What do sushi, yoga, pea coats, Asian girls and Barack Obama have in common? According to Christian Lander, the provocative and popular blogger-turned-bestselling-author, they're all "stuff white people like."
Lander, who was working as a copywriter in Los Angeles when he got the idea for his immensely popular blog and later bestselling book, "Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions," spoke on Friday to an enormous crowd in Wilson 102 as part of the ongoing Eureka! Lecture Series. Students filling every space of the auditorium - including windowsills and stairways - listened for more than an hour as Lander explained how a single instant message conversation spurred what has become a pop culture phenomenon.
In January 2008, Lander and a friend were instant messaging about one of their favorite television shows, "The Wire," when Lander's friend said that he did not trust any white people who did not watch the program. The conversation soon shifted as the two began coming up with alternative activities that white people might be doing instead of watching the show. The men offered ideas like going to therapy, watching plays, getting divorced and doing yoga. Lander was so amused by the conversation that he started a WordPress blog based on it.
Lander continued writing and adding to the blog, and within a few days he had written more than 20 posts. He decided to send a link to his site to some of his friends - mainly students and other graduate-school dropouts. Soon after, he began receiving feedback from his friends, who had shared the site with others.
At their suggestion, Lander left WordPress and registered the Web site with the hopes of publishing advertisements and earning some money from the blog's viewership.
The blog's notoriety continued to grow, and eventually the site was featured on the blogs of Good Magazine and Comedy Central. Stuff White People Like's popularity exploded, and the blog soon had more than 30,000 hits.
But the site crashed immediately thereafter.
When Lander called up the site administrators, they told him that he had violated the terms of his contract. They were confused why his site had so many hits. Was it an "adult" blog? they asked. Was Lander running a gambling site? No, Lander insisted, he was simply posting a blog.
When the site administrators caught on and realized just how popular the blog was becoming, they told Lander he would need to pay thousands of dollars a month to maintain the upkeep of the site. Lander declined, and moved the site back to a WordPress account.
But the site's popularity continued to increase, and by February 2008, it already had hundreds of thousands of hits. At the same time, a New York literary agent who wanted to turn the blog's content into a book contacted Lander. Talent agencies began calling, and by the end of March Lander quit his copywriting job, signed with the William Morris Talent Agency and began work on his book.
By July 1, the book hit shelves, and by July 14 - less than six months after the blog's creation - "Stuff White People Like" had become a New York Times Bestseller.
Since then, Lander has traveled all over the country giving lectures and promoting the book. His travels have taken him everywhere from schools to bookstores to "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" last September. When Lander was on "Conan," the other guests included Tim Gunn of Project Runway and Jerry O'Connell, the Hollywood actor.
Lander told Friday's audience that his appearance with O'Connell was "huge" because, growing up in Canada, O'Connell starred in one of Lander's favorite childhood television shows, "My Secret Identity." Lander, who described himself as "kind of a chubby kid," said O'Connell became "the greatest hero to fat kids on Earth" after appearing in the movie "Stand by Me."
So as Lander prepared for his appearance on "Conan," he thought about telling O'Connell about how much he loved him as a child. But when the two actually met on the set of "Late Night," Lander barely got a word in edgewise. According to Lander, O'Connell was "gushing" about how much he loved Stuff White People Like.
O'Connell's love of Stuff White People Like was most apparent when Lander participated in a book tour event in St. Louis. A woman from the local paper wrote an article about Lander's visit, and a few days later she sent Lander a link to the story. He politely wrote back, thanking her for the link, but explaining that he had already seen it - because Jerry O'Connell had sent it to him.
"How strange my life has become!" Lander exclaimed as he recounted the story. In less than a year, Lander had gone from instant messaging at work to exchanging personal e-mails with one of his childhood heroes and speaking across the nation.
"I thought it was very clever," said Annie Matusewicz '11 about Lander's lecture. "(His concept is) a funny way for people to think about the culture they associate with."
But not everyone loves what Lander is doing. His Web site is full of comments from people who find its content offensive and, in many cases, racist.
Lander said the book and Web site are "more about class than about race," adding, "you don't have to be white to be white ... you just have to be rich." His satirical comments are more about upper-middle class interests that are "perceived as white activities," he said.
Much of Lander's material comes from the experiences he had as a PhD student at Indiana University, Lander said. He described his peers as people who were "on a mission to save everything" by "writing papers and presenting them to people who already agree" with them and patting themselves on the back for doing "so much great work."
These people annoyed Lander, because "everyone was exactly the same," he said. "Nobody was mainstream," but they were all going to the same concerts and coffee shops.
"Everybody was the same but they were rebels who were fighting the system. That's where I got the subheading 'The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions,' " Lander said.
Yet Lander, who is white, told Friday's audience that he is no different from the people he pokes fun at.
"I don't want to imply that I'm different. I went after myself as viciously as possible. I just put myself out there," he said.
