You’ve probably heard this one before, but I have to begin at the beginning anyway. A few weeks after starting Stuff White People Like, a blog satirizing upper-middle-class liberals, primarily the American version and including the green-centric and hipster mutations, copywriter Christian Lander found himself at the forefront of the “Internet famous”. The success of the blog (over 47 million hits at the time of this writing) made the eyes of the scouts over at Random House flash with dollar signs, and the publishing giant hastily offered him a pile of money to put out a book, cheaply constructed but with expanded content, of the same name.
Since its July release, Lander has been interviewed by The Onion’s A.V. Club, Salon, and CBS, among others; has given a talk at Google headquarters (no exercise ball chairs were harmed during the event); and, in early September, he crossed over into the dreaded (to white people) mainstream with an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
The book/blog is essentially a numbered list of things (“stuff”) that Landers, who is white (you knew that), thinks most hilariously represents his demographic. The entries are delivered deadpan throughout as if he were writing a how-to manual for outsiders trying to infiltrate and exploit (financially, usually) white culture. Here’s an example from Threatening to Move to Canada (#75):
Though they will never actually move to Canada, the act of declaring that they are willing to undertake the journey is very symbolic in America’s white culture. It shows that their dedication to their lifestyle and beliefs is so strong that they would consider packing up their entire lives and moving to a country that is only slightly different from the one they live in now…
Be aware that this information can be used quite easily to gain the trust of white people. Whenever they say, “I’m moving to Canada,” you must immediately respond with “I have relatives in Canada.” They will then expect you to tell them about how Canada has a perfect health-care system, legalized everything, and no crime. Though not true, it will reassure them that they are making the right choice by saying they want to move there.
Stuff White People Like can be incredibly funny and, excepting the oblivious and the hopelessly self-righteous, those who can identify with it at all might just learn something about themselves—like how obnoxious it is to think Vintage (#49) clothing makes them “authentic”, or how ludicrous it is to think a Toyota Prius (#60) is somehow (1) good for the environment, and (2) affordable to the overwhelming majority of people who drive cars.
And those who find it funny might, like me and many other commenters, account for it along these lines: “This is totally me, but not really. I mean, sure, I can’t help Standing Still at Concerts (#67) and think Living by the Water (#51) is awesome, but at least I’m not one of those smug, composting yuppies with that stupid Apple (#40) logo tattooed to their ankles—I get stuck behind those assholes every time I go to Coffee Bean (Coffee is #1) for my iced mocha latte.”
That’s why it’s important that Lander’s stuff isn’t mutually inclusive. “White people” who attend Film Festivals (#3) do not necessarily Make You Feel Bad for Not Going Outside (#9), and so on. So the outdoorsy environmentalist justifies himself against the film school hipster, the film school hipster justifies himself against the wine-tasting yuppie, who justifies himself against the pop culture savant—or any hybrid of subcultures in between, really—and all, by believing they alone are living rightly, unique beings irreducible to stereotypes, prove themselves guilty of the class elitism at the heart of Lander’s satire.
They’re the right kind of white people, don’t you know; they are resplendent individuals who simply cannot be determined by their economic status—they are above class. It’s a free will philosophy that, unfortunately, is not extended to the `wrong’ kind of white person (the kind from Kansas that votes Republican, or the kind that discovers `your’ obscure band after it gets popular), and is especially not extended to the poor person of any color who is uniquely unqualified to afford shopping at Whole Foods (#48), or to afford food at all (more on poor people as automatons in a minute).
I should make it clear that Stuff White People Like is not, by any means, a mean-spirited screed. “It’s comedy first and foremost,” Lander says of the book in his Onion interview (The Onion made it on the blog, finally, at #109); and when asked how he decides what makes it on the list, he replies, “Me. It’s a mirror.”
