There are so many social media and forums online that there is no way to participate in them all. I am on a few forms of social media (FB, Twitter, IG), but I’m sure there are at least a dozen other apps and sites that I’m not on. I can’t be on everything, so I pick and chose the ones that fit into my life. The same with online forums. I use FB a lot of online forum type discussions and for a long time I used the forums on IMDb to discuss tv shows and movies. But when the forums were shut down, I started looking for new places to chat with other fans of shows and movies I love.
I was never a real big user of Reddit in the past. I would look at it occasionally, but I didn’t do anything on it. And I never really thought I would use it. But after the forums on IMDb shut down, several people were saying how they were using Reddit instead so I finally signed up for an account on there and was pretty much just a lurker when I started. But I started to figure out how to use Reddit and subscribed to several subreddits for things I love (like Orangetheory!). Ironically, I don’t use Reddit for discussing tv and movies except on rare occasions but I’ve been enjoying Reddit for what I do get out of it.
There have been gift exchanges through Reddit several times a year and I participated in my first one during the holidays. It was fun buying a gift for someone who I didn’t know and they posted online about how much they loved their gifts! The gifts I got weren’t things I necessarily loved, but I put the blame for that on myself. I wasn’t that great at filling out the form to let my Secret Santa know the types of things I like. They got me things that fit what I said I liked, but not necessarily things I would use (such as t-shirts with the poster of a show I like, except I would never wear it).
So when I decided to sign up for another Reddit gift exchange, I tried to be much more specific about what I like and the types of gifts I would love to get. This exchange was to celebrate the 400th gift exchange so there wasn’t really a theme to the gifts. They did say we could send 400 of something, but it wasn’t a requirement (some of the gift exchanges are pretty specific like comic books, bookmarks, or themed for a specific hobby). I pretty much wrote in my gift preferences that I love to listen to podcasts and I love Disney. I think that pretty much sums me up!
When the matches were done, I was excited to see who I got to send a gift to. As I’m writing this, they haven’t posted on Reddit if they liked their gift or not. But they mentioned they are in dental school and love candy. So I found gummy candy teeth to send to them. They also joked that they would like $400 million as well, so I found fake $1 million bills to send to them. I didn’t send 400 fake bills, but hopefully they will get a laugh out of it.
Right after I sent off my gift, the gift I got from my Secret Santa (who isn’t the same person I sent a gift to) arrived at my door. They had given me a heads up that it was going to be in 2 shipments, but they happened to arrive at the same time so that was fun. And when I opened up the box, I was smiling so much!
While I don’t need a book on how to start a podcast, it’s going to be the perfect thing to tell others to read when they ask me about doing a podcast! And while I don’t have a trip planned yet for Disney World, I’ve been telling my friends how we need to figure out how to get to Disney World since it’s been a while since I was there and so many new things have opened at those parks!
But the book on poster art in Disney parks is the most amazing and perfect gift! I haven’t seen this book before but it is totally something that I would have seen and would have loved to buy but wouldn’t get it for myself. I’ve looked through the book a few times already and it makes me so happy to see all the incredible posters that are in each of the chapters. I love anything to do with Disney and love Disney history so this is the perfect thing for me!
I seriously love everything I got and these gifts almost make me feel bad for the person I bought gifts for because I know these gifts are so much better than what I bought. But I also can’t always compare what I gift to others to what others gift to me (this is true with Reddit gift exchanges and in normal life). This person happened to guess pretty perfectly what I would love but they had a chance that I wouldn’t love it. I’m just so grateful for what I got and have thanked them for figuring out the best gifts to get me.
I’m going to do more Reddit gift exchanges since I’ve had fun with them with the first 2 I did. I won’t do too many since I do have to spend about $20 on the gifts and then pay for shipping sometimes. If I had more money to spend I could totally see myself doing a ton of these exchanges and hopefully one day I’ll be able to do that. But for now, I’ll just have to be picky about which exchanges I’ll do. I’ll maybe pick one more to do that is fun plus the holiday time one. And there do appear to be some exchanges that are about postcards so those are less expensive to do. I’ll just have to do some investigating since these gift exchanges are still a bit new to me.
But I’m so glad that I did take the chance on doing them and that I lucked out and got someone who really did an amazing job picking out gifts for a stranger!
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