I’ll admit it: when I started this blog I did a lot of things because everyone else was doing them. Big example is reviewing the first episodes from a new season of anime. Sure, it’s a great way to generate content, but it’s content that’s ultimately disposable and worthless.
Nowhere else is the tendency to generate content at the expense of value more apparent than in the practice of writing gift guides. I know a lot of the people reading this aren’t plugged into a million anime and manga blogs the way I am, but this is a thing that happens on a stupefying level.
Milo, you rude asshole, I can hear the objectors say, people have found these guides useful. They’ve said so on numerous occasions. They’re more than just Internet noise!
Yeah, but they shouldn’t be. That’s my whole point.
There was a stamp guy I used to know. He was really into stamps. Whenever it came time to get someone a gift, he would get them the stamp version of what they liked. Liked baseball? He got you baseball stamps. Liked cars? He got you car stamps. Liked Indigenous Australian sandpainting from the 19th century? He got you baseball stamps.
You know where I’m going with this, right?
Don’t be that guy. No one likes that guy. Even if they’re super polite to him with frozen smiles on their faces.
Milo, you impolite idiot, I can hear other objectors say, what about people who use these guides to buy gifts for their friends who already like anime and manga? Not everyone has time to know about the new releases in a given year.
Really? People have time to read blogs but not time to find an appropriate gift on their own?
The whole idea of gift-giving is busting your ass to show appreciation for someone. If you’re only giving on a superficial non-committed level, then get something generic that won’t go to waste, like a gift card. Or don’t waste your money on superficial bullshit at all, and donate to a needy charity.
That’s what this whole thing is supposed to be about, you know?
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Milo, I don’t think anyone who participates in the Great Manga Gift Guides each year is hoping to shove manga down the throats of otherwise uninterested giftees. The guides are meant (usually) to help people who are buying gifts for people who already appreciate manga. It could be quite helpful to the parents of a kid who loves manga, for example, but doesn’t know what to get their kid.
If you’re not buying anyone manga, it’s also a good indication of what the bloggers think highly of. The choices we put in our gift guides aren’t always widely reviewed manga.
And lastly, most of these bloggers have already donated generously earlier this year to charities involved in helping Tohoku tsunami victims. I should know because I ran a fundraiser for two such charities and used my blogger friends to solicit donations from their readers. Most of the bloggers themselves donated money and apologized to me for not being financially able to donate more.
Just because they’re participating in this doesn’t mean that anyone is trying to be hypocritical and not give to the needy. Quite the opposite, as I think many of us want to prevent a critically-wounded industry from going away entirely. Good sales over the holidays means that maybe Digital Manga Publishing or another small company stays alive over the next year.
Notably, Kate Dacey of The Manga Critic has suggested donating to charity in her gift guide too.
The point of this write-up wasn’t to challenge the integrity of anyone that would write a gift guide, it’s to poke fun at the usefullness of such a practice. Like I said in the intro, I completely understand blogging without questioning (or caring) how useful it ultimately will be. I’ve done it before and will most likely do it again. But I also think before doing something a lot of other people are also doing, it’s worth asking why.
For example, you countered these manga gift guides may be useful to parents who want to get gifts for their kids who love manga. But your audience isn’t parents with kids who read manga, it’s parents who read manga blogs and have kids who read manga. I don’t think that audience requires much help unless they have a really bad memory, because why would you read about manga all year and suddenly need help thinking of manga gifts after Thanksgiving?
Can’t we honestly characterize things? Wouldn’t it be fair to say these are being written more because it’s something easy to do and feels kind of fun? Like a sort of writing prompt for bloggers: an easy way to show appreciation for the year in manga.
And buying someone a gift because you saw it in a gift guide still strikes me as an empty social gesture. Maybe this is just a minority opinion, but I’d rather not receive a gift at all than receive one with minimal thoughtfulness put into it. People’s money can go to better uses.
I generally find that blogging is sometimes more useful to me than it might be to my readers. But then again, I tend to start a lot of discussions on my blog where I want to hear what fans have to say about certain industry practices, trends in manga, etc. But that’s just me because it’s hard for me to do manga reviews as an industry member. Other people have their own reasons for blogging and I don’t know what they are. Still, I would hypothesize that a lot of bloggers have very personal reasons for blogging, aside from what use their posts have to their readers.
I can honestly say that I know my regular readers fairly well and most of them are not parents who read manga blogs. Those people might exist, true, but there also exists the people who turn to Google when they want to get something thoughtful for their manga-loving friend or relative and they need to research first. If the search engines point them in our direction, then we have useful content ready for them. Which is why, I’m guessing, the Manga Gift Guides are some of the most popular posts on my blog.
You may question the thoughtfulness of such practices, but isn’t that a question for the person receiving the gift? I bet there are a fair number of people out there who would be overjoyed that someone thought of their interests and bothered to give them a related gift. I know I was so happy as a teenager when a relative or friend would get me a manga-related gift. They thought of *me* when choosing it, so what if they got some help along the way? Really, as long as there is one person enjoying the gifts our gift guides might have influenced, our gift guides are thoughtful and useful.
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Hi, Milo!
On one level, I share your skepticism about the practice of writing annual gift guides. I’ve certainly read my share of silly ones, the nadir of which suggested that parents give their college-aged kids cash and scented body wash for Christmas. That’s why I made a conscious effort to keep my list brief and focused on books that aren’t on every manga fan’s radar. (How many reviews of Tank Tankuro have you read this year? Yeah, me neither.)
On another level, however, I found the tone of your essay odd, especially when you recently posted an article that began like this:
Now that the US is in Black Friday/Cyber Monday mode, what better time to pick up some anime for ridiculous prices? Only problem is searching around for prices at multiple sites can be a major pain in the ass. The forums over at The Fandom Post have you covered, listing not only the sales, but linking to the actual anime titles themselves.
I’m not really sure how this post is so different in tone or purpose than the Christmas lists, as you’re urging people to participate in the consumer frenzy around the holiday season just as surely as the folks who composed gift guides. I’m not criticizing the practice of linking to sales — I’ve certainly done it, as has every comic blogger I know — just suggesting that your indignation is a little misplaced.
Kate
Telling people where they can save money is one thing. Setting out to advise what they buy for their friends and family is quite another. I can’t imagine the utility of gift guides ever coming close to matching their prevalence.
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