He admits that there’s some anger behind the comedy—it is satire, after all—but it’s not the kind of anger you might expect from someone giving his class, mostly the 40 and under subset, its first proper comeuppance. “Look at our generation,” he says. “What do we have left? Stuff is all we have… You’re just as guilty of the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses’ mentality as your parents or grandparents. It’s not a display of wealth. It’s about a display of authenticity and taste. And so it’s just my anger about that competition. And what I’m angry about is, I just can’t stop myself from doing it.”
Lander may have a point, but I find it odd that, instead of getting angry at the legitimate follies he exposes—egoism, hypocrisy, conspicuous consumption, self-righteousness—he gets stuck in the web of his own blog, and hates on himself because he can’t keep from committing these follies. Not Being Responsible for Their Actions is surely something else white people like, but only when they fail; “any time that a white person succeeds it is entirely because of their hard work and natural talent” (from Therapy, #146).
But, to be fair, Lander is a comedian, and comedians generally make a living by not biting the hands that clap for them. Delving seriously into the deeper, more subversive criticisms in Stuff White People Like presents a looming catch-22, as he would have to make unironic judgments on his customers, thus implicating himself (unironically) in the circular process of elitism he created. But there comes a point at which calling out a behavior or a belief goes further than the humor aisle, whether he (or Jon Stewart, or Stephen Colbert [their respective shows are #35]) cares to admit it or not.
Take this, for instance, from Hating Corporations (#82): “When engaging in a conversation about corporate evils it is important to never, ever mention Apple Computers, Target, or IKEA. White people prefer to hate corporations that don’t make stuff they like.” One can’t get much closer to the bull’s-eye than this, and I doubt that Lander, the next time someone claims to have achieved enlightenment after reading Naomi Klein’s anti-corporate, anti-globalization manifesto No Logo, won’t realize the Irony (#50) of the fact that the book was an international bestseller published by a multinational corporation. In other words, I assume he learned something through the process of writing the book/blog, just like I learned something by reading it.
If Given Money and Education …
Of these harder-hitting critiques, Awareness (#18) is in my opinion the most resonant:
An interesting fact about white people is that they firmly believe all of the world’s problems can be solved through “awareness”—meaning the process of making other people aware of problems, magically causing someone else, like the government, to fix it [sic].
This belief allows them to feel that sweet self-satisfaction without actually having to solve anything or face any difficult challenges… Raising awareness is also awesome because once you raise awareness to an acceptable though arbitrary level, you can just back off and say, “Bam! Did my part. Now it’s your turn. Fix it.”
Many individuals across the globe are advocating tirelessly, at the expense of their own problems, their own families and their own sanity, for the money and institutional support required to stem the evil they happen to be fighting. The guy wearing the “Save Darfur” hoodie and skinny jeans isn’t one of them. The problem is not that reasonably intelligent, compassionate people are ignorant of the evils occurring in Darfur (to stick with the example), or that they don’t care, it’s that the nature of the problem is so overwhelming, so inveterate, and at the same time they’re so disillusioned by all the vacuous talk and fashion show theatrics being presented as some kind of solution.
Can I afford to give $25 every few months to a worthy cause? Probably, but how do I know the money will go where it needs to go, and will it do anything to effect systemic change, which is the only thing that can begin to address most of these evils? Now, if I had something to show for my $25, a way to make other white people aware that I’m more aware than they are…
What makes this even more appealing for white people is that you can raise “awareness” through expensive dinners, parties, marathons, T-shirts, fashion shows, concerts, and bracelets. In other words, white people just have to keep doing stuff they like, except that now they can feel better about making a difference.
Bingo. And as a consequence of this insidious white person fad, these chronically underfunded charities, if they want to successfully compete against their chronically underfunded competitors, spend their resources on products and/or manufactured experiences that are then marketed to the selfish drives and consumeristic fetishes of potential contributors. The “INSPI(RED) T-shirts—CONSCIENCE CLEA(RED)”, read an Onion mock-up—are a perfect example, because every white person has seen one or is wearing one. Product Red was founded by Bono (the most advanced white person living today) and Bobby Shriver as a counterpart to their non-governmental organization DATA (short for Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa).
