The gift needs to be able to come off as a genuine gift so there’s some plausible deniability…
Edit: Just so it’s clear, this is purely hypothetical. I just thought of the idea and thought it would be funny to see what a random person on Lemmy might think. This isn’t a serious request and none of the suggestions will ever actually be used.
My personality disordered MIL is an artist at giving insulting gifts. An absolute master. She likes to pretend she is very poor, although isn’t, and she volunteered at a Catholic charity shop for used goods, so she would take home armloads of used crap donated from the homes of deceased elderly people and would give them as gifts, none of which was any use to anyone and was quietly donated elsewhere afterwards. But she also likes to give you weird things that are basically trash, not because she can’t afford gifts, but just to get negative attention and make people upset.
- She gave me her old used bathrobe as a Christmas gift, which was pretty threadbare, and made sure to call me the next day to tell me it had been hers, which I had consigned to the garbage because it wasn’t even really fit for donation.
- She gave her only granddaughter an old vitamin bottle filled with dish soap and a discarded bubble wand she had found in the park. Not even one dollar for her grandchild would be spent, hell the dish soap probably cost more than buying a bubble blowing kit from the dollar store would.
- She gave my BIL a sandwich baggie filled with used discarded golf tees that she had picked up walking the public course, all chipped and full of dirt. Another item easily found at the dollar store.
- Years later her only grandchild had developed an eating disorder after being bitten on the face by a pit bull and needing several surgeries to repair as she was depressed about her appearance, poor kid. My MIL immediately went out and bought herself some size XXXXL pyjamas, and then dramatically announced to her grandchild’s mother/her daughter that they were too big and she was going to give them to her grandchild, who is way thinner than her and would never fit them. We intervened and told her she was not to do that, and she immediately began squawking about what she could possibly do with them now. The whole point, if you don’t speak personality disorder, was that she bought them simply to give them to her to send her a message that she was fat, even though she was absolutely not, and to also upset her daughter.
Top tier personality disorder behaviour really.
My goodness, she sounds like a monster. Continue doing your best to protect the granddaughter please.
We’re all estranged because I seriously cannot take this family. Thankfully granddaughter won’t put up with it.
What an odd person.
She’s so much worse too. Has called me by the wrong name for almost 30 years on purpose. Her one daughter for married when West Nile virus was a big thing, and had an outdoor wedding, and MIL wore a bush helmet with mosquito netting over top in all of the photos just to get attention. It’s quite psychotic really…
I wonder why and how it comes that someone acts like that. Sure, be rude or whatever. But she seems borderline cruel for absolutely no reason whatsoever except for I assume her own entertainment.
Does one always act like that or does it come with time?
She had a childhood where she didn’t have much but I don’t think her family life was unhappy. We think she was institutionalized for mental illness in 1970 and dropped my SO into the care of his aunt and uncle. When she came to pick him up a year later he didn’t remember her, of course, being a baby, and that was distressing for her and probably made him very detached from her, because those primal bonds are so important. She had a bad relationship with her husband but it seemed to be because she was continually provoking him when he actually was home, which wasn’t hardly at all because of his job. Like I would not say she had it easy, but also that a lot of things end up the way they do for her because she enjoys what I call stick poking. She has done incredibly provocative things to provoke conflict between her children, for example not telling daughter #1 that daughter #2 was having an engagement party, but then ensuring to post photos on Facebook the very next day. Or she’d invite us over for dinner and then sit inside and talk to nobody while we prepared all the food on the barbecue and just sat around trying to figure out why we were there. She won’t have a garbage can in her house and instead walks it all over to the park trash can, which to me is insane.
I’m honestly not sure you could even diagnose her with anything really, she seems to like upsetting people and making them fight and it gives her pure pleasure to do that. I’ve never seen her smile except when she got a rise out of someone, which makes her smile like it’s her birthday. Like it’s an abnormal way of being in the world, but it doesn’t seem to be from trauma or being neurodivergent, she just really likes to seem to be an asshole as much as possible because she likes it. That’s my take on her. It’s just what she likes to do.
Hahaha my god you should make a collage out of those photos of her, I’d love to see these.
Also, sorry for what you went through. My birth mother is a narcissist, so I can relate. It can be quite liberating to have fun at their expense, though!
Unfortunately I don’t have them. But they were hilarious. Sorry about your birth mom.
Any gift that suggests they need to improve something about themselves, especially if they’ve never shown any interest in that. Like a gift card for skincare treatments, or teeth whitening. Maybe a self-help book, or some exercise equipment. Cologne/perfume is good for deniability, but it might come off as more romantic than intended.
Also, giving any of these gifts to make someone feel bad about themselves makes you an enormous asshole. Use your words, be honest with people, and don’t go out of your way to humiliate or irritate people you don’t like. Life’s too short to spend it scheming.
Boss gifted me lotion once. Was kinda amusing in that it sorta was an insult, but like I sometimes bleed from how bad my skin sometimes gets so it’s not like it’s some secret. I think she also apologized in case it was weird.
Doesn’t sound like an insult at all to me. She paid attention, which is great, but was… yes, weird.
Also, giving any of these gifts to make someone feel bad about themselves makes you an enormous asshole. Use your words, be honest with people, and don’t go out of your way to humiliate or irritate people you don’t like. Life’s too short to spend it scheming.
If you’d met the kind of people who do this - they just don’t know anything in life they could honestly do otherwise. Sometimes they pretend to do something so well, that a fraction of the effort could be spent actually doing that instead of pretense.
