There's nothing cute about spending my money on other people with no expectation of receiving anything in return, unless maybe we're talking about inexpensive gifts for very young children still capable of expressing genuine emotions of gratitude. Outside of my immediate family (and even that is arguable), no one has ever given me a gift without strings attached. In the event of a friendship/relationship built on trust/expectation that each participant will appropriately gift each other in roughly equivalent value, the strings sort of fade into the background, but they still exist.