Product Red licenses to partner companies, and these companies put out products with the Red logo, giving a percentage to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Why not give directly to The Global Fund, thereby increasing its coffers by the millions of dollars currently being wasted on advertising and the corporate cut? Because white people need to be a walking advertisement of their own fashionableness, self-satisfaction and superiority.
Is pandering to the baser desires of our nature—“stuff is all we have”—really the solution, or is it part of the problem? Surely there are smarter, less wasteful, less cynical ways to raise money/awareness in the Metadigital Age. “Join us in rejecting the ti(red) notion that shopping is a reasonable response to human suffering,” the activist website Buy Less Crap.org declares. The site is simply a hub in Internet space through which you can donate directly to various charities, including The Global Fund.
While many organizations at both the international and community levels are improving and/or saving millions of lives a year, one has to question the sheer sprawl of Non-Profit Organizations (#12) in general and the extent to which they’re founded and touted to give white people something to do, something to wear and something to say at Dinner Parties (#90). Whether or not any amount of these public charities, or any amount of money, can “save” Darfur and eliminate any number of evils across the globe is up for debate, but the Self-Importance (#149, book only) of the white people who evangelize on money’s behalf from platforms money bought them is not.
“There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat,” writer and former Peace Corps teacher Paul Theroux said in a New York Times Op Ed in 2005, “but I can’t think of one at the moment.” The point of his article is that, while intelligent humanitarian aid is a moral imperative, only the Africans can save Africa in any real sense of the word. But Bono and his colleagues quite disagree, seeing as how they’re so imminently qualified in the discipline Lander calls Knowing What’s Best for Poor People (#62):
[White people] feel guilty and sad that poor people shop at Wal-Mart instead of Whole Foods, that they vote Republican instead of Democrat, that they go to community college or get a job instead of studying art at college.
It is a poorly kept secret that, deep down, white people believe that if given money and education, all poor people would be exactly like them.
WARNING: It is essential that you make it clear that poor people do not make decisions based on free will. To suggest anything to the contrary could crush white people and their hope for the future.
Still, there are worse things in the world than generosity and right-minded activism mixed with a little naiveté—like Not Giving a Shit about Poor People, Abusing Power for Personal Gain, and Advancing Rapacious Greed as a Force for Good, Even When it Consistently Results in Great Human Misery—which brings us to an entirely different species of white person.
This species seems to believe that we should all fend for ourselves in the human jungle, that the fit will survive and the unfit will not, that government is bad and should not interfere with the struggle for existence, unless of course certain members of said species willfully make bad loans to their customers (who should’ve realized that no one but Wall Street gets something for nothing), revel orgiastically in the short-term profits and bonuses, and then, when the economy collapses because of their actions, begging the government to bail them out with a pile of money the size of Texas, which is probably where the President who gave these white people tax breaks will be hiding if, God forbid, the cost of a slice of bread eclipses the cost of a gallon of gas.
And that brings us back to the beginning. Even if you don’t think Stuff White People Like is funny or smart, or even sufferable, at the very least it started a conversation about class and culture in America, assuming you belong to one that has the leisure and the inclination to read and write blogs in the first place, or to peruse (or to participate in) the hundreds of pages of commentary left on Lander’s particular blog, and the many more on the blogosphere, Amazon, Gawker, NPR (#44), The Onion and every other site that ran a story about Stuff White People Like and offers the chance to leave commentary.
We are all, regardless of biological accidents, nationality, income or musical preference—and without the sarcasm this time—unique individuals defined by the houses we grew up in and the choices we make; but we do belong to a class, and that class gives us access to specific cultures and subcultures, each of them upholding certain beliefs and behaviors while disdaining others. That I think you’ve seen or at least heard about Stuff White People Like says something about my class culture and my perception of yours, and it’s these kinds of stereotypical assumptions that make Lander’s vicious circle go round.
Satire exposes irrational behavior, usually with the intent to correct it. The verdict in this case, despite possible appeals by the author, is that vanity and snobbery should not be indulged, hypocrisy is not a reasonable course of action, and “stuff” is not all we have.