stuff white people like
24 Aug 2008There’s this website stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. I don’t like it.
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Sorry, what? Oh, fine, I’ll explain. Before, in a similar vein, there was Black People Love Us, which is basically hilarious, because it plays on some very real race dynamics. And it was a brief, succinct, and effective parody.
Sally’s always saying: “You go girl!” while “raising the roof” to mainstream hip-hop tracks at cheesy bars. That’s fun! I relate to that.
I mean, come on. That’s hilarious. And it’s funny because it’s a parody of genuine interactions between black and white people that we’ve all experienced to some degree. “Stuff white people like”, on the other hand, is stupid, and you should stop liking it. “Ha ha, man, us white people are so lame!! GET IT?? Oh man, white people sure love facebook.” What? I think it’s endemic of some creeping sense of self-loathing tied to race. It’s like if you took white liberal guilt, applied it specifically to race, and cranked the volume to 11. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some funny stuff up there. Like this article about people studying abroad:
If you need to make up your own study abroad experience, they all pretty much work the same way. You arrived in Australia not knowing anybody, you went out to the bar the first night and made a lot of friends, you had a short relationship with someone from a foreign country, you didn’t learn anything, and you acquired a taste for something (local food, beer, fruit). This latter point is important because you will need to be able to tell everyone how it is unavailable in your current country.
This is pretty funny. And we all know these people. But what the hell does this have to do with being white? I know black people that wouldn’t shut the fuck up about their trip to Africa for a week and how they really connected with their heritage, and I’m like “dude, you grew up in Long Island.”
That’s all I got.