Stuff White People Like

One of the more popular white person activities of the past fifteen years is attempting to educate others on the evils of multi-national corporations. White people love nothing more than explaining to you how Wal*Mart, McDonalds, Microsoft, Halliburton are destroying the Earth’s culture and resources.

While the growth of multi-national corporations can be attributed to a number of complex social, economic and political factors, many white people prefer to take the word of two trusted sources: No Logo and AdBusters.

Published in 2000, No Logo has been responsible for more white person “enlightenment” than any book since the burning of the library at Alexandria. By reading this one magic book, white people are able to get a full grasp on the evils of multi-national corporations and then regurgitate it to friends and family.

Advanced white people will supplement No Logo with a subscription to AdBusters, where they will learn how to subvert corporate culture and return it to the masses. Specifically, this means taking ads and redoing them to give a negative message about a product. Apparently the belief is that when other people see this ad, they will be hit with an epiphany that their entire existence has been a Matrix-style manufactured universe.

If you plan to engage in lengthy conversations or get high with white people it is recommended that you read No Logo or one issue of AdBusters. Failing that, it is acceptable to buy a copy to leave on your coffee table. When white people see it, they will recognize you as someone who can see through the advertising and has a proper perspective on life.

When engaging in a conversation about corporate evils it is important to NEVER, EVER mention Apple Computers, Target or Ikea in the same breath as the companies mentioned earlier. White people prefer to hate corporations that don’t make stuff that they like.

Following these simple steps can help you gain the trust and respect of white people in a relatively short period of time.

Being white means to engage in a day in, day out struggle to prove that you are smarter than other white people. By the time they reach college, most white people are confronted with the fact that they may not be as smart as they imagined.

In coffee shops, bars, and classes white people will engage in conversations about authors and theorists that go nowhere as both parties start rattling off progressively more obscure people until eventually one side recognizes one and claims a victory. By the time they graduate (or a year or two afterwards), white people realize that they will need an edge to succeed in the cut-throat world of modern white society.

That edge is graduate school.

Though professional graduate schools like law and medicine are desirable, the true ivory tower of academia is most coveted as it imparts true, useless knowledge. The best subjects are English, History, Art History, Film, Gender Studies, <insert nation> Studies, Classics, Philosophy, Political Science, <insert European nation> Literature, and the ultimate: Comp Lit. MFA’s are also acceptable.

Returning to school is an opportunity to join an elite group of people who have a passion for learning that is so great they are willing to forgo low five-figure publishing and media jobs to follow their dreams of academic glory.

Being in graduate school satisfies many white requirements for happiness. They can believe they are helping the world, complain that the government/university doesn’t support them enough, claim they are poor, feel as though are getting smarter, act superior to other people, enjoy perpetual three day weekends, and sleep in every day of the week!

After acquiring a Masters Degree that will not increase their salary or hiring desirability, many white people will move on to a PhD program where they will go after their dream of becoming a professor. However, by their second year they usually wake up with a hangover and realize: “I’m going to spend six years in graduate school to make $35,000 and live in the middle of nowhere?”

After this crisis, a white person will follow one of two paths. The first involves dropping out and moving to New York, San Francisco or their original home town where they can resume the job that they left to attend graduate school.

At this point, they can feel superior to graduate school and say things like “A PhD is a testament to perseverance, not intelligence.” They can also impress their friends at parties by referencing Jacques Lacan or Slavoj Žižek in a conversation about American Idol.

The second path involves becoming a professor, moving to a small town and telling everyone how they are awful and uncultured.

It is important to understand that a graduate degree does not make someone smart, so do not feel intimidated. They may have read more, but in no way does that make them smarter, more competent, or more likable than you. The best thing you can do is to act impressed when a white person talks about critical theorists. This helps them reaffirm that what they learned in graduate school was important and that they are smarter than you. This makes white people easier to deal with when you get promoted ahead of them.

