It’s nice to see another example of a casual hobby blog turning into a globally popular phenomenon and breaking into other media formats – this time it’s Christian Lander’s massively popular ‘Stuff White People Like’ blog, which started as an amusing joke between friends a little over 18 months ago – and has now seen its author do numerous US tours, appear on prime time talk shows and release a much-anticipated book.
The blog does exactly what you’d expect, featuring over a hundred short comic posts titled after all the things that ‘white people like’ – from ‘coffee’, ‘architecture’, or ‘Michel Gondry’ right through to ‘music piracy’, ‘black music that black people don’t listen to anymore’, ‘Facebook,’ and ‘hummus’.
Anyway the whole thing is quite entertaining – and a first visit will quickly derail an entire afternoon’s work, while the blog’s success speaks amazingly well yet again for the springboard effect achievable by a talented, perceptive, and witty writer with a simple but clever blog. Lander has now quit his former job and is working on activities connected to the blog on a full time basis.
While some of the comments posts might betray a few disappointing sentiments (Youtube anyone?) the posts themselves are a treat, and it is nice to see a humble blogger doing so well, and not just with white audiences. The 63m hits the blog boasts display a diverse geographic and racial mix (judging by people’s comments) and it is this that marks such an amusing and entertaining blog, as also being quite a perceptive and valuable forum for considering and debating questions about how our racial identities translate into lifestyle choices and tastes and preferences. Hats off to Lander for this, and good luck with the current book launch! (SWPL even has its own facebook app – check it out in the apps section).
Dejan Levi