white elephant gift exchanges - c or d?

Dud

relate your mortifying and/or hilarious stories and generally discus

When my cousin and I lived in a cabin in the woods and all our friends were broke hippies, we had a Solstice party with a gift exchange and one of the gifts was two bras someone had found in the reuse area at the transfer station. They were both very small iirc.

So I guess I'd have to say classic.

lol

they are actually classic, for the most part. all the ones i've been to have been enjoyable.

my boyfriend attended one where someone brought "brokeback mountain" as a homophobic gag gift. he called them out afterward. not classic.

hate this shit lol

I've only ever participated in these twice and both times at least one person misunderstood the concept and brought legit nice gifts (once a wine gift basket, the other a $50 restaurant gift certificate) so it ended up with people constantly trading for that and a lot of annoyed people. Not quite to The Office iPod level, but not far off.

never done one of these. had a work secret santa thing that was a game, where you could "steal" and "trade" the gifts, and only a few of the gifts were any good - not because people had misunderstood the nature of the game but just different people brought worse or better gifts - and it became legitimately competitive and not really in very pleasant spirit.

the last one I went to, everyone bought expensive ass shit for their gifts, like they had to fucking compete with their other rich ass friends even at a white elephant party. And the hosts specifically told them “don’t buy expansive shit like you did last year”

the most crucial rule of a white elephant gift exchange is to bring shitty gifts that cost like $10 or under. if people are allergic to going to the salvation army and picking up something random and fun then they aren't worthy of this kind of party, and tbh, i don't want to hang out with them.

i'm feeling kind of inspired to do one for next year, when i can see friends again, and have it be an etsy-under-$20 party.

I much preferred the version we did for the Oscars at my old office in the early 2000s. To get into the pool, you had to buy a new, still shrink-wrapped DVD that cost less than five bucks. The winner of the pool kept all the movies. It meant combing Wal-Mart or Best Buy discount bins for the weirdest/worst movies you could find, was a lot of fun.

nice

that does sound good.

I think a white elephant gift exchange with my main social group would probably be good, might do it next year like you, map