I am an older mom in Michigan. My teenagers were on Facebook and I made them let me look at both their accounts so I could see what was going on. Nothing too worrisome.

I got an Facebook account so that I could easily distribute photos. I did not do it to snoop on the lives of my kids. They added me to their friends list so that we could work with the photo albums.

I found your post about gift giving on Facebook because I wanted to know what was going on with it. I had no knowledge of the fact that you are an expert on social networking. (Do you know Carl Page?)

I was amazed and discouraged that you seem to regard gift giving entirely as a status seeking or competitive activity. I give more gifts to people then anyone I know and it is because it makes ME happy. If a waitress admires my purse, I take the stuff out and give it to her. I have given away at least 5 purses.

I gift loved ones, neighbors and total strangers. Sometimes the objects actually make people happy. Many times the gift is about the gesture, not the object. We don’t give each other enough attention. None of us do. Sometimes the gift shows that we are paying attention.

Most of the gifts I give are cheap or free, but since I pay attention to what people like, they are always just what the person wanted, even if they didn’t know it. They know that I was paying attention and remembering things about them, which delights them.

I could spend about ten minutes around you and then go out and get you something for under ten dollars that you would love and that would make you feel special. FACT.

Not all gift giving is about the object and social climbing. Some of us just like to give stuff to other people.

I have gifted my son on Facebook twice in 7 months. I gave him a slice of bacon and a lime jello mold. Was this a waste of money? No, because the gift meant that I love him and that we both have a weird sense of humor.
It is hard for parents to stay connected with their teenagers and anything that will assist us to communicate and help them feel loved is worth a dollar once in a while.

I appreciate the work you are doing and am glad that there are people trying to figure out the new world. My sons were born in 1990 and 1994 and were online by ages 3 and 1, respectively.

They are the first generation of children to grow up online, so they are pioneers. I can relate, because I was in the first generation of woman who tried to “have it all”. Even 30 years later we haven’t got it right.

Food for thought?

If you’re going to waste a dollar on me, GIVE ME the dollar so I can spend it because I really don’t care one bit about an image that I could easily take from the website and stare at all day for absa-freaking-lutely free.

I run a mailing list that started as an experiment to get a bunch of people that I know in contact with each other, many of whom have never met. It is a private list, no censorship, and is only invite only, but by anyone on the list, not just me. It is one of my primary tech thrills, I just love getting e-mails on the list.

I am also obsessive-compulsive when it comes to metadata and filters, I love tweaking my junk filters and “fixing” my mp3 tags. So, I am beginning to realize the means by which I create my standards of enjoying the gifts of communication I receive. I work diligently to not see hundreds of spam messages so the only e-mail I get is from my friends (or more importantly, the list, since it feels like we are talking).

I had never really thought about this part of gift economics in an interface, and am now realizing all kinds of ways that I use my computer in intentionally archaic ways so that I have rituals for my gifts. I openly despise Valentine’s Day, but I crave correspondence from a mailing list.

This is just the beginning of my coincidence.

I think I understand what you are saying here. And, I did sort of get, based on your expressions about commercialized holidays, that in your heart you’re not necessarily 100% onboard with that sort of program. And perhaps that was part of why I was disturbed enough to raise the issue. The thing that really got to me was when you were noting that to be effective they really should show who gifted whom first, in order to enable more effective status play.

To use an analogy which is certainly much darker than the present issue, I get this image of a pacifist physicist with a morbid fascination with the details of nuclear device design, and he’s like “you guys will never get this thing to trigger right using this design. Now, look here – if you just tweak it like so….”

And I’m surely not trying to pose as some standard of moral purity myself. I know the seductive joys of value free analysis from the inside. I get in moods where I can enjoy the armchair analysis of military conflict situations, almost like I was kibbitzing a chess game, with utter disregard for questions like which side I favor, or what was the human cost of the enterprise. Just analyze the game. Analyzing the game is fun. Player A should use this strategy – but player B could counter thus. etc.

But on to more pleasant thoughts.

Perhaps this would be an appropriate moment to speak of the most memorable person who ever gave me a non-commercial gift that touched my heart. Now to be fair, I should note that this individual touches my heart a lot, in many ways. But it’s also true that precisely the things about her character that would lead her to give out copies of one of her drawings as her Christmas gifts, are the things that cause me to think of her as “good people”.

Now I’m glad you mentioned class as a factor in gifting styles. Because there are things you can say about this person’s class background which are interesting, and perhaps even a bit counterintuitive. (Although it turns out that I will be able to say less about class issues than I had expected, since a lot of the relevant family background simply cannot, in decency, be publicly discussed).

So, let’s get names and some background for the actors in this story. Casey, the person who gave out her drawings for Christmas, was peobably about 16-17 when she did that. She’s perhaps 19-20 now. And, parentheticaly she and some of her friends were the first people I knew on MySpace, which was what caused me as an older adult to get a MySpace account so I could leave them comments. Casey’s mom is Sue, who passed away recently from breast cancer. I don’t think the depth of Casey’s humanity is understandable without considering Sue and her life struggle. (And, unfortunately, I am only going to be able to give a very limited and superficial account of that struggle, as I find, upon reflection, that most of the details that would give her story depth are simply not mine to speak about).

Sue grew up in an abusive home and foster care (respect for the privacy of those involved won’t let me give details. But things were not good at all.) and married at a young age to a fellow who ran out on her as soon as she got pregnant. So she entered adulthood as a welfare mom. But, unlike many in that situation, she was diligent and dedicated to her kids and, although there is profound alcoholism in her family background, and she certainly enjoyed her beer, she never became a drunk, and never drank to the point where it would disrupt the stability of her home. She eventually had two more kids, of which Casey is the youngest.

Now all the family of Sue’s generation are artistically talented in one way or another, and Sue expressed that through her sewing. She was always able to make nice looking clothes, or enhance stuff from the secondhand store. Eventually, when welfare reform forced her to get a day job, she became a professional seamstress for a local bridal shop, and she was very good at it. And, now that I think of it, Sue also was one to give handmade gifts. Another memorable Christmas present from years further back was a small Christmas basket held in the arms of a delightful stuffed elf figure.

So, here’s Casey. Growing up in a poor home, but with a loving and creative mom, but also subjected to a lot of the chaos that seems to be a universal part of welfare mom lifestyle. And, somehow, she found her way through that to a profound strength of character. She told me once that she was perfectly able to say and do the right things to be accepted by the “cool” kids of her school, but chose not to, because those people were shallow and lacked depth. Nor did she hang with the “ghetto” kids. She made few friendships, but deep ones, and always with conscious thinking people.

So, what does it mean when such a person chooses to give a handmade gift. On one level, it was simply a matter that if you have time and not money it’s easier to make than to buy. But, on another level, I really think that she was conscious that she would prefer to give something from her deepest true self rather than her superficial self. Rather than give a gift that might have come from anybody, she gave a gift that said “this is me”. (The piece in question is more self-portrait than not). I never asked her what thoughts went into that gift decision, but I never felt I needed to. Because I know who she is.

And when I think of MySpace users I think of Casey and her friends. My notion is that these are “real” MySpace users that I can see and touch. And I use what I see of their relation to that medium as a (sometimes critical) counterpoint to the conclusions of scholars such as yourself.

And, I find that I have given a limited and one-dimensional account, despite my original intention which was to immerse you in these people’s lives so you could see them as I have. But something is better than nothing, and perhaps I have conveyed some of the flavor of what I wanted to express.

Thanks for listening,
-Steve

Do not forget that time is also a commodity and it depends entirely on the giver/receiver as to which is worth more – money or time. Part of why most privileged folks i know value handmade gifts more is because they take time and emotional energy – two things that many of us are drained of. On the other hand, in working class culture, there’s a higher value on purchased artifacts precisely because that is the hard thing to do and you see many families going into obscene debt over Christmas just to be socially appropriate.

I’m not a fan of contemporary capitalism but to bring that into the argument here would make many people glaze over another valid and needed critique.

You give an analysis couched in value-neutral terms focused on the pragmatic question of whether the Facebook gifting feature will be a commercial success. To me, the more interesting question is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I am inclined to think it is a bad thing.

Why should people have to pay money in order to show kindness and thoughtfulness. Some of the most precious gifts I have ever received were hand made artistic messages from people who were unable to purchase a gift commercially. The thought, love and caring that went into those gifts meant more to me than any amount of money they might have otherwise spent.

And, they were in no way associated with “status games”, which I think was positive.

(Yes, status games are a pervasive part of society, associated with gift giving among other things. I associate myself with the tradition that has been explicitly against that sort of thing for at least 2000 years.)

I see the facebook gifting feature as nothing less than an attempt to put a price tag on love itself. (and an absurdly low one at that – but presumably that can be negotiated upward if the concept takes off.

To paraphrase the Master Card Commercial – Nothing in the world is pricesless anymore. For everything at all, including every deep and profound human emotion – there’s e-commerce.

Interested to hear your thoughts,

-Steve