But the question here is … whether giving to charity … is better than buying expensive stuff for themselves.
This is all so bass-ackward. Your premise seems to be that the Valentine Day is all about spending money, so if you’re spending money anyway why not spend it on charity. However “buying expensive stuff” is not a terminal goal, but merely instrumental—replacing it with something that does not achieve the same terminal goal is counterproductive.
Valentine Day is about expressing very personal attention to and care for another person. It is NOT about yourself and demonstrating your admirable qualities like willingness to give money to charity. If you think it’s just an opportunity to status-signal, you’re doing it wrong.
Sure, there are lots of people who take the easy way and substitute “took time and effort to find/make/pick” with “expensive”. But these are precisely the kind of people who will look at a suggestion to replace the flowers/diamonds/etc. with condoms for Africans with incredulity. These are not your target audience.
Besides, if a S-RCN (Self-Respecting Conventional Neurotypical) girl gets “I gave some condoms to Africans as a present to you” for Valentine Day, her immediate first instinct would be to kick the giver in the yarbles. If she’s quick-thinking, though, she’ll realize he doesn’t have any yarbles, so she’ll just give up and leave.
The two solutions to this situation are (a) pick something other than conventional neurotypical; (b) don’t be a bloody idiot.
This is all so bass-ackward. Your premise seems to be that the Valentine Day is all about spending money, so if you’re spending money anyway why not spend it on charity. However “buying expensive stuff” is not a terminal goal, but merely instrumental—replacing it with something that does not achieve the same terminal goal is counterproductive.
Valentine Day is about expressing very personal attention to and care for another person. It is NOT about yourself and demonstrating your admirable qualities like willingness to give money to charity. If you think it’s just an opportunity to status-signal, you’re doing it wrong.
Sure, there are lots of people who take the easy way and substitute “took time and effort to find/make/pick” with “expensive”. But these are precisely the kind of people who will look at a suggestion to replace the flowers/diamonds/etc. with condoms for Africans with incredulity. These are not your target audience.
Besides, if a S-RCN (Self-Respecting Conventional Neurotypical) girl gets “I gave some condoms to Africans as a present to you” for Valentine Day, her immediate first instinct would be to kick the giver in the yarbles. If she’s quick-thinking, though, she’ll realize he doesn’t have any yarbles, so she’ll just give up and leave.
The two solutions to this situation are (a) pick something other than conventional neurotypical; (b) don’t be a bloody idiot.