The Japanese have always held to the notion that a good gift is consumable (in a small home a non-consumable, unthoughtful gift can become a burden fast). Think premium fruits, a nice bottle of wine, or edible souvenirs from whatever region you are visiting from (although these could do with a lot less packaging plastic). That's a mindset that ought to be embraced more widely — leaving the occasional non-consumable gift for when you know someone will appreciate and want it.
Also, books can be great gifts if you don't burden to receiver with the expectation to keep them (although they might). Nothing wrong with re-gifting books to friends, family, or colleagues. But again, only if you know the tastes of the recipient.
At a minimum, something that someone will actually use or appreciate.
Stocking filler plastic tat is not that. It's completely useless and either gets stashed in a store room or binned immediately.
I had thought this would just be intuitively obvious to anyone - buying stuff that's lower quality than you could personally use is just burning money.
I'd prefer that if someone can't afford or doesn't want to spend enough to get something useful they just don't at all. Spend the money on yourself or on charity.
I had thought this would just be intuitively obvious to anyone
Nothing is intuitively obvious, nothing is common sense, except maybe the UX quip about babies and breast feeding; that's a style of comment which is mostly a superiority boast.
There's a common saying along the lines of "buy once, buy for life" but pushback against it recently suggesting "buy the cheapest thing which will do, if you turn out to use it often enough to break it then consider buying a decent one". Stocking filler plastic tat might be enough to learn whether you have any interest in {jump rope, juggling, yo-yo, growing an indoor plant}.
A unique handcrafted item becomes clutter when it isn't something the recipient will use. Compared with store-bought gifts it comes with the added drawback of being unique, and thus very awkward to dispose of to someone who would use it.
Handcrafted and unique is fine, but suitability is much more important.
No, this becomes culch that you really don't want and you become burdened with because of sentimentality. It feels bad to bin the dollar store crap that you get as a gift, but it feels especially awful to throw out the hand-made junk that your aunt crocheted for days.
What would a real gift be like?