Before reading this notescription (which I actually reformatted for your viewing pleasure!), please see my article regarding accuracy and note-taking. “I,” here, does not connote a direct quote from Christian Lander.
FROM WORDPRESS TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
with Christian Lander of
Stuff White People Like
Saturday 26 April 2008, 1:30 pm
Dude, how STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE went from just another blog to over 20 million page views in 3 months. What happened?
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Christian’s introduction follows.
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Christian apologized for being a white privileged male.
“Stuff White People Like” was started and the first post published on January 18th of 2008. It is his second blog. His first blog revolved around rating video games which he received for free, starting with NCAA Football 2007 for the X-Box.
The site started when he and his friend Myles were watching The Wire. Myles said that he didn’t trust white people who didn’t watch The Wire. They thought, What about the white people that aren’t watching The Wire? What are they up to? The duo kept listing things and thought it was funny.
Christian went online, typed in and registered the URL at WordPress, and started writing. He only expected it to be read by Myles and maybe two or three friends in Toronto, their hometown.
Nine or ten posts later, Christian’s friend Shawn needed to find a project for a book design layout. The two decided that Christian would set a goal of fifty posts, after which they would put the entries into a book and self-publish in Victoria for the project. To reach that goal, Christian wrote quickly. Traffic started to pick up, reaching maybe 300 hits in one day. Once the website was forwarded to more friends, Christian received up to 1000 hits per day.
Christian heard that a friend had received up to $34 a month using Google ads on his blog. You can’t use these ads on an ordinary WordPress blog, so Christian bought a domain and hosting and then proceeded to install everything on the WordPress server. He registered a .com and .org (because white people as an organization is funny) and added the Google ads, expecting to receive about $40 per month in revenue.
Christian said that as soon as the URL changed from ~.wordpress.com to a regular .com address, the site went from 1000 to over 30,000 hits in one day. The traffic bogged down the website and it went down. People emailed Christian wondering when his blog would be back online (they kept reading his WordPress blog, which was still up).
Talking to the web hosts, Christian figured out that it would be too much money to host independently (and he hadn’t even received his first check from Google!). He decided to move the blog back to WordPress, which would handle the traffic. Apparently, the spike in traffic flow was caused by Comedy Central and Good Magazine (Al Gore’s son’s blog for his magazine) linking to Christian’s website on the same day it was registered.
Once more people heard about Stuff White People Like, more media got hold of the hype. When post #34 (about NPR) was published, NPR interviewed Christian (he biked to the studio). After the website’s publicity on the radio station, SWPL got even more hits.
SWPL was featured in the New York Magazine approval matrix, where it was marked as “low-brow” and “brilliant.” The LA Times and other newspapers picked up the show, as did radio shows. By then, Christian was still working full time.
The media wasn’t behind all of the hype. As people started mentioning that the site read like a book, the idea of publishing one started to mature. Christian said that LOLcats, though funny, would not make a simple transition from the Web to a book. Eventually, WSPL got enough attention that Christian hired a literary agent and there’s a book deal for a publication release this July.
After the news about the book deal was made public, the backlash arrived. Christian said he hates negative responses, which he received from New Republic, Slate.com, and Gawker. He mentioned it is strange being attacked, because the popularity was completely unexpected. He referred to Friday’s LOLcat panel, where it was said that digital authors have to ignore the hatemail, which can be tough. Christian found more dissenters in the comments section of his blog.
He stated that the problem with racism originated from the horrible comments, which were then attributed to the content of the blog. He said that the same thing happens on YouTube, where in just ten posts hateful arguments can easily crop up.
Regarding the website’s statistics, Christian said that it took only thirty days to reach 1 million page views, and then only thirty-three days total (three days later) to reach 2 million page views. Now, the website has received up to 24 million hits in three months. Christian has been able to leave his job (he gets enough money from Google) to pursue the completion of the book.
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The Q&A session with the audience follows.
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Q: What is your biographical information? It’s not clear that you are white.
A: I am. One reader wrote four pages about how he thought I might be Asian. A T-shirt I wore in a picture featured on the website conjured thoughts of me being Jewish. I was born and raised in Toronto, and graduated from McGill University. I tried freelance writing in Montreal, then went to graduate school at the University of Arizona for film. I attempted academic writing and a PhD program at Indiana University, but really hated it after two years, so I moved to Los Angeles for an industry job.
Q: How much of the site describes the generic white person, and how much describes you yourself?
