Gwyneth Paltrow has one. So do Amanda Seyfried and the Kardashians. Magazines like New York, GQ and Vogue publish several. The boutique down the street just released one, as did seemingly every lifestyle writer on Substack — even the ones who said they really didn’t want to. The New York Times has a couple, too.
Each holiday season, the pressure of finding the perfect gift for someone can seem as overwhelming as the number of gift guides trying to offer solutions. And now, some people are expressing their fatigue with the deluge of gift guides from influencers, media outlets and individuals that clog email inboxes and dominate social media feeds.
The gift guide ecosystem — or “industrial complex” as one X user called it — used to be dominated by stores like Sears and Williams-Sonoma, which mailed out bulky catalogs to entice holiday shoppers. Some of those compendiums could be amusingly aspirational.
“I remember seeing a chicken coop one year and wondering who the hell was buying this stuff,” said Drew Magary, who writes an annual “Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalog,” which ridicules some of the retailer’s more lavish gifts.
Media companies entered the fray more than a decade ago. But the lure of affiliate marketing dollars, which gave them a cut of whatever people bought via hyperlink, has led many to only increase their production of gift guides.
Emilia Petrarca, a fashion writer based in Brooklyn, argues that the gift guide glut began with the larger media companies. “People wanted genuine and useful recommendations, but so much of what you would see were Amazon links and expensive advertiser placements,” she said.
