The WiShLiSt WeDnEsDaY Experiment

the opinion you didn't ask for.

Cool your boobies before you come at me, these are only my observations, opinions and results of an experiment. ¹

What is Wishlist Wednesday?

If you are anything like me, there is one day a week that you wake up dreading your bookstagram feed. Wednesday. I have to take a deep breath before I open the app in the morning. You know it is going to be clogged start to finish, all day long with posts for WiShLiSt wEdNeSdAy! For some inexplicable reason the posts seem to start sneak-a-leaking in there in the late afternoon every Tuesday (Tuesday is NOT Wednesday, people - someone please comment and tell me why Tuesday).

The whole concept never made any sense to me and would send me into a rage spiral every single week, mostly due to the crazy amount of them. Don’t even get me started on the fact that we now seem to have “Gift Train Tuesday, Thankful Thursday, Fairy Friday, Send Something Saturday, SOMEBODY for the Love of God Send me Something Sunday,” and all the others which are essentially the exact same concept.

How it Works

As far as I can tell, for most posts, the rules are simple… suspiciously too simple. People generate a post similar to the one above. They tell people to follow them and share the post. Then people comment with a book they want or a “surprise me” with their country’s flag (I assume to make it easier for people from the same countries to send to one another). Here is the catch, if you want to gift someone, you respond to their comment with a present emoji. There is usually no rule that you have to send a gift if you are participating, just if you want to. ²

The Hypothesis: People are selfish, and this is stupid.

As you may have realized, I can be extremely skeptical of the motives of others. I can even be downright cynical. I was looking at these posts every single week, and I could not for the life of me figure out what the point was, and why they are so popular. They are all filled to the brim with people asking to be gifted, but not gifting anyone in return. Some of these posts have hundreds of comments asking for gifts, and one or two actually sending gifts.

The Experiment

I teamed up with two bookstagram besties for a collaboration of our own Wishlist Wednesday post. We also went out and entered all the “Wishlist Wednesday” post we could manage that day and sent off some books for goodwill. The goal was to see if any of us received gifts, if the hosts reached out to ask if we were gifting, and to generally keep an eye on it to see how many other people were being gifted.

We sent a total of 10 books altogether.

I personally entered my name on 27 Wishlist Wednesday posts (before you come at me for these numbers, as cynical and unbelieving as I am, I was fully prepared to go out and randomly gift additional books if I happened to get more than the number I sent, however unlikely that seemed - but you have to keep the universe happy with that good karma). The others probably entered 20-30 posts combined.

The Results

Of the 27 Wishlist Wednesday posts that I entered, almost none of them had anyone commenting that they gifted someone.

I received 1 book. Of the other two people involved, one of them received 1 book.

Looking back at our own post, we had 43 people comment, asking for books, but only two people gifted books.

The Conclusion: People are selfish and this is stupid.

Very few people actually gift books! Endless people comment asking for books. So that still begs the question of why on earth is this such a trend!?!

My Opinion - Take it with a grain of salt

It wasn’t until one of my fellow experimenters brought this to my attention that I realized what was right in front of me the whole time. Throwing it back to my last post - this is essentially a forced follower grab. In order to participate, you need to follow the host. If you are hosting a “Wishlist Wednesday,” it is essentially no work at all on your part. You throw up a post, let people follow you, and let endless people comment asking to be gifted (and we all know comments equal engagement, so bravo).

I am not coming for all my Wishlist Wednesday posters or participants, these are all merely observations. And a call for people participating to be aware. If you regularly participate and send books, you are a special kind of saint with a good heart. If you regularly participate but don’t send books, hopefully you get a book every once in a while, and you’ll gift in the future. For all those who participate though, I encourage you to take a good look at the host and their prior Wishlist Wednesday posts to see if they are participating by also gifting books, or if they are just sitting back collecting followers and engagement with zero effort.

In Conclusion

Not all things on bookstagram are as “heart hands emoji” as they appear or as people make them out to be. I don’t want to discourage people from participating in things they enjoy and feel comfortable doing.

As for my salty ass, I will continue to roll my eyes at the trend every freaking TUESDAY AFTERNOON when the Wishlist Wednesday posts begin to clog my feed.

Feel free to comment or DM me on the gram @gofetchabook if you have anything to say, especially if you consistently have different Wishlist Wednesday results than I have.

Thank you all for hearing me out! New posts drop on Wednesdays to get you through the hump. Join me in the upcoming weeks where I discuss topics such as - The Laughable Raffle Scam, You’ll Survive Writing a One Star Review, and Be Careful What You Ask For: Physical ARCs from publishers.

Here is a picture of my dog right after he finished mowing the lawn in his white Nike sneakers with his black calf-high socks, waiting for someone to comment on how nice the yard looks - for your enjoyment. I hope everyone has a great Wishlist Wednesday!

1. There are a few good, kind people out there who participate fairly, this isn’t about them. I don’t hate Wishlist Wednesday, I don’t have a problem with people who participate, I just think overall, it is not what it appears to be.

2. There are a few out there (very few) who host these with “mandatory gifting,” this post is about the optional gifting Wishlist Wednesday posts. But the thing with “mandatory gifting” is just lol to me - if you’re going to participate in that then just order yourself a book off your own wishlist so you don’t risk getting scammed.