else’s hobby than they do. He uses his roommate who’s really into vinyl records as an example. “It’s hard as someone who’s not a record collector, being like, ‘How am I supposed to know which edition this is, or whether they already have it?’” The solution? “I look for something that incorporates a bit of that interest but still sticking with what I know,” he says. “There’s this company called [Vinylize]( that makes sunglasses out of old vinyls, so maybe I find them a cool frame that includes something they would also be interested in and kind of touched by, because I’m not going to be able to find something that they wouldn’t be able to better buy for themselves.” The idea of gift guides, in recent years, has become something of a lingering question within media, particularly surrounding whether publications should be encouraging readers to consume ever more physical stuff when [consuming physical stuff relies heavily on labor exploitation and is slowly destroying the planet](. The UK-based site gal-dem, which covers stories related to people of color and non-cisgender people, published an [anti-consumerist gift guide in 2019]( that included ideas for art or cooking projects to give loved ones; Vice published a [similar list the year before](. Though gift guides are still hugely popular (and profitable) for media companies and influencers, more widespread awareness of the failures of capitalism and consumerism have made it more difficult for some shoppers to click “place order” without feeling a pang of ethical queasiness. Yet I don’t think the joy of putting together a gift guide for strangers comes solely out of a desire to score commissions on affiliate links, even though this is almost certainly the reason [so many publications and popular influencers keep tossing out product recommendations]( year after year. A cynical take might be that as more of the attention economy is spent watching professional influencers and online creators do their jobs, the more we’ve subconsciously adopted their rituals and mannerisms (“link in bio!” “like and subscribe!” “use my code for discount!”). Perhaps as social media has forced us all to become one-person media empires, product recommendations are the internet’s answer to magazine ads or commercial breaks, creating an endless loop of products to see, buy, and recommend again to one’s followers. But I think the reason there are so many gift guides on TikTok is because of a far simpler, if perhaps more unfortunate reality: It is extremely fun to shop. For the average TikToker who earns zero or very few dollars doing so, gift guides are simply a hobby. “It’s fun,” says Nolan, “I have people asking for a $500 or $1,000 gift guide, and that’s when you can find some really out-there stuff.” In other words, curating gift guides feels like shopping with money you don’t actually have to spend; they let you imagine a perfectly designed person whose every problem can be solved by customized water bottles or fancy bakeware. I don’t know how to solve the problem of too much stuff, or the problem of hard-to-shop-for people. I don’t know why I enjoy watching teenagers I’ll never meet tell me what they want for Christmas. I don’t know why so many of us are willing to shill for the richest man in the world, for no money, all while believing we’re doing someone else a favor. But it’s the holidays, so here we are, watching free advertisements for terrible companies, watching stylish TikTokers talk to us about things they like, buying more stuff with the best intentions and presenting them to each other in the universal language of consumption. For the record, to anyone reading this in order to drum up gift ideas for me, I’d like a Dyson Airwrap.  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Clickbait 👀 - I was offline on vacation for most of November, and the only internet thing that penetrated this blissful state of being was [“yassify.”]( - This story will make you feel really sad for a millionaire who [streams on Twitch all day](. - The Times’s Ben Smith got access to an internal TikTok document that lays out its ultimate goals: adding daily active users by optimizing for retention and time spent (I guess those “you’ve been scrolling for too long, maybe you should log off” ads are a lie!) There’s some other stuff there, too — how the algorithm suppresses “like bait” and how every video is given a score that determines how many people it’s shown to — but nothing particularly alarming. In fact, computer scientists quoted in the piece said nothing in the document was unusual, which is pretty much the general takeaway of every “we cracked TikTok’s algorithm!” piece I’ve ever read. - TikTok’s [vigilante detectives are out of control.]( So are the conspiracy theorists deciding that a TikToker who posted a dance video i[s actually a serial killer]( based on nothing whatsoever. - Get-rich-quick schemes are getting [really good at targeting young people](, maybe because literally everything feels like a get-rich-quick scheme right now? - Speaking of bad ways to spend money, I dare you to get through a single paragraph of [this story about metaverse landlords]( without wanting to throw your computer away. One Last Thing 👋 The holiday season, encapsulated in a [single TikTok](.  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Manage your [email preferences]( or [unsubscribe](param=goods). If you value Vox’s unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring [contribution](. View our [Privacy Policy]( and our [Terms of Service](. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Floor 11, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2021. All rights reserved.