Many white people will tell you that they are very into soccer. But be careful, it’s a trap.

If you then attempt to engage them about your favorite soccer team or talk about famous moments in soccer history, you are likely to be met with blank stares. This is because white people don’t actually enjoy watching soccer, they just like telling their friends that they are into it.

In fact, the main reason white people like soccer is so they can buy a new scarf. As you may or may not know, many soccer teams issue special scarves, and white people cannot get enough of them!

Most white people choose a favorite soccer team based on either a study abroad experience or a particularly long vacation to Europe or South America. When they return, they like to tell their friends about how great “football” is and that they are committed to ‘getting more into’ now that they have returned home.

Some white people take this charade so far as to actually play in adult soccer leagues or attend a local professional match.

The best method for exploiting this is to ask a white person who their favorite football team is and how they came to be fans. This will allow them to tell you about their time abroad and feel as though they have impressed you with their knowledge. Once they have finished talking, it is acceptable to ask for favors.

Note: Europeans are actually into Soccer and are exempt from this entry, however they are free to use it to their advantage when in North America.

When white people envision their dream home, a key part of the fantasy involves a least one piece of furniture designed by a famous architect from the 1930s.

Architects like Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier designed iconic modern furniture that has inspired virtually everything made by Ikea and Design Within Reach, both of which are key suppliers of furniture to white people.

But as with all things, white people will do whatever it takes to secure authenticity including paying thousands of dollars for a small piece of furniture.

If they are able to acquire this prized furniture, they will forever refer to it only by the designers name. “I spend hours in the van der Rohe, just looking through these beautiful books of his work.”

Referring to a white person’s expensive chair as a ‘chair’ is considered poor form and will likely result in a loss of trust and/or respect.

The best strategy  for avoiding this faux pas is to look for the most uncomfortable chair in a white person’s home and ask “who designed that?” If they say “Ikea” or “Design within Reach” you can call it a chair, otherwise refer to it only by the name they give you.

It should also be noted that many white people are unable to acquire this furniture, but that does not mean you cannot use this information to your advantage.

In situations where you need to improve your connection with a white person, just mention how you hope to be successful enough to one day afford an original piece of furniture by <insert obscurely named architect>. If they have heard of the designer they will nod in agreement, if they have not, they will also nod in agreement and make a note to look it up later.

In either case, your status will rise.

All white people want their children to speak another language. There are no exceptions. They dream about the children drifting in between French and English sentences as they bustle about the kitchen while they read the New York Times and listen to Jazz.

As white people age, they start to feel more and more angry with their parents for raising them in a monolingual home. At some point in their lives, most white people attempt to learn a second language and are generally unable to get past ordering in a restaurant or over-pronouncing a few key words. This failure is not attributed to their lack of effort, but rather their parents who didn’t teach them a new language during their formative years.

White people believe that if they had been given French language instruction when they were younger, their lives would have turned out very differently. Instead of living in the US, they would be living and working abroad for the United Nations or some other organization with a headquarters in Switzerland or The Hague.

Generally, white people prefer their children to speak French. Advanced white people will actually spend outrageous amounts of money to send their children to a Lycee or Ecole Francaise. But the vast majority will abandon their dreams when they realize that need a second mortgage so their child can have a better study abroad experience in France.

Languages such as German, Spanish, Swedish, or Italian are also acceptable, but are considered to be poor substitutes (especially Spanish). At the time of writing, it is still considered expert-level white person behavior to have white children speaking Asian and African languages.

There is only one way to use this information to your advantage: speaking another language means that white people are more likely to want to have children with you. It is seen as a cheaper alternative to language schools.

One of the more interesting things about White people is that they love singing comedians.

This style of humor involves a person or group singing a song but rather than singing about something serious, it has funny lyrics. It’s not any more complicated than that, but white people can’t get enough of it. Weird Al Yankovich, Tenacious D, Sarah Silverman (sometimes), Flight of the Conchords, Dennis Leary, and Adam Sandler are all excellent examples of the genre.

