Many thanks to u/Acrobatic_Inside3173 for the effort they put in to this (not for this subreddit). I do this stuff for fun (and because I kept buying my dad crap gifts). Wrote a simple scraper with PRAW and pulled every Father’s Day thread from r/daddit , r/AskMen , r/BuyItForLife , r/Gifts , and r/GiftIdeas back to 2021. Filtered comments with 5+ upvotes to cut down on scrap. Total: ~4,200 comments on 50+ threads. I tagged each comment with the product mentioned, price range and category. Here’s the stuff I didn’t expect: Experiences beat products to 3:1. The most upvoted comments did not recommend anything. They were recommending time which a lot of people here will agree too. It was like: This was found in 62% of the highest rated comments. Basically check what he’s into more and then give him that experience for a price. Anyhow here are 8 products that were found in 20+ different threads: Kindle Paperwhite or an e reader Yeti Rambler / tumbler Leatherman (Wave+) Ember Mug 2 Lawn mower or a pressure washer for an outdoor budy dad Car accessories for a car dad Grilling set Benchmade Bugout or similar pocket knives and tools Here’s a short analysis from the threads: The phrase “he’d never buy it for himself” came up 83 times. That’s pretty much the formula. He has the gift that he wants it, but he won’t pull the card because he feels guilty spending on himself, which is the case with all dad’s. Gift cards are controversial. Roughly 40% of threads had someone coming to their defence hard: And someone else calling them lazy. No in between. No one recommends cologne. Nobody. In 4,200 comments I found maybe 6 positive mentions of cologne. ‘World’s Best Dad’ mugs were only mentioned in passing as a joke about bad gifts. These type of gifts will be used barely a month and then sitting somewhere on a shelf. Subscriptions make people happier than one-time gifts. The gifts that kept on giving after the day was over were Audible, AllTrails Pro, and Storyworth. One comment said his Audible sub from 3 years ago was still the best gift he’s received. The hit rate was the highest in the $15–40 range. Nothing too cheap, nothing too fancy. Practical stuff in this range were like pocket torch, meat thermometer, good socks, a wallet tracker. They got the most “I got this and he actually uses it every day” follow-ups. I cleaned up the whole list and sorted it by what the dad is actually into. And a budget-sorted version with 90+ picks if you want to sort by price. I can also run a script check on the csv data for a specific product category if someone wants to. Just comment it down! Curious if anyone else’s experience lines up with this or if I’m missing something obvious. submitted by /u/AutoModerator
Originally posted by u/AutoModerator on r/AskMen
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