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Are 'Geek Gifts' Becoming Their Own Demographic? (thenewstack.io) 41

Posted by EditorDavid from the GitHub-vs-Amazon dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland wonders if "gifts for geeks" is the next big consumer demographic: For this year's holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game "Oregon Trail." ("Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West....") Top sites and major brands are now targeting the "tech" demographic — including programmers, sysadmins and even vintage game enthusiasts — and when Hallmark and Amazon are chasing the same customers as GitHub and Copilot, you know there's been a strange yet meaningful shift in the culture...

While AI was conquering the world, GitHub published its "Ultimate gift guide for the developer in your life" just as soon as doors opened on Black Friday. So if you're wondering, "Should I push to production on New Year's Eve?" GitHub recommends their new "GitHub Copilot Amazeball," which it describes as "GitHub's magical collectible ready to weigh in on your toughest calls !" Copilot isn't involved — questions are randomly matched to the answers printed on the side of a triangle-shaped die floating in water. "[Y]ou'll get answers straight from the repo of destiny with a simple shake," GitHub promises — just like the Magic 8 Ball of yore. "Get your hands on this must-have collectible and enjoy the cosmic guidance — no real context switching required!" And GitHub's "Gift Guide for Developers" also suggests GitHub-branded ugly holiday socks and keyboard keycaps with GitHub's mascots.

But GitHub isn't the only major tech site with a shopping page targeting the geek demographic. Firefox is selling merchandise with its new mascot. Even the Free Software Foundation has its own shop, with Emacs T-shirts, GNU beanies and a stuffed baby gnu ("One of our most sought-after items ... "). Plus an FSF-branded antisurveillance webcam guard.

Maybe Dr. Seuss can write a new book: "How the Geeks Stole Christmas." Because this newfound interest in the geek demographic seems to have spread to the largest sites of all. Google searches on "Gifts for Programmers" now point to a special page on Amazon with suggestions like Linux crossword puzzles. But what coder could resist a book called " Cooking for Programmers? "Each recipe is written as source code in a different programming language," explains the book's description... The book is filled with colorful recipes — thanks to syntax highlighting, which turns the letters red, blue and green. There are also real cooking instructions, but presented as an array of strings, with both ingredients and instructions ultimately logged as messages to the console...

Some programmers might prefer their shirts from FreeWear.org, which donates part of the proceeds from every sale to its corresponding FOSS project or organization. (There are T-shirts for Linux, Gnome and the C programming language — and even one making a joke about how hard it is to exit Vim.)

But maybe it all proves that there's something for everybody. That's the real heartwarming message behind these extra-geeky Christmas gifts — that in the end, tech is, after all, still a community, with its own hallowed traditions and shared celebrations.

It's just that instead of singing Christmas carols, we make jokes about Vim.
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Are 'Geek Gifts' Becoming Their Own Demographic? More

Are 'Geek Gifts' Becoming Their Own Demographic?

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  • Underserved market (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday December 21, 2025 @06:49PM (#65873581) Homepage

    When I was growing up, gifts for geeks were cheap junk. That has changed over time, but it isn't mature. Geeks came into their own about ten years ago, but not everyone has caught up.

    • Underserved market

      It'll be a dying market in 20 years. AI doesn't need Christmas gifts.

      Maybe geek nostalgia gifts will replace it. Shirts with a pic of a Bash script with "This used to be my job".

  • Elephant in the Room (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Sunday December 21, 2025 @06:52PM (#65873589)
    Think the current ownership even knows about ThinkGeek?

    • Re: Elephant in the Room (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Old Man Kensey ( 5209 ) on Sunday December 21, 2025 @07:06PM (#65873621) Homepage
      First thing I thought of. The halcyon days of ThinkGeek were the early '00s when they had stuff like the t-shirt that said "go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script". (One of my friends actually worked there for awhile and got to beta-test the interactive wizard robe that was originally just an April Fool's joke.) Toward the end it was hard to find anything that wasn't just mass-media licensed merchandise, even before it became a wholly owned brand of GameStop or whoever. The one bright spot is apparently the team that designed the Bag of Holding bought the IP and released an updated version (which I bought and has been amazing for work travel). These days the geek stuff I get is mostly conference swag and stuff from vendors at shows like Awesome Con, but I'd love to see a ThinkGeek Redux type of thing.

      • Vendor swag (and especially company swag) can be great, but has a shelf life due to the branding. It's pretty embarrassing to sport a T-shirt from a former employer at your new employer (duh!)

        What would be cool is a site with tips and tricks for removing branding of different kinds, so you can keep the swag without the stigma shelf life hit.

