With only a few days left before Christmas, everyone is scrambling to finish that last bit of shopping that they have to do.
In an effort to avoid the awkward silence or the obviously fake too-enthusiastic smile that comes when someone receives a gift that they know they’ll never use, we’ve created a list of five things that you should never buy your gamer for Christmas.
Music CDs
"Everyone loves music!"
It's true that pretty much everyone loves music. Sure, we all know that one guy who claims to hate all music created within the last 200 years, or he doesn't listen to it because of some obscure bullsh*t Hipster reason that he believe makes him seem smarter and more worldly…
…but past those rare and douchey exceptions, human beings on a whole love music and are at heart, very musical creatures.
From Barry White slipping vocal roofies into your date's drink, to that one dubstep song that you heard for like twelve seconds, but refuses to leave the spot in your head where it has been playing on loop for the last three goddamn days, music is a part of us. It is incorporated into every thought, process and significant event of life that we enjoy, so why would this be a bad gift?
Because we already own it. All of it.
In the 80s and 90s, music CDs were harder to come by. You had to leave your house, drive to a store and paw through racks of overly protected discs just to get the songs that you wanted. People had entire CD collections, and if they were in the mood to hear a favorite song they had to go to their bookshelf, find the disk, clean the fingerprints off of it, and put it in their CD player.
Then God created the internet.
So now we have all of it. Every single song that you can think of literally at our finger tips and you want us to go back to using that archaic physical media? Thanks, but no thanks. And come on, no one actually pays for music anymore. It isn't like there is a place to buy songs and mu-I SPENT HOW MUCH MONEY ON iTUNES THIS YEAR?!?
)
Fitness Gear and Gym Memberships
"Everyone wants to be in shape and look good!"
I don't want to perpetuate a stereo type of the lazy, out of shape geek or the skinny nerdling who escapes to the realm of video games because the last time he went outside a wild pack of pollen dry humped his lungs…
…but exercise kind of sucks.
Gym Memberships just serve to remind us that even if we worked out faithfully every day, our hollow bird bones wouldn't support the weight of the muscle that the guy next to us has on his f**king thumbs. Human interaction is awkward enough without going to a place filled with the people who used to give us wedgies and shove us into lockers.
Now couple that with the fact that exercise is… you know… hard and stuff.
)
Besides, I don't need perfectly sculpted, well-defined abs. My level 85 Paladin has them for me.
Gift Cards
"Why get him a gift he might not like when I can let him pick it out himself!"
Gift Cards seem like the perfect gift because like money they can be used to buy anything in the store, but they feel more personal because you're not just bouncing a few bills off your sister's head like you're at a strip club in Arkansas. The problem with that is, they can only be used in the store they've been purchased in, and in order to use them, we actually have to go outside and have human interaction.
So now you're making us leave the house to buy ourselves something from a store we'd probably never shop at anyway? How is that a gift?
Look. When we go out, we go to one of three places: Game Stop, Best Buy, and Taco Bell.
In that order. Because doing Taco Bell first is a rookie mistake that you only make once.
)
Any gift cards to places that aren't one of those three will go into a drawer with twenty-five pens that don't write a hundred dead batteries and a deck of cards missing most of the 3's.
Give us the money instead, and I promise that we won't be offended. You’ll get the joy and happiness that a well planned gift fills you with and we'll still get the twenty-five bucks to spend on something that we'd actually like without having to go into Bed Bath & Beyond to do it.
Self Assemble Kits and Models
"Wow, this model kit is amazingly detailed and Timmy just LOVES Star Wars!"
While it is true that there is a very small sub-species of geek who are adept at assembling small figures and painting them with breath taking detail; the rest of us are basically the paste eating retards who failed art class. Because of this, what we build never even faintly resembles the picture on the box when we're done.
Mostly because it is missing forty-seven percent of the pieces and all of the windows are smudged with fingerprints and glue, but partially because the picture of the model on the box that lured you in was done by entire teams of professionals with steady hands and an almost DaVincian talent for Photoshop.
So while the idea of a fully detailed, painstakingly recreated replica of the Millennium Falcon hanging from our ceiling with fishing line sounds amazing…
.. most of us simply don't have the skill to do it.
)
Just buy us the finished product, and pretend that you have no clue that it is already done. We’ll be happier with a cool looking, artistically painted replica and will still have that feeling of pride and accomplishment when we lie to everyone who asks by telling them that we performed all of the work ourselves.
Video Games
Now… I know what you're thinking:
"This is the one gift that YOU SHOULD buy a gamer you dumbass! Games are our lifeblood. Our essence. They are the key to our very being! Depriving us of them is like robbing Batman of his gadgets, Superman of his powers, or Aquaman of his… whatever it is that Aquaman has! I think… it's like… shells or starfish... or something like that."
)
And if you do say that, I totally agree with you.
"But you just said -"
I know what I said, and I stand by it. Getting video games for your gaming geek is probably the meanest and cruelest thing that you could possibly do. Why? Because we can’t immediately run off like Gollum to our lair and greedily covet our gift.
Because it’s f**king CHRISTMAS, and it is the one day of the year where we’re expected to be social and pretend like we don’t hate our families. So we thank you for the awesome present, our eyes wide and honest, our hearts soaring…
…and then we put it away for a “later” that feels like it will never come.
We socialize and eat cookies and swap stories with our families. We greet relatives that we pretend to not be home for the other 364 days of the year with open arms and we even help with food and clean up. On the outside we seem in every way to embrace the spirit of the holiday and bask in the “true meaning of Christmas”.
But inside? Inside we are dying.
Every minute, every second, every moment away from the game is causing us actual physical pain and no matter what we say or do, our hearts and minds are in our rooms with the one toy that we wanted, that we can’t play with. We ache with the knowledge that it is just laying there…
Alone.
Waiting.
Still unopened, the white strip of nearly impossible to remove security tape running its length like an especially naughty piece of lingerie just waiting to be ripped off in a fit of passion. It calls to us in a Siren's tone, beckoning, pleading, offering us the joy and pleasures concealed within…
…and we have to leave it there, because of you.
Which is why we spit in your eggnog every chance we get. Happy Holidays indeed, you monster.
-Coyote
