Stuff White People Like may be misleading to some because, from the title, they'll expect this book to be about stuff that white people like.


Various white demographics weren't hurt in the making of this book.

This is not necessarily the fact. In Lander's own words (pulled indiscreetly from wikipedia), this book is "rather a stereotype of affluent, environmentally and socially conscious, anti-corporate white North Americans, who typically hold a degree in the liberal arts."

In other words: Hipsters.

And we all know that hipsters aren't technically people.



There are really only four responses that a white person could have to this book:

1. This book is so racist. I don't get my free-trade, tall, double venti, nonfat, soy-frappacino extra hot from my local coffee shop while I read poetry because I'm WHITE but because it makes me a better person (than you!)
2. Yeah, I kind of do some of this stuff. Sorry! I don't mean to be so white! I guess society has just impacted me that way until I subconsciously strive to be whiter through diversification.
3. This book is fantastic! I'm SOOOOO white! You never met someone as white as me! I do pretty much EVERYTHING in this book! It's hilarious! This one time, I was being white, at band camp...
4. Mavis! Gone get me my boomstick!

Stuff White People Like is part of an internet trend by popular blogs/websites in writing books based on some of the older content and integrating newer content. This tidbit will be especially useful to hipsters because they can go back and pretend that they followed the blog (before it became so popular and sold-out).

Like most books based on a gimmick, it gets very tiring. I read a good two-thirds of this book and fell asleep. While I was napping, a continuous stream of, "White people are happiest when girbersnooberwhacking together. This makes them feel superior to other people who don't know as much about girbersnooberwhacking. A way to exploit this is to read the first paragraph of the hypogrumpustootlebudge and insist your an expert on the details and that it is, indeed, superior and better for the environment."

When I still found that as interesting as the book, I realized that this book was just a little too long.

But if you look deeper, there is a poignant (I get extra white people points for using that word and for looking for a deeper meaning in a gimmick book) and eerily accurate portrayal of upper middle-class white culture - and not JUST hipsters.

My parents are NOT hipsters. My mother is hard-core Christian and my father is a right-wing (just not politically) professionally successful businessman. They are your upper middle class Australians living in a very nice, refurbished home in the middle of one of those desirable locales.

Yet they still fit a great deal of this book. They drove Priuses at the time that this book was published. They want to be more environmentally conscious, they have a nice house with a lot of cultural "focus points", they drink expensive wines and overseas liquors. They eat obscure cheese and they buy their vegetables, fruit and honey from the farmer's market and have their groceries delivered by Farmer's Direct. They go away to their holiday town and bring back lots of folksie oiled feta, quaint bottles of sundried tomatoes etc and high-quality cooking oils that they bought to support the small, local community. Then they are immensely proud of it all and boast about it while trying to appear not to boast about it.

In fact, the only white people who wouldn't find something kindred in these pages are the "wrong type of white people".


Pictured: The Wrong Type of White People

I've heard the term "cultural currency" coined before and this book is all about that. How do you impress other white people, as long as they aren't the wrong type of white people? Well, actually, this book is a pretty good guide on how to do that. If you don't look hard at all, you can see it right here on GoodReads.

The ONLY reason I'm reading Madame Bovary is because:

a) It's got sex.
b) It's a classic and I feel insecure for not having read more of these.
c) Manny told me to.

The guy has a beard, he speaks several languages, reads books in those languages that I can't even effectively impersonate because I don't know enough about them and he's married to a lovely European woman. And that's only as much as I know about him! For all I know he could be drinking free-trade coffee right now and then I could be REALLY screwed. If his profile pic had an image of him wearing glasses then I'd be forced to elevate him to the status of White God. I have to give him the props because he has the cultural currency. He's out-whited me right from the start because it's PHYSCIALLY IMPOSSIBLE for me to grow a beard!


Okay, technically not true but I don't want to go into that!

The one thing this book doesn't do is provide an answer to all of this other than to understand it well enough to exploit it. Unless I'm considering opening up a co-op market or a specialized barkery then I really don't see that as an option. Don't even start me on the beard option that we've already dismissed.

So what's the answer to our lives, white people? Do we keep reading the Madame Bovarys of this world, pretending to understand them (or hate them because we understand them better than all those fools who like them because they don't understand them ENOUGH?). Do we listen to obscure music, drink water out of twist-top metal bottles and sneer at those who buy bottled water? Do we do all this all the while ignoring the fact that maybe we don't even LIKE obscure music but not knowing why we get the satisfaction out of listening to it?

Should we all examine ourselves a little better to try to be a little more nonconformist? Actually that was a trick question because that would be useless since cultural currency is all about being different and nonconformist in a better way!

I strongly feel the answer lies in a trashy Paranormal Romance and so I'm off to go read that.








Don't judge me!