A: Almost all of the website describes me. It’s hard to fix on how pretentious I really am, such as how much I really talk about biking in real life. I think that the post about outdoor gear is least like me.
Q: There are many different ways to be white, so do you think that SWPL is focused on any subgroup of white people, or multiple groups?
A: It’s easy to tell this is some group. Today people are trying to find a term to describe the current generation of 25 to 35 year olds. Society needs a new “yuppie” term. What I’m writing about is in the same mentality, that there is a subset of white people who are left-leaning and want to be patted on the back for it.
Q: What would someone who is white and super poor say about the website?
A: Squidbillies is one of my favorite shows. I have received positive feedback from conservatives, who think that SWPL has done a good job poking fun at those people who poked fun at conservatives.
Q: What do you think of the derivatives of your blog? Are they accurate?
A: The ones I’m aware of are “Stuff x People Like”: Asian, educated Black, White parents, gay, Hill, dirtbags, White trash, gay parents, Mexicans. His favorite is “White Stuff People Like,” such as flour, sugar, or drywall. When I started SWPL, I considered it would be hilarious if there were spinoff sites. Like LOLcats, I have to let all of the bad responses go. A lot of the spinoffs are not very funny, because they simply try to catalogue items and it doesn’t come off well. As long as SWPL isn’t directly attached to the spinoffs, then I am fine with them.
Q: A lot of people who read the blog think they’re being made fun of. Why do people like that? Is it unique to white people to enjoy being made fun of?
A: “How many derogatory terms for white people do you know of?” Cracker and honkey are examples, but the response is humored. The key is to not be purposefully hurtful; I have not meant to insight any racial hatred. It’s OK if you can enjoy it. Poking fun at stuff I believe, like about a dumb bicycle, in a non-hurtful or non-demeaning way is fine.
Q: The website has persistent fame that keeps coming back, without people passing around the URL and forgetting about it. How much is attributed to a specific angle or topic, and how much is attributed to the initial push to put content up really quickly?
A: I never thought it’d be big. The one thing that amazed me was how many people feel they’re being described. Most people live being told to think that you’re unique. Writing about that ideal, it was amazing to see how many people are really exactly the same, in spite of also being “unique.”
Q: Would that change if the blog had been written at a normal pace?
A: I’m not really sure.
Q: To leave the horrible comments section in… is there a benefit to having comments enabled?
A: Yes, a comment that a guy made about in my Prius post. I like to give people the chance to participate and talk to each other. Everyone needs a form and a place to write somewhere.
Q: What is the number one thing white people like?
A: Barack Obama.
Q: ROFLcon has been about the relationships between big media and Internet media and their conflict and collaboration. What is your opinion of the alternate media and how it works versus digital media like blogging? Will changing to the other media (ie. the SWPL book) affect the site?
A: In terms of big media, I always wanted to be a journalist. I did internships with radio, magazines, and newspapers, and was always impressed at how big media moved so quickly. With NPR, the show had me interviewed really soon. For Wired and Comedy Central, they try to be on the cutting edge and move quicker than expected. They are listening and paying attention. The book has changed the writing for the site because there’s more being written for the book.
Q: What is your view of alternate media? Where do white people go to get new media?
A: The site that sent the most people to SWPL was Stumble Upon. Another was the blog for the Atlantic by Andrew Sullivan. The section called White People in the News got traffic from the New York Times.
Q: A lot of posts that come up are about white racism. Is there a guilt about that racism, because it’s not on purpose? What do you think about the backlash against it, that white people are being outed as racist?
A: White guilt is a large focus of the website.
Q: The comments on racism are about white people not changing it. Is there backlash from people seeing they’re “racist” and not wanting to be?
A: Most of the backlash hasn’t really been about racial stuff, which is really interesting considering what the site is. The interesting question about race is that I think a lot of people don’t know what to do about it. People believe that if they eat in the right restaurants and give to the right causes, that they’re doing the right thing. Blackpeopleloveus.com is a great site at pointing those things out.
Q: The friend at EA (Myles) who co-conceived the site…
A: He wrote six posts.
Q: How much was he involved?
A: He wrote some content in the book. His writing style is different: more anger and hatred is portrayed.
Q: The focus seems to be communities on the Internet. Where do you live on the Internet? Where do you frequent?
A: Digg and Facebook. The Facebook group for the website got a whole bunch of members. For Wikipedia, Myles and I tried to update the page to link to their profiles, but there were problems. Some nerdy forms of entertainment from my childhood were video games.
