what to gift them based on how long you've been friends
the grayscale of platonic relationships
🕊️ Ceasefire Now in Gaza 🕊️
An annual subscription is on sale for $60 ($5/month) this week.
If you need a gift “on time”, check out The Molehill thread for reader-submitted ideas. And add yours :)
I thought long and hard about how to approach “gift guide” content this year. Because the vibes really shifted this year: gift guides are now more than ever a presumed part of anyone’s *online personal brand.* I think the product review/recommendation space is changing; we want personal recs from people we relate to or wish to emulate in some way. We’ve been moving away from the Wirecutter era, which is now just all Amazon affiliate links anyways…
And then there’s the lol moment of reading the “gifts for xyz person in your life” that tries so hard to be hyperniche but it’s all the same bathrobes and drunk elephant drops and stanley cups for [insert maternal-coded figure here]. If you don’t have a diptyque type mom then these gift guides just feel very useless and kind of alienating even??
Anyways. I present to you a gift guide for friends. It’s a riff on the “what to get him based on how long you’ve dating” genre of article. Because gifts communicate things. Feelings. Intentions. I think platonic relationships are just as complex and layered, so let’s break down what Types of Friends this guide will cover:
I also think most gift guides are wildly unrealistic for most budgets, considering the number of people on a typical gift list. Most of my picks are under $25.