White People Like Us

I was wandering around my local bookshop yesterday. A blue book caught my eye and I found myself reading through it first with incredulity then hilarity: Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander.

It is completely non PC and points directly at the mask we all put on as we grow up and head into the world. 

I came home and googled it to find the paperback had been spawned from a very  funny blog. Lander gets right to the uncomfortable squirmy truth of what a bunch of dickheads we all are most of the time.

On tattoos:

“A white person with the right kind of tattoo is generally very popular within the white community since they have shown a demonstrated commitment to irony, humor, and in some cases, self-deprecation.

If you find yourself competing socially with one of these people, there are a few things you can do in order to defeat them.

Your saving grace is the fact that white people not only enjoy getting funny/ironic tattoos, but they really enjoy talking about them too!  Therefore, it is essential that you already have 2-3 clever tattoo ideas ready to drop into a conversation.”

From the blog, Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander.

I chose this excerpt because I don’t have a tatt. I do however have some outdoor gear , go running and host dinner parties... Yikes, I even practice yoga. But I wear cheap pants!

If you’re white and this stuff about what white people like doesn’t make you feel a little uncomfortable, then the truth is that your mask is stuck so tightly and desperately to your face that you can’t see it, or you are the white version of the Dalai Lama.

When I saw the book I didn’t know about the blog, but there is another little goldmine of truth-telling: the comments that are posted on each blog.

Absolutely hilarious.  (I am waiting for installment: “white people love saying ‘hilarious’ ”)

The indignation of people who have been ‘busted’ (“man you just suck/f.u.c.k you” etc), the complete lack of comprehension (“is this supposed to be ironic?”—and that wasn’t even on the entry on how much white people love irony), the thigh-slapping Oh Yeah I get It (“Tatoos [sic] are a trendy way to declare oneself hip. When all the people with them now hit their 40s tattoos will go the way of other misconstrued cultural commodifications “)  and finally the Whoa, uh-oh! (“I have a tattoo of an ampersand….a backwards ampersand…where does that put me?”).

Its my latest favourite blog in my very new foray into the blogging world (nearly 50 million people made it to Landers blog before me).

 I looked up and down the list for “White People Love Blogs” but perhaps everyone does.