        Eg how to remove logos from fabric without damage? Easy enough when it's just sewn on, but for some kinds of swag the logo printing methods are more stubborn than ot

    • Exactly. I've got order receipts back to 2005, including a wind-up Bender, a Piet Hein supercube in the form of a drink cooler (extra points for knowing about this from an ancient Martin Gardener column), one of the first RFID-proof wallets, and a lot of t-shirts.

    • Re:Elephant in the Room (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday December 21, 2025 @08:01PM (#65873705)

      Man, I seriously miss (the old) ThinkGeek.

    • Got me some canned unicorn meat from Thinkgeek. Mmmm .. mmmm ... good.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Think the current ownership even knows about ThinkGeek?

      ThinkGeek is more like a historical footnote, and the counterexample to show geek gifts have not been a viable demographic.
      And I'm not sure where the article is going with that. The Oregon trail is iconic among old people who were never geeks for nostalgic purposes as a famous game played when kids. Game Enjoyer and Nostalgic gamer are true demographics though, and these demographics are Not related to geekdom; any more than gift for Movie enjoyer puts

  • I mean geek gifts have been a thing for at least that long.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by micsaund ( 12591 )

      Totally. Nothing new. Thinkgeek comes to mind as I'm looking at a Tix LED clock and bendable power strip I bought from them decades ago...

  • Just because you give a geek gift, or you receive one, won't make you a geek. It will only make it mor eblantantly obvious to those around you that you are not one.

    It's one of those funny social constructs where you can't call yourself a thing to become one. The title needs to be given to you by others, independently.

  • The fact this has so thoroughly permeated into the culture means the distinction is irrelevant except to write articles and sell shit because either geeks still want to feel special in their culture or non-geeks who want in, is there even a distinction there? We all carry pocket computers around, everyone on earth has some idea of what an IP address is. Even in sports everyone knows there's some moneyball math shit behind the scenes now. The geeks won, these are just called "gifts" now.

  • I only give a Greek Gift, leading to checkmate in 5 or so moves.

  • Literally an entire website dedicated to geek gifts existed for 20 freaking years. And they think this is only now becoming a thing?!

  • As a "my first computer was a C64" kind of geek, the last thing I want is more useless plastic e-waste to clutter my house that will eventually end up in a landfill.

    Gift ideas for a geek of my generation? A donation to the EFF in my name, or maybe a used copy of a book like Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg. An old copy of a BYTE, Compute!, or Creative Computing might trigger some nice nostalgia. Maybe even a coffee cup with vi or emacs commands, but even that's pushing it because who doesn't already ha

  • Hanging out is a good gift... (Score:3)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Monday December 22, 2025 @02:56AM (#65874075) Homepage Journal

    ... especially when others and I are old these days. We barely have time to play with geeky stuff. :( I was happy to see my old friends yesterday. Some of them I haven't seen in person for like two decades!

    • That doesn't mean you can't have a gift. I was hanging out with a friend yesterday as well while wearing a periodic table of elements shirt I got as a gift a while back. Not every gift needs to be the kind that involves time and playing.

  • Ah nerd traditions... Let's keep them alive. I had a job position where I had to work together with two teams. One team used emacs, the other vim. Personally I did not care. I am more of a decent GUI guy.
    But, as you guessed, both teams did not like each other. Part of my job was to get them to work together better. I love doing that. So I learned vim and emacs and learned the intricacies of both editors. As I no longer work there and no longer need to keep the middle ground, I can clearly say emacs just s
  • FreeWear claims to donate to "corresponding project or organization" from each purchase. I wonder what this is for C-related articles (unlike some other categories, it's really not obvious in this case)? The FAQ says the donation would be listed on the check-out form and the invoice, but as far as I can see, there's nothing like that on the check-out form. Canceled the test-ordering process, so no data on what the invoice would or would not have had.
  • There are a lot of "interesting" gifts I see on places like Facebook. Geek gifts like Christmas sweaters that say things like "This is the exact thing for a spreadsheet, or "Chernobyl Safety Team 1986. Or incredibly cute cat cartoons selling T-Shirts. In a heavily battened down computer, the link won't be opened if you click on them. Most computers will open.

    There's something extra in the images if you drag them to the desktop. Still looking into what.

    Pisses me off, I would have liked a Chernobyl Safet

  • My wife laments the downfall of ThinkGeek, because she used to know that if she couldn't find a gift for me at the store then a random desk goodie from ThinkGeek would always work. Now, it's once again a struggle.

  • Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes

  • I am so thankful that all of the people recommending these kinds of products will very soon be unemployed or returning to their day jobs after the backlash of these offensively bad 'geek' products predictably backfire on the businesses selling and promoting them.

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