|
When I first checked out StuffWhitePeopleLike.com — because everyone I knew was checking out StuffWhitePeopleLike.com, and recommending, repeatedly, that I check out StuffWhitePeopleLike.com — I couldn't stop thinking about an internet date I'd been on a few weeks after I first moved to New York.
The girl was from Queens, a short, pale, pretty thing with fierce black eyes and a gap between her front teeth. She took me to an old-school Italian restaurant that I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to find again. I got there by taxi. She showed up twenty minutes late via two subways, a bus, and a twenty-block stroll. The restaurant was called Angelino's. The owner — our waiter, her father — was named Angelino.
At first, it all seemed like a grand experience.
Hadn't I moved to New York for this very authenticity? Here I was, on a date with a member of a faraway culture at a restaurant with red-and-white checked vinyl tablecloths and no Zagats listing. But something felt off.
When we compared the usual notes — the schools we went to, the things we did on weekends, our feelings for our deceased childhood pets — nothing matched up. "You're funny," she told me near the end of the date, her "you're" sounding remarkably like the outer-borough "yo-wa" you hear in the movies. But she didn't mean I made her laugh. She meant I made no sense. "Well," I said, feeling hopelessly bourgeois, "I guess you're pretty funny, too." I never saw this girl from Queens again.
I drink too much bottled water (#76). I wear overpriced vintage t-shirts (#84), loved studying abroad (#72) and stand completely still at concerts (#67). I'm a fan of Michel Gondry (#68), Apple products (#40) and Stephen Colbert (#35). I've threatened to move to Canada on more than one occasion (#75). And I don't mind that StuffWhitePeopleLike.com — a blog that lampoons the over-educated yuppies and hipsters who populate the nation's trendy urban centers and mixed-use development zones — pinpoints me with such eerie accuracy, assessing my predilections like a gifted psychic reader. The site is a fairly amusing send-up of the slightly embarrassing, clearly predictable culture I'm a part of.
But the fact that it also describes virtually my entire dating history — that really unHooksexups me. When I moved to New York, I imagined my dating repertoire would reflect the diversity of a Barack Obama rally (#8). But this doesn't happen, or at least, it didn't for me. I ended up dating exactly the people StuffWhitePeopleLike.com depicts: other white people who'd come to New York lusting after authenticity, ponying up their ample disposable income to purchase something that feels like "the real thing." People like me who moved here to drink from some mystical font of urban cultural capital, then just kept on dating within the tight-jean pool.
If you're one of these people, you can supposedly appreciate the irony (#50).
|
How many nights will I find myself at Whole Foods (#48) picking out produce for a romantic, organic (#6) dinner for two?
|
For instance, take another date I went on soon after arriving in New York, one far more representative of the date I would typically come to find myself on. We met at an Asian-fusion restaurant (#45). I ordered the vegan teriyaki (#32), she ordered the sushi (#42). We bonded over our bad memories of high school (#83), and compared the uselessness of our respective liberal-arts degrees (#47). She told me about her work at a non-profit (#12). I told her my reasons for not owning a TV (#28). We both agreed New York was the greatest city we knew (#26) because of the diversity (#7), the indie music (#41) and the architecture (#34).
It's not that I haven't dated captivating, unique girls within the Stuff White People Like cultural spectrum. It's just that there's a Groundhog Day sensation that comes with repeatedly dating people cut from the same American Apparel-purchased cloth. How many times will I be asked to a dinner party (#80) on the fourth date, to meet her friends? How many nights will I find myself at Whole Foods (#48) picking out produce for a romantic, organic (#6) dinner for two? How many Sunday mornings will be consumed pacing the sidewalks outside breakfast places (#36), waiting to indulge in another post-coital brunch?
|
Commentarium (24 Comments)
Let's just make this perfectly clear. Stuff White People Like is not about white people. It's about a specific left-leaning segment of upper-middle-class urban whites who tend to live on the coasts. I see myself caricatured in it -- sometimes in surprising ways -- as in "Not having a TV." But don't try to tell me the rest of the white population is thinking this way! It's a subgroup -- yes, an extremely annoying and humorless subgroup, at times -- but a SUBgroup. Not "white people."