But they sincerely think their ability to scheme is unchangeably better than their ability to actually do interesting things. Or maybe they take pride in that.
The point is - they treat wonderful things like something out of reach, while it clearly isn’t.
The name Trojan refers to the fact that it’s intended for horses, with anything under 37cm being x-small.
Discreetly open it and replace the contents with x-large.
If they open it, it’ll make them feel even littler.
Most folks have at least 1 commonplace food item that they can’t stand. This time of year food gift baskets are everywhere and often specialized to certain tastes. So you get them something that looks like a nice goodie basket but then most things in it are tainted by a thing they don’t like.
For me it would be licorice / anise.
The taint is right next to the anise.
LOL
I haven’t tried anise but licorice is really good. Especially salted licorice!
Yes, I am Scandinavian.
Assorted chocolates - all containing nuts.
Mouthwash, breath mints, deodorant… Basically any hygiene product.
That really depends on the person and what they perceive as an insult.
Make a charitable donation in their name, and put it in a card. This is actually genuine as you spent actual money, but it’s also kind of an anti-gift. Sometimes the donation even gives you a free gift like a calendar or T shirt which you can pass along. Some people may be triggered by specific charities like The Satanic Temple, or Planned Parenthood. I would be quite upset if somebody gifted me a PeTa donation. But in that unlikely event, I would laugh and gift them back a Heifer International donation.
Get them soap and instructions about maintaining proper hygiene.
a stick of deodorant wrapped in a bow, would say it all silently
Decades ago, my mother worked with a small group of women. Every day they spent a few hours together in the office before going out. There was one lady with lacking personal hygiene, quite whiffy and rather oblivious about that. It was about that time the stick deodorants became available in our post soviet country, I believe the Speedstick was the first brand to take the market. So for Christmas for secret santa they got her the deodorant. It was a passive aggressive move, the things could have gone really wrong. She was happy with the gift but the things didn’t improve much. The following year they got her another stick deodorant, hoping to get the message through. She unwrapped the gift and excitedly thanked them, saying that the previous one was almost finished. Bless her, she only used it as a perfume on special occasions…
I think something that goes against their personality. Someone who hates the spotlight give an improv class, someone who’s afraid of heights a rock climbing class, for picky eaters a food tasting, I hate listening to instructions so I hate yoga so if you got me a yoga class. Even better if you go with them so they can’t back out. It’s easy to say I wanted to get you out of your shell and thought you would like it if you tried it.
One trick I heard is to get them a gift card towards a Las Vegas vacation. If they go to Vegas they are way more likely to lose money than win at the tables.
That doesn’t sound insulting, it just sounds like you’re giving them negative money.
True, but I think it’s in the spirit of the question.
Someone once told me that in certain circles it’s considered rude to give a book as a gift, because it implies that the person is ignorant. May have been a joke.
Save your money
The best way is the one where you know lots of (not so well-known) context and circumstances, and then it can work as an insult, but you can deny some of the knowledge and therefore you can appear innocent.
At one workplace secret Santa (which I always declined to participate in), one recipient got an empty spherical clamshell with cardboard retainer on which was printed the word “Nothing”, visible through the clamshell. The joke being that it was supposed to be “I didn’t know what to get you, so I got you nothing.”
This was not intended as an insult by the secret Santa, but was taken as one by the recipient who must have spent significantly more on whatever their recipient got.
Only you can judge how your recipient would take such a gift, but if this seems like a good idea to you you can probably find them on sale somewhere. (NB: I accept no responsibility if you choose this course of action.)
If I remember correctly, one of the recipients of a better gift thought it was funny so swapped their gift with it to cheer up the unhappy recipient. I am not sure if the swapper was their secret Santa or not.
There had been much offence, pouting and sulking… from a grown man.
I did a thing once where everyone brought a gift and some game was played and if you won your round you got to pick the gift you got, or something like that.
The person who picked before me got 2 crisp $100 bills, the person after me got airpods. I got… A painted rock, I was so excited. It was the only gift that someone put actual effort into and wasn’t just a quick buy.
Not that I would’ve been upset with $200 but I still have that rock sitting in my garden
Dang that’s crazy, someone put a lot of effort into earning $200 and giving it away as well.
A gym membership. Implies overweight.
Makeover service. Implies not looking so good.
If you know a right-wing prepper, get them a subscription to Mother Earth News, a magazine that touts self-sufficiency and off-grid living with occasional ads that lean to conspiracy theories like “free energy”. It’s full of food saving and growing ideas. It’s also liberal AF.
Charitable donation in their name to an organization they likely oppose, but not “in your face”. Like if they’re republican, don’t donate to a blatantly liberal org, donate to one that teaches kids critical thinking skills and welcomes lgbtq or something like that. They get the tax writeoff, a real benefit, but would have to be visibly hateful of they rejected where the money went. Edit: how about a LGBTQ shooting camp. That’d take some mental gymnastics.
Gift tickets to a nice cultural event to someone that is anti-lgbtq. Local city playhouse has an Opera with lots of men in tights.
Any subscription or service that makes potential commentary on personal appearance or personal beliefs would be effective.
I know an arborist (he cuts down trees) and as a joke, each year I get him a charity donation certificate for trees planted in his name.
That’s a pretty funny joke.
Donate to the human fund.
Money, for people.
Are you doing the importing or exporting? (Amazing username)
