What started as an inside joke became mainstream success for Christian Lander, whose "Stuff White People" like quickly turned into a smash hit. Still reeling from his Internet fame, Lander is now finding wider recognition with a new book based on the blog.

The Daily Californian: Where did you get the idea for "Stuff White People Like"?

Christian Lander: It would be great if there was a story of some fantastic, divine inspiration, but my friend and I were both at work, just having an IM conversation about the TV show "The Wire." And my friend, who's Filipino, said he didn't trust any white people who didn't watch "The Wire." And you know how IM conversations go: The next thing you knew, we were saying, "Well, what are they doing instead of watching 'The Wire'?" And we just threw ideas back and forth, like yoga, getting divorced, therapy, and I thought it was a pretty funny conversation, so I was like, OK, blog time, fully expecting it to only be read by him and maybe a few of my friends.

DC: When did you realize that the blog was really taking off?

CL: I honestly never expected it. We figured it would be about a hundred people a day, because you know, if you just put certain words in there, people just find it through weird flukes through Google. Then when I got to about 15 or 20 entries, I thought, you know what, this is pretty funny, I'm going to send it, instead of just to the few friends who would ever read the stuff that I would put up there, I'm going to send it to all my friends. And I don't have a huge amount of friends; I'm talking about 20 people. And they liked it, and they sent it out to their friends, and next thing I know it's mentioned on Comedy Central's main blog and GOOD Magazine's blog. So it went from like a hundred hits a day to 30,000, and I just couldn't believe it. And it just kept getting crazier and crazier after that.

DC: How would you respond to critics who claim the whole concept is racist?

CL: It's about mainstream upper middle class white people. And regardless of what people are going to say, it's about class as well. Fundamentally, the upper middle class in the United States is dominated by white people. So regardless of whether it's racist or not, there's a class issue here, and it's spurring discussion, it's getting people talking about it. And it's comedy-it's not meant to incite hate, and it's not meant to prevent people from getting jobs ... It's not hateful.

DC: So you haven't lost any white friends since starting the blog?

CL: I would say I've gained far more white friends than I've lost.

DC: Do you personally like all the things that you post about?

CL: Um. I don't like outdoor performance gear.

DC: But you do like the majority of what you post about?

CL: Yeah, of course. I put my own picture up there. I just want people to know that I'm making fun of myself. Even though it's written in a tone that implies a distance, realistically I'm making fun of myself all the way through. I'm making fun of myself for being pretentious, for knowing what's best for poor people, all the stuff. I'm really making fun of myself here.

DC: You actually had a contest in which readers sent in their own ideas for stuff white people like. How accurate were the submissions?

CL: There are some good ideas out there. Usually the astute ones sent in things that were going to be in the book or that were already addressed. But there were a fair amount of people who sent in NASCAR and guns and mayonnaise, stuff like that, sort of missing the point. But people are astute and sharp. The funny thing about the Internet is that people can really sort of see through a lot of stuff. They can pick up on bullshit pretty quickly. For example, I was invited to this thing called ROFLcon. It was like Tron Guy and me and the one red paperclip guy and the XKCD comics guy. And it was funny because every single person there had the same story about how they started this with no intention of getting famous, they never thought it was going to be big. They did it because it was funny to them and they enjoyed it, and then it spread because other people shared that sense of humor. It was really interesting to see how many people sort of get it and see through blatant attempts at stuff like that.

DC: Now that the book is out, will you keep the blog running?

CL: I want to keep the blog up as long as it's funny-funny to me-but it can't last forever. It'll run its course.

Tags: STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE