October 2008: Stuff White People Like

The Blog of the Month for October is Stuff White People Like, which, despite qualifying for the Good Web Guide's award for the Worst Title in the History of Blogging is worthy of more than our momentary attention, even if it's only to work out how it has become one of those internet sensations that come along from time to time.

Stuff White People Like is the work of Christian Lander, who began the year as an ordinary Canadian internet copywriter. By the summer, the blog he had set up only six months previously had become so popular that he had book based on it published. Stuff White People Like is a simple idea. It's a list of, ahem, stuff white people like. But of course, by ‘white people' Lander doesn't mean ‘white people.' He means a certain kind of white person: affluent, upper middle class, well educated, left leaning, liberal, metropolitan, unthreatening, desperate to be cool, hung up on authenticity, troubled by endless guilt and living in North America.

Lander's list is amusing if unsurprising. As well as Barack Obama (8) we have Dinner Parties (90) and Having Gay Friends (88). This is not comedy on the level of Chris Morris. It doesn't shatter conceptions leaving the world altered. It's comfy, like My Family or Bruce Forsythe. Like the laughter of a group of close friends sitting around a table while drinking Coffee (1), eating Organic Food (6) and talking about their new Yoga (15) class and how they really must do some more Travelling (19), the humour is affectionate and smug.

Perhaps the single biggest achievement of Stuff White People Like is that it generates a variety of responses, from those genuflecting at the altar of its creator's wit, to those pointing out how far off Lander is with some of his choices, to those reading the whole thing as inspired cultural critique or play on the dominance of stereotypes. But to our mind Christian Lander wants to be congratulated too much for being relaxed enough to laugh at himself thus allowing him to feel valid and superior, which might just be something to add to the list.