about me: well, i'm a walking stereotype of an environmentally and socially conscious, anti-corporate white North American hipster.

but mostly i'm filled with jealousy that someone has created a blog more clever than my own. actually, i've known about christian lander and his blog stuff white people like for much longer than i've been blogging on my own site. his blog is a guilty pleasure i'm not even ashamed to admit i love. it does pain me to admit that of the 130 entries i can easily identify 114 i enjoy. as i write this post i'm sitting at the non-profit job i so desperately wanted for the year i'm taking off before deciding what i want to do for graduate school, drinking coffee, wearing a sweater, and listening to indie music. if the computer i am using were an apple product i might die of white overdose.

something i find more interesting than the blog its self is the reaction it has drawn from critics. lander is a generic looking white male who, if placed in a group of 29 other hipsters with unkempt beards, bed hair, and dark-rimmed glasses one would most likely assume a fleet foxes concert had just let out. other than being quick enough to spot an up-and-coming trend just before it turns from sub-culture to main-stream, he is not particularly interesting. i've read a lot of criticism calling him racist, classist, pretentious, and a bad writer. i have also read and heard several interviews of his. of all the things people say about him the only one that ever bothers him is being called a bad writer- which causes his critics to become all the more offended.

and here's the thing i don't think most people get- christian landers does not give a shit. he is not trying to make an intelligent social commentary on "white culture" because white people don't really have any kind of culture, we steal them from other people. he is not a decorated academic trying to base any truth on what he says, that's why he writes a blog. part of this i think stems from the fact that the popularity of stuff white people like grew incredibly quickly. in three months he became a popular culture phenomenon. but, landers knows that his blog, just like everything he writes about on it, is ephemeral. he just happened to get lucky. when people say the things he writes are racist and classist, that more than just white people enjoy these things, and not all white people enjoy everything on the list he doesn't care. he has said he knows he is not racist, and he bases most of his entries off his and his friend's personal tastes. he never makes a new post with the ill intent of offending anyone, but when people do get offended (#101) it adds even more novelty to his satire.

moral of this post- tell your friends to read my blog. landers was given a $300,000 advance for his book. matthew wants to get paid.