Category Archives: stuff white people like

Facebook – Why I Just Can’t Quit (Yet)

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How Addicted to Facebook Are You?

Created by Oatmeal

Thank god this number is so low. I thought it would be more in the range of 100%. Not that a quiz result on a humorous website is an exact reflection of how addicted to social networking sites I am. But still.

I spend about an hour each day, in 10 minute increments, on Facebook. Conservatively speaking. Because there are days when I check it so often – along with my email and Twitter accounts – that I’m not sure what I’m expecting to happen. It’s like I’m a bird who has learned to peck at a lever for a pellet. I couldn’t have a more dopamine-driven reaction to checking my Facebook page. After years on the site, I have a Pavlovian response to the little red number telling me how many new items are on my page.

Like everyone else these days, I am 10 parts mystified to 9 parts embarrassed to 5 parts worried about my online activity. Am I online too much? Would I have written 10 books by now if I weren’t? Maybe. Though I think I remember procrastination BEFORE the internet came along. Hard to imagine, I know, but it involved magazines, cleaning, cooking, and my record collection. I am dubious, too, about all the doomsday accounts of how sites like Twitter and Facebook are making it harder for us to concentrate on one task, make connections offline, etc. Maybe I’m both too old and too young to understand these common laments. I’m old enough that I didn’t grow up with cell phones, computers, etc. – but young enough that I don’t think that teenagers are destined to go to hell in a handbasket for growing up with them.

At any rate, I am more addicted to Facebook than to my Twitter account. Probably because I see Twitter as a really big conference where I pick up news, neat articles, a little bit of gossip, and network. Facebook is like high school, and thus I’m more emotionally attached to what happens there. When someone de-friends me, I notice. On the other hand, when someone stops following me on Twitter, I shrug and tweet again.

As an anthropologist who is beginning to study human interactions on and through social media and information generated and circulated using new technologies, I think all of this navel-gazing we are doing about our online lives is fascinating. Self included. Stay tuned. As we become more adept at harnessing the power of the web, we’ll have more fears and joys and reflective moments. I’ll be sharing mine on Facebook, clearly.

How addicted to Twitter are you?

Created by Oatmeal

I must like blogging away the Mondays.

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Because I always seem to blog on a Monday morning. Maybe that is because I am procrastinating the beginning of yet another week. Which I’m usually afraid is going to suck.

But not for much longer!

The perk of being in academia is definitely the summer break. This summer, I have every intention of finishing my second novel, about a group of western or ‘westernized’ Chinese women in Hong Kong. The plot is loosely based on Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, for anyone who cares. It’s more of a literary novel, but I don’t think that people who like a good ‘beach read’ would turn away from it either. It’s all about relationships and what it’s like to be a white women in a post-colonial setting. From, clearly, my own personal experience with such a thing. It should be fun, and serious, and just a good read. Hopefully, it will also be provocative of discussion about what it means to be a woman, and Chinese or American in today’s world (respectively, I only barely dabble in Chinese-American status, which I know about only from my friends in China classes).

I can’t wait to just sit down and crash it out.

That and a couple of academic articles.

I guess I plan on being productive.

But you know how that works. Doesn’t the weekend always look better on the Friday side of it? By Sunday, I think most people have disappointed themselves. They didn’t do everything on their ‘list’. That’s something that should be on “Stuff White People Like”. Lists.

Well, I say frak the lists. To-do lists outside of work only depress people. Don’t even have a MENTAL to-do list.

Instead, why don’t you try keeping a record of what you’ve accomplished during the day. Shake it up. Yesterday, for instance, I wrote an introduction to a theory paper about the so-called ‘problem’ of China, specifically focusing on the issue of science & technology. I also wrote about the ‘Science Wars’ of the 1990s for my field statement on the anthropology of science. In addition, I read an article in Chinese about China’s economy for today’s Chinese class. I took an hour walk with my lovely boyfriend. I grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. OK, I just ate them and he grilled them, but still.  I also managed to call my close friend Mark and gab.

Looking at that list makes me feel pretty good about my Monday. Let’s see if it lasts. . . .

Stuff White People Hate: #2 Paying Taxes

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Upper and middle-class white people hate paying taxes. Due to the fact that most of them owe money to the government, despite all the sneaky write-offs they do. (Come on, do you really have a “home office”? If we could write off over-filled garages, spare rooms, and attics, we’d be all set.)

Worry about “filling out the taxes” starts just after the haze of the New Year’s hangover. It intensifies after Valentine’s Day, and might be the reason that white people get so drunk on St. Patrick’s Day. (White people love to avoid doing things. They actively practice slacktivism. I guