Like a
virtual gold rush, millions of people wade into the
Internet stream every day to try their luck at the
electronic equivalent of panning for gold. Some of
them put a video on YouTube. Many start a blog.
Most
will not find riches or fame. But every once in a
while, digital lightning does strike someone. This
time, it's Christian Lander.
If you
regularly receive check-this-out links from friends or
co-workers, then chances are you know about his blog,
"Stuff White People Like," which has just
arrived in book form. It's an open-ended list of, as
the title says, the stuff white people like.
Stuff
here refers to anything from "Coffee" to
"Adopting Foreign Children" to "Public
Transportation That Is Not a Bus." Each entry is
its own little essay, noting the item and discussing
the how and why of white people's affection for it.
It
would be a much more pleasant, or at least, less
fractious world if it wasn't necessary to explain that
Lander's blog is intended to be humorous, satirical
even, poking fun in particular at white people who are
liberal, educated and smug. But judging from the
number of angry and offended responses the site has
incited, it is necessary.
So,
"Stuff White People Like" is supposed to be
funny. And it is. Here, for example, is advice on
wine:
"When
a white person offers you wine, you take a small sip
and then say 'ooh, that's nice. What country is it
from?' Then they will say the name of the country and
you say 'I love wines from that country, I would love
to get a villa in the wine region there.' White people
will nod in agreement as they all want to have a
second home in a wine region like Napa, Tuscany or
Santa Barbara."
The
site is also popular. Calling it an overnight success
may, technically, be an overstatement, but not by
much.
Consider
this: On Jan. 18, Lander was instant-messaging a
friend about the HBO series, "The Wire". His
friend said that more white people should watch it.
This led to an exchange about the things white people
do. The series of messages struck Lander as funny
enough that he created a blog to list them.
"At
first, I was just thinking this was something that was
going to be for me and a few of my friends. I didn't
really think much of it," Lander, 29, says by
phone from his Los Angeles home.
This
went on for a little while. When he got to 20 entries,
he decided it was funny enough that he went ahead and
sent a link for it to all of his friends. Still, in
the worldwide scheme of things, all of his friends
weren't that many people - "around 50."
"At
first, we were getting like 30 hits a day. But then
one day, we got 500. And then a few days later, we got
1,000. The day it blew up was the day we got 30,000
hits. That's when I knew something crazy was going
on."
But it
didn't stop there. The hits kept climbing, topping out
around 800,000, as all his friends told all their
friends who told all their friends and on and on.
Viral marketing in action.
The
success spawned imitators, such as "Stuff Asian
People Like" and "Stuff Educated Black
People Like." And now, less than six months after
those instant messages were pinging back and forth,
"Stuff White People Like" has been released
as a paperback by Random House. And Lander, a Ph.D.
dropout and an associate manager of corporate
communications (currently on leave), is now a
published author on a book tour.
"It's
all happened so fast, so insanely fast that none of it
feels real," he says. "It's all just so wild
and completely unexpected."
Sure,
sure, sure, but now that he's been struck by
lightning, people are going to want to know: How did
you do it? What's your secret? What secret strategy
did you figure out and how can I copy it?
Brace
yourself for the inevitable answer.
"I
don't know. If some giant corporation like IBM or
Coca-Cola gave me $3 million and said, 'Now do that
for one of our Web sites,' I couldn't."
But,
but, but, don't you have any insights, any kernels of
wisdom born of experience that you can share with all
those still waiting and hoping?
"I
think one of the reasons the site took off is because
it was genuine. It really was me writing about stuff I
think is funny. I think that's important.
"People
on the Internet are pretty smart and sophisticated
about what people put out there. I think if someone
puts out something that is intended to create a
sensation, that's all 'look at me, look at what I can
do,' they see right through that, and it's a real
turn-off."
As it
turns out, trying to be rich and famous is like trying
to be cool. If people can tell you are trying, then
you're not.