Coming up with ideas for gifts can be very hard sometimes. Especially if it is for people you don’t know too well, so you have no idea of their interests and what they might consider practical and useful. In this situation many people would start looking for something that will appeal to themselves, which can be completely opposite from what the recipient might enjoy.

It is unfortunate then that what you might consider beautiful, practical and useful might seem ugly, unnecessary and not very useful to somebody else. I am sure that you get lots of completely useless (aside from being gifts you can give to other people) gifts from your family. Either books by my mothers favorite authors, kitchen stuff from my grandmother or car related stuff from my brother, all this is wildly pointless for me even if it might be very useful for them.

The thing with gifts is that most people already own almost everything they need. Of course you could get them something they really want instead, but those tings are often very expensive and not very realistic to get. Many young men would like a sports car, and even if the whole family pooled together enough money to get it there is still the problem of insurance, storing space in winter and so on.

Left are the gifts that invoke some kind of positive emotion. A parent will be much happier if his 10 year old kid does something nice for them in crafts class than if the kid would buy them something. On a similar note, your partner will probably appreciate a nice framed picture of you two together in your favourite spot even though it has no practical or monetary value.

This is where the often overlooked gag gift or prank gift comes in. Happiness and laughter is the most positive emotion we can experience, and gag gifts are often designed just to make us laugh. Even if people wont remember the specific gift very long they will remember the feeling it invoked in them. The fun at a 50th birthday party might be remembered for the rest of this persons life, but will he remember all the junk he got? Probably not.