The cultural insight here is lapidary. A lovely little jewel of a piece that makes me stop and reflect on how class, romance, and urban hipsterdom intersect.
yep - its true
where are the funny burg on Hooksexup?
Hey, I'm the guy who writes Stuff White People like. This is a fantastic article. You've done a great job, and thanks for getting the joke, and building on it in such a great way.
Great job.
"Crash" should also be added to the list of things that White people like. That movie is GARBAGE.
Clearly you are doing the things you like to do and dating the people you like to date, and I think you should stop feeling awkward about doing so. If you felt differently, you'd act differently -- it really does not take much effort at all to do so. I'm a white guy who moved to New York and without looking outside my immediate circle of friends (of friends) and co-workers dated about 80% non-white women. I didn't put any particular level of effort into it either -- that was just the intersection of people I liked and who liked me. In the words of some wise person, "just do you."
I agree that A. This was a wonderful essay and B. Crash was one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever seen!
You have nailed my feelings and experiences with stuffwhitepeoplelike.com in much the same eerie fashion in which it has nailed my experience in being a white person who likes things.
It sounds, unfortunately, like the author wants to have a diverse dating life without having to *do* anything about it. Waiting for her to walk into your favorite bar will NOT cut it; you need to walk into hers.
Expect to get the weird looks and weirder remarks. Expect to be told, "You're funny." Remember that this is a necessary and good process--you're learning poise.
P.S.: For some real family fun, try it while black.
I was with you until the last paragraph, which was stupidly self-congratulating. Do you really think you only date/fuck other white people because you're so above garnering "ego-fueling diversity points"? The reason "diverse" dating is so uncommon is because people are generally ignorant and scared of what lies outside their tiny comfort zones. You might have had plenty in common with the Queens girl, but you were so paralyzed by superficial lifestyle signifiers ("Angelino's!" How ethnic!) you never got below the surface. Own your fear.
God. Your egotism is almost unbelievable.
boo mutha-f-in hoo, peckerwood!
Dead on.
Same goes for the second city...
Ha!
But, as you've clearly read SWPL numerous times, white people, specifically white men, have taken to Asian women as ways to lay a claim to authenticity. It's incredibly creepy to think that you would want to date someone just because they're so much more "different" from you. People of color are viewed as touristic adventures or experiences white people use to beat back the ennui of their bourgeois life. Just stick with what you know.
I think yuppies need to get over themselves. They are a subculture, one as real as any Italian restaurant family. Think of all the televsion shows/movies celebrating the NYC yuppie ghetto: Friends, Sex and the City, Kissing Jessica Stein...it's rampant. And it's okay! Those diverse Others are also dating people with whom they're comfortable and they have things common. Lose the self-consciousness and welcome to Humanity.
ah. but SWPL isn't about the middle class. It's about the Upper Middle Class.
news flash, 20somethings: all these young, rich, boring, unidimensional white people weren't here 20 years ago.
I loved it!
Pathetic. Go back to Kansas.
We guess white people like to cheat in the voting process to.
This was hilarious and painfully true. It hurts to think I am that shallow and that predictable. Ouch. But again... it's pretty damn true. What a great essay, Joey! I loved reading it :)
Respect to the author of original work. I am want to say thanks for funny post, and thanks to google and yahoo for perfect blog search.
thnks for this testing :)
This is great! Maybe the best on the ground illustration/explanation I've seen of the sociological truism that the best way to know if two groups of people are part of the same class is whether they intermarry.
BTW, There's a cute pediatric resident you might like, who I think fits into the proper class demographic--
https://www.umm.edu/pediatrics/residents/joey_rubin.htm