For Christian Lander, sometimes the best inspiration can be found by just looking in the mirror.
Last night, about 250 students attended Lander’s talk at the Hoff Theater in the Stamp Student Union on his quick rise to success, thanks to his renowned blog — stuffwhitepeoplelike.com — and book, Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions. Event organizers and many student attendees agreed the crux of Lander’s appeal rests in the relatability of his subject matter: white people.
Lander, 31, took the audience through his journey to fame and fortune — a rise Lander attributes to making the New York Times Best Seller list just two weeks after publishing his first book.
First, there was the blog.
In January 2008 Lander decided to create a blog after having an online conversation with his Filipino friend, Myles, about how all white people watch The Wire on HBO. Lander recalled Myles saying he “didn’t trust a white person that didn’t watch The Wire.”
The conversation soon turned to speculating on what are other white people doing instead of watching The Wire? Doing yoga? Going to therapy? Getting divorced?
“It was that last one, the idea that there is this white couple saying ‘I would love to get into The Wire, but I’m just too busy getting divorced,'” Lander said. “My exact comment in the Instant Messenger conversation was, ‘That’s it. It’s blog time.'”
Lander started the website and began posting a few things he believed all white people enjoyed. He sent out a mass e-mail to 20 people — the “sum total” of all his friends — and waited. He said he was surprised to see that his friends had not only read and enjoyed his blog posts, but had forwarded them to their other friends.
Soon after, his blog received a mention on Comedy Central’s website. After that, it went from getting 1,000 hits per day to 30,000. Newspapers from Los Angeles to Baltimore began profiling Lander’s unique website, and within weeks, the blog was receiving more than 400,000 hits daily.
On March 1, he met with an agency to discuss a book deal.
“I had just spent four years in graduate school,” Lander said. “It had been my dream to write a book, but it had been my real dream to write a book that people were going to read.”
The book was published on July 1 and just two weeks later — by July 14 — the book was ranked on the New York Times Best Seller List, Lander said.
“People loved giving it as a gift, not only the book but reading the site, they’re like ‘This is my friend, I’m sending this e-mail to them right now, saying ‘you are not special; here it is,'” he said. “That was an additional pleasure that I wasn’t expecting to come out of it.”
Many of the students at last night’s lecture had heard about the book or blog previously, and came to see what Lander would be like in person.
“I heard about Lander’s book from the Best Seller List,” freshman psychology major Starr Chen said, adding after she found out about the book, she began reading the blog. “It’s nice to have a definitive list of stereotypes just for white people.”
Chen added cheese, parent-hating and Asian girls rank among her favorite “stuff white people like.”
“I checked out his website and I found out that he has given some really successful lectures,” said Michael Goland, the lectures director for Student Entertainment Events, which sponosred the event. “I mentioned the possibility of bringing him as one of our lecturers at a meeting and everyone was really excited.”
The blog has inspired an array of spin-off websites relating to stuff that people of every demographic like. One such spin-off Lander mentioned is whitestuffpeoplelike.wordpress.com,featuring things people love that are literally white, such as “cocaine and sugar.”
Lander said he’s working on a second book, and FOX is planning to work with the creators of Arrested Development to turn his first book into a TV show. The secret to this success, Lander said, is only updating the blog when something is worth writing about.
“If you’re doing your blog because you love doing it, that comes across,” Lander said. “I think with the site, I was going to write this blog if the three people I was writing for were going to read it or if millions of people were going to read it … I was going to do it regardless.”
news at umdbk dot com
