Today, I spent the afternoon entertained by “Stuff White People Like.” I’d seen it before, listed on my dashboard as one of today’s top WordPress.com blogs. Honestly, the title put me off a bit, but when it popped up during a session on Stumble Upon, I decided to give it a chance.
The most recent post, #79 Modern Furniture, I completely skipped. Just didn’t interest me. The next caught my eye though: #78 Multilingual Children. Maybe it was the title, maybe it was the picture, maybe it was the whopping 631 reader comments. Anyway, I read it and loved it. Yes, it’s an extremist view and written in a sassy, snarky tone, but there’s definitely some truth to the author’s claims here.
Then I scrolled down to #76 Bottles of Water. It starts out “Water seems like a fairly simple concept. You turn on the tap, put glass underneath, and drink. Sadly, it is not this simple for white people.” The writer goes on to ruminate about the use of expensive bottled imports like Figi, along with the ever-popular Aquafina and Dasani. Next came refillables like Nalgene, filtered by Brita and Pur. When the story brought up those metal bottles that my coworker keeps encouraging me to get, I laughed out loud at the sheer irony of it all.
What else to “white people like?’ According to this post, there’s #72 Study Abroad (I know a few people who resemble this one), #1 Coffee (Starbucks – it’s everywhere!), and #40 Apple Products (who doesn’t own an iPod?) to name a few. It’s sad, but generally, stereotypically true. And even if you take offense to being labeled “white” and therefore thoughtlessly grouped with people that “like” all these things that you couldn’t care less about, you’re almost certain to know someone who actually fits quite well into the stereotype, and you can’t help but be amused.
