Bad Gifts Are Everywhere

Why would anyone give a bad gift
Bad gifts in history
Bad gifts in film, literature

Bad gifts for every occasion

Weddings
Birthdays
Anniversaries
1. Your spouse
2. Relatives & Friends
Graduations
1. Huffpo has 10 bad gifts for grads:
  1. Guidebooks About How To Be Successful After Completing A Humanities Degree http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-oneill/holiday-presents-least-ap_b_799113.html#s209654 "This is a gift that says, “I know you’re spending four years of your life and roughly the price of a small house on your college education, but I thought this handy guidebook (only $19.99!) might really launch your career.” It also says, in smaller print, “I have no idea who you are as an individual, or what the heck you read. I could have taken five minutes to ask your mom, or your girlfriend or anyone who spends more than 10 seconds picking out gifts for people. But to be honest, I think most of the choices you make for yourself are big, fat wastes of time.” "
  2. Stuffed Animal From The University Bookstore: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-oneill/holiday-presents-least-ap_b_799113.html#s209851
  3. CDs: " A CD is perfect for any college student to pop into his Discman right before he catches the bus to 1995." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-oneill/holiday-presents-least-ap_b_799113.html#s209857
Religious events
1. Bar mitzvah
2. Christening / name day
Holidays
1. Xmas
2. Chanuka
3. New Years

Bad Gifts for Special People

Relatives
1. Relatives who are small children
Boss
Co-worker
Rival
Enemy

Songs About Bad Gifts

Present Face by Garfunkel and Oates

Web Pages About Bad Gifts

This is a goldmine: Gawker, Give Us Your Gift-Giving Horror Stories

LIFE magazine in the 50s: Christmas Jeer: Good-for-Nothing Gifts

Lifehacker (2013)The Worst Gifts You Can Possibly Get Someone for the Holidays

News About Bad Gifts

Washington Post, [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122601836_pf.html Amazon patents procedure to let recipients avoid undesirable gifts.

Amazon is working on a solution that could revolutionize digital gift buying. The online retailer has quietly patented a way for people to return gifts before they receive them, and the patent documents even mention poor Aunt Mildred. Amazon's innovation, not ready for this Christmas season, includes an option to "Convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred," the patent says. "For example, the user may specify such a rule because the user believes that this potential sender has different tastes than the user." In other words, the consumer could keep an online list of lousy gift-givers whose choices would be vetted before anything ships.

Amazon's idea has raised the ire of the Miss Manners crowd, which thinks the scheme rather uncouth. After all, receiving an e-mail notification of a forthcoming gift - and thereby being able to check its price - is hardly the same as unwrapping the item at home.

Anna Post, great-great-granddaughter of the late etiquette author Emily Post and spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute, said she hopes the company realizes it is risking major backlash and abandons the idea. Because of Amazon's dominance online, she and others say they fear the idea could spread throughout the e-retailing industry, which this holiday season racked up $28 billion in gift purchases.

"This idea totally misses the spirit of gift giving," Post said. "The point of gift giving is to allow someone else to go through that action of buying something for us. Otherwise, giving a gift just becomes another one of the world's transactions."

The proposal has also brought into focus a very costly part of the e-retailing business model: Up to 30 percent of purchases are returned, and the cost of getting rejected gifts back across the country and onto shelves has online retailers scrambling for ways to reduce these expenses.

...

Amazon's patent is 12 pages long, with numerous diagrams, including a "Gift Conversion Rules Wizard" that shows how a user could select rules such as, "No clothes with wool." The document makes for curious reading, reducing the art of gift giving to the dry language of patentry.

"It sometimes occurs that gifts purchased on-line do not meet the needs or tastes of the gift recipient," the patent says. "In some cases, concern that the gift recipient may not like a particular gift may cause the person sending the gift to be more cautious in gift selection. The person sending the gift may be less likely to take a chance on a gift that is unexpected but that the recipient might truly enjoy, opting instead for a gift that is somewhat more predictable but less likely to be converted to something else."

In even drier language - "an exemplary embodiment relates to a computer-implemented data processing system comprising a user interface and gift conversion logic" - Amazon explains complicated algorithms that help users create rules about what to do in certain gift situations, such as "Convert any gift from Aunt Mildred to a gift certificate, but only after checking with me."

Most cleverly - or deviously, depending on your attitude toward this sort of manipulation - the gift giver will be none the wiser: "The user may also be provided with the option of sending a thank you note for the original gift," according to the patent, "even though the original gift is converted." (Alternatively, a recipient could choose to let the giver know he has exchanged the item for something else.)