White Elephant gift exchanges are offensive.

Well if a random guy on LRC says they should then it must be so!

I think you're right.

White Elephant is your typical Republican.

And since in this gift exchange you have a chance to buy a cheap gift to put in and then wind up with an expensive gift - it goes counter to their philosophy.

It sounds socialist.

L L wrote:

I think you're right.

White Elephant is your typical Republican.

And since in this gift exchange you have a chance to buy a cheap gift to put in and then wind up with an expensive gift - it goes counter to their philosophy.

It sounds socialist.

This is the liberal view of how socialism works. Unfortunately, in practice, the opposite occurs. See, everyone realizes that you can put in a cheap gift so why should you put in a expensive one, when you are likely to walk out of it with a cheap a$$ gift like a re-gifted homer simpson chia pet.

Its all about incentives, and the incentives with a White Elephant gift exchange are a lot like socialism and provide the same result - the outcome is reduced to the lowest common denominator, which is the cheap gift.

Still don't understand why this concept is lost on the liberal crowd. If all the hippies are hanging out in the magic bus smoking doobies, there is no one growing the food to feed the munchies.

Yep. White = racist, non-inclusive. Elephant = Republican. Oh, the humanity!!

Tonka Hills wrote:

They should be banned.

I never realized how complex the variations of this pop culture game can get.

A certain gift may be particularly sought after, prolonging the game (almost indefinitely). To address this, two related variations have been widely adopted: First, no gift may be stolen more than once per turn. However, this gives a distinct advantage to the final participant. Because of this, a second common variation states that after a gift has been stolen a certain number of times (usually 3) it is "frozen" (or "dead" or "safe") and cannot be stolen again.

Another popular variant no longer places a limit on the number of times a gift can be stolen, but instead limits the number of times a person can be stolen from. Once the person reaches that number, the last gift they choose is automatically frozen to them. The frozen person can no longer be stolen from or steal from anyone else. The gifts themselves can circulate as often as possible unless frozen to someone, however a person cannot steal back the gift that was just taken from them

Some versions vary the process of choosing the play order. For example instead of numbers from a hat, two decks of cards may be used to determine the picking order. Each deck is shuffled individually, and one of them is dealt to the players. One person flips the top card of the remaining deck, whoever has the first matching card then takes a gift. The cards are flipped again until another match is found, and that person is next to take a gift or takes someone else's unwrapped gift. This continues until everyone has had his or her turn. Dice are another way to determine who is allowed to "steal" a present, when the holder of the die roll doubles (2 of the same number) it is then their turn to take a gift.