Q: Have you been contacted by anyone else to hear more?
A: A few people. SWPL would make a good mockumentary, but it wouldn’t translate well to a film like the story behind One Red Paper Clip.
Q: Race was a big issue at the keynote yesterday, but white people are a big group. How can you subdivide race? Is there a class issue here? You said earlier you were “privileged.”
A: It’s entirely about class, and that’s pretty much obvious whether or not it’s stated. For a long time, white people wanted to believe they were classified as working class or really rich WASPS. The class issue is about the second generation of upper middle class whites, and the growing gap between the upper and the lower middle class. It’s mainstream that a lot of stuff about opportunities and privileges belong to the upper middle class. A belief is that whites can do whatever they want, that being white is not a luxury that everyone has. Being upper class comes with the freedom to do what you want without having to seriously worry about money, to know that you always have a safety net there. It’s really all about freedom.
Q: Is the website changing anything, or just entertaining people, to get people to look at themselves and reconsider their behavior?
A: I don’t want people to actually change, but I don’t like things the way they are. When it’s wrapped up in humor, it’s easier to talk about race. With the election as it is, it’s also an interesting time to discuss race. People are talking about it because of the website. In academic life, people do a lot of talking and not a lot of doing. My only goal was to produce a lot of laughing.
Q: What are the differences between white Canadians and white Americans?
A: White left-leaning Canadians are exactly the same in every single way. Americans, though, pronounce the last latter of the alphabet wrong (it’s “zed”). “English” is the name of the language, so if there’s a dispute, the experts of the language are in England. Also, a wool hat is never a beanie (they have propellers) but a “took.”
Q: Now that you’re moving from the blog to a book, is there any different way you think about writing?
A: The main difference is linking, because you simply can’t do that in a book. In his post on dogs, I mentioned a few things and linked to other funny websites. With the book, that comic element is removed. However, the site is written in a serialized book format, so it is not unique to the book.
Q: What is the usefulness of the comments section? What constitutes selling out? Since it was intended just for you at first, is there a point where you were trying to pull in an audience with certain topics rather than just write things?
A: No, I didn’t want to write to get more people reading, because that would be more controversial. Anything written has to be funny to me first. Referring to Jay, the Tron Guy, when you can detect if someone is trying to do something to be famous, then it becomes really obvious and unenjoyable to watch or read. My stance has never changed, even when a reader sent in a margarita machine in hopes that I would write a post about it.
Q: Regarding the editorial process, have you ever had to go back and reconsider if what you wrote was true?
A: It hasn’t happened yet. But white people like grammar so much that in fifteen minutes I will receive emails full of corrections to grammar and punctuation.
Q: Based on the critiques, how do you respond to very negative comments? For example, do you serve up softball questions or use metaquestions? Do critics misunderstand the website? How do you address these people when they say you’re going easy on Whites?
A: I don’t want to hear the word “meta” again, since I heard it too much in graduate English classes. For the critics, it’s strange when I create something that means another thing to other people. It’s implied that the writer needs to have responsibility. For me, that responsibility is to be funny to myself. It can be tough to do that, but I just can’t listen to the haters.
Q: What is the whitest part of LA?
A: Santa Monica. I can’t stand it.
Q: What’s your favorite meme?
A: LOLcats. I love them because they always make me laugh.
Q: How did you decide to write in the style you did? Could you change it?
A: I wish I had thought it out more at the beginning. I considered the funniest way to go about writing it, then just started composing, and everything grew on its own. I don’t remember making a conscious decision. It’s funny how it all worked out. The strange little decisions are the ones that make the big impacts.
Q: Do you ever think you’ll run out of things to write about?
A: No, but I might. Organic bakeries are opening up all the time. Boston has provided a lot of good ideas.
Q: Why do white people like the things they like?
A: “That’s a deep question…”
Q: “Why do I like the same things that you like?”
A: I don’t have an answer and wish I had a clearer understanding. When I answer the question of what is funny, then everything is answered. I’m not there yet, but I’m close.
Q: Has the website turned into more of a job with a planned out schedule? Or is it still just made of ideas that pop up? Has SWPL become your new job?
A: There’s a very tight deadline for finishing the book, so the real focus at the moment is getting that done. I don’t view the site as regularly scheduled like the others. Everything’s done by me and put up when I’m ready and when I think it’s funny. There will always be tons of new content for LOLcats, but SWPL won’t be around forever.