It’s a pretty good idea because when you have jokes that aren’t that great and music that isn’t that great, you can mix them together and create something that will entertain white people.

So how you can use this knowledge to your advantage?

If you find yourself at a corporate retreat where you have to put on a skit for the other employees in your office, it’s always a good idea to suggest doing a funny song. The rest of your group will get very excited and start work immediately on some clever lyrics. Do not worry about the music part, if you have more than two white males on your team, it is certain that one of them can play the guitar.

Water seems like a fairly simple concept. You turn on the tap, put glass underneath, and drink. Sadly, it is not this simple for white people.

On the whole, they are unable to put a glass under a tap and just drink. In fact, this is such a strange concept that the city of New York had to launch a rather large PR campaign to show white people that it was possible to actually drink the water that comes out of the tap!

Up until this point, white people were consuming most of their water in the form of expensive bottles like Fiji, Aquafina and Dasanai. To this day, many white people continue to get their water in this fashion, and it is important to be aware about how your choice of water can say a lot about who you are.

Logically, you would assume that drinking the most expensive premium bottled water (Fiji and Voss) would be enough to show the world that you are too good for tap water. And a few years ago, you would have been right. But lately, advanced white people have been getting very upset about all of the waste that comes with drinking 15-20 bottles per week.

The leading edge of white people have started to use sturdier, refillable bottles. But do not assume this is from the tap. Most white people need to run their water through some sort of filter (Brita or PUR) before they put it into their bottle. This allows them to feel good about using a refillable bottle, but it also makes it more complicated, which they also like.

Previously, the gold standard was the Nalgene bottle, however recent studies have shown the plastic can leak toxins into the water. Currently, white people on the cutting edge are really into metal bottles of water with a twist cap. It is recommended that you buy one of these as soon as possible.

Having one will give you precious leverage over any white person who is drinking from a plastic bottle. “Oh bottled water? really? I mean it’s cool, but I kind of thought you cared about the earth.” If you see someone drinking a Fiji water, you do have the opportunity to go in for the kill. “Do you know that your bottle of water has a bigger carbon footprint than me? I think they were originally going to call it ‘aboriginal blood’ but that bottle was as close as they could get. You know, legally.”

Again, this should only be used in extreme situations.

Following your confrontation, the white person is likely to have a metal bottle just like yours. If this happens, there will be an implicit pact whereby they will do favors for you provided you do not tell everyone they got their bottle after you.

NOTE: whoever makes the metal bottles did not pay for the link.  They just had the best pictures.

Often times, white people get frustrated with the state of their country. They do not like the President, or Congress, or the health care system, or the illegal status of Marijuana. Whenever they are presented with a situation that seems unreasonable to them, their first instinct is to threaten to move to Canada.

For example, if you are watching TV with white people and there is a piece on the news about that they do not agree with, they are likely to declare “ok, that’s it, I’m moving to Canada.”

Though they will never actually move to Canada, the act of declaring that they are willing to undertake the journey is very symbolic in white culture. It shows that their dedication to their lifestyle and beliefs are so strong, that they would consider packing up their entire lives and moving to a country that is only slightly different to the one they live in now.

Within white culture, it is agreed upon that if Canada had better weather it would be a perfect place.

Being aware that this information can be used quite easily to gain the trust of white people. Whenever they say, “I’m moving to Canada,” you must immediately respond with “I have relatives in Canada.”

They will then expect you to tell them about how Canada has a perfect healthcare system, legalized everything, and no crime. Though not true, it will reassure them that they are making the right choice by saying they want to move there.

But be warned, they will reference you in future conversations and possibly call on you to settle disputes about Canadian tax rates. So use this advice only if you plan to do some basic research.

Note: Canadian white people threaten to move to Europe.

Note: Europeans are unable to threaten to move anywhere.

One of the best places to gain a white person’s trust is at an Oscar party. An invitation to one these parties is basically your “foot in the door”.

Vocabulary is one of the first things to be aware of at an Oscar party. Never say “movie”, always say “film” and know which awards use the term “Best” and which ones use “Outstanding Achievement”. Saying “I hope Atonement wins Best Art Direction” will guarantee that you won’t be invited next year.

Attire is very important as well. Either dress in an fancy suit / gown or wear something that relates to one of the films nominated for Best Picture. So for the 2008 Oscar Party it might be best to put a pillow under your shirt and come as a pregnant teenager in tribute to Juno (by no means should anyone bring an actual pregnant teenager). You can impress white people even further by bringing in a food or drink item that relates to a film. Again using Juno as an example, if you were to come to the party with jugs of SunnyD, it would highlight your keen observation of detail when it comes to watching films. Then they will see that you watch films the same way that they do. Also be prepared to be involved in an Oscar Pool, but make sure you don’t win. If you do, just say that you were lucky.

However all of this preparation will mean nothing if one does not act during the most important part of the night: when the nominees are read for Best Foreign Film. At this point someone will get angry and state that some movie that no one has heard of, was snubbed. When this happens just nod and agree. Mention that it sounds interesting and that you will watch it tomorrow, even if you have already seen it and know that its boring.

Basically what separates Oscar Night from other party nights is that it allows white people to express themselves through their tastes in film. If they see that you are someone who agrees with a majority of their opinions, then they will be your friend and provide you with ample opportunities to sip wine and attend film festivals together

In general, white people love situations where they can’t lose. While this does account for the majority of their situations, perhaps the safest bet a white person can make is to buy a house in an up-and-coming neighborhood.

White people like to live in these neighborhoods because they get credibility and respect from other white people for living in a more “authentic” neighborhood where they are exposed to “true culture” every day. So whenever their friends mention their home in the suburbs or richer urban area, these people can say “oh, it’s so boring out there, so fake. In our neighborhood, things are just more real.” This superiority is important as white people jockey for position in their circle of friends.

They are like a modern day Lewis and Clark, except instead of searching for the ocean, they are searching for old properties to renovate.

In a few years, if more white people start moving in, these initial trailblazers will sell their property for triple what they paid and move into an ultramodern home.

Credibility or money, they can’t lose!

When one of these white people tell you where they live, you should say “whoa, it’s pretty rough down there. I don’t think I could live there.” This will make them feel even better about their credibility and status as neighborhood pioneers.

In addition to accumulating sexual partners, binge drinking, drug use and learning, white people consider studying abroad to be one of the most important parts of a well rounded college education.

Study Abroad allows people to leave their current educational institution and spend a semester or a year in Europe or Australia.  Though study abroad are offered to other places, these two are the overwhelming favorites.

By attending school in another country, white people are technically living in another country.  This is important as it gives them the opportunity to insert that fact into any sentence they please. “When I used to live in [insert country], I would always ride the train to school.  The people I’d see were inspiring.”

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.

It is also important that you understand the study abroad ranking system.  Europe/Australia form the base level, then Asia, then South America, and finally the trump card of studying abroad in Tibet.  Then there is the conversation killer of studying abroad in Africa.  If you studied in Africa, it is usually a good idea to keep it quiet, it will remind white people that they were too scared to go and they will feel bad. Use this only in emergencies.

Editors Note: Thanks to everyone who sent this topic in.

This concept ties heavily into post #7 Diversity and post #19 Travelling, but is important that you fully understand how white people view authenticity and experience.

In most situations, white people are very comforted by seeing their own kind. However, when they are eating at a new ethnic restaurant or traveling to a foreign nation, nothing spoils their fun more than seeing another white person.

Many white people will look into the window of an ethnic restaurant to see if there are other white people in there. It is determined to be an acceptable restaurant if the white people in there are accompanied by ethnic friends. But if there is a table occupied entirely by white people, it is deemed unacceptable.

The arrival of the “other white people” to either restaurants or vacation spots instantly means that lines will grow, authenticity will be lost, and the euphoria of being a cultural pioneer will be over.

Being aware of this can be extremely valuable in your efforts to gain the trust of white friends and co-workers. If you bring a white person to an ethnic restaurant and another white person (or group of white people) shows up, you can lose all respect and trust that you have worked so hard to acquire. Do your best to find a table with a divider, or ask the waiter to put future white people out of sight.

Note: This does not apply to night clubs.

Prior to engaging in divorce, most white people train for it by engaging in a series of long term relationships that end very poorly. At some point, you will likely encounter a white person who is in the middle of a difficult breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

The suffering of heartbreak is universal, but it is important to be aware that white people thrive during these trying times. If you play your cards right, you can parlay these moments into future favors and valuable trust.

The majority of white person art is created after a difficult breakup; films, indie music, and poetry are all kicked into high production during the end of a relationship. This helps train white people to prepare for the pain that is coming.

Once breakup proceedings have been initiated, a white person is immediately thrust into the center of attention in their circle of friends. During this time, they are permitted to talk at great lengths about themselves, listen to The Smiths, and get free dinners from friends who think “they shouldn’t be alone right now.”

It is imperative that you do not attempt to kick them out of their misery by saying things like “get over it,” “there are other people out there,” or “I don’t want to read your poem.” Implying that there things in the world more important to you than their breakup is considered one of the rudest actions possible.

If you are lucky enough to speak a second language, the best thing you can do for a white person in this situation is to give them an expression in that language that relates to breaking up. This will make them feel better since they are comforted by the gesture and happy to be learning a new sentence that they can reuse to with their friends.

In the olden days of white culture, people used to look up to Kings and Princes. These were the people that they adored, and every night they wished and hoped that somehow they could wake up and be just like them. But with Royal Families crumbling, that role has been filled by one man: Mos Def.

He is everything that white people dream about: authentic (“he’s from Brooklyn!”), funny (“he was on Chapelle show!”), artistic (have you heard “Black on Both Sides?”), an actor (“he’s in the new Gondry film!”) and not white (“I don’t see race”).

He has done an amazing job of being in big budget movies (The Italian Job) and having one of his songs become a white person wedding staple (Ms. Fat Booty) but still retaining authenticity and credibility.

If you find yourself in a social situation where you are asked to list your favorite actor or artist, you should always say Mos Def. This way you can name someone that everyone has heard of and you don’t look like you are trying to one up anybody. The only possible negative consequence is some white people might think “I wish I had said that first.”

In putting together the canon of directors that white people like, we must include Michel Gondry.  He directed such white classics as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, and Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.  Oh, that’s right Charlie Kaufman, Gael Garcia Bernal, AND Dave Chappelle – could it get any better for white people?  Oh yes, it can.

You see, Michel Gondry got famous by directing videos for The White Stripes, Massive Attack and Bjork.  These are three bands that, at some point in their lives, all white people have thought were cool.

Between the ages of 16-20, all white people go through a phase where they aspire to become a music video director.  This is followed shortly by a phase where they want to become a regular director. But in both cases, they don’t want to produce generic content, they want to create art.  As a result, the two directors who have achieved this (Spike Jonez is the other) are universally beloved by white people.

If you look at the DVD collection of a white person (even those without a TV), it will contain “The Work of Director Michel Gondry” (pictured).

This can be used to help find common ground with white people.  Talk about how you wanted to direct music videos after you saw Michel Gondry’s video for “Around the World” by Daft Punk.  Then make a joke about how foolish you were at that age and everyone will have a good laugh. But they will also feel your pain about sacrificing your artistic dreams.

The observant among you will probably be aware that the white person wet dream “Be Kind, Rewind” is about to be released.  This might be the biggest event in white person film since The Royal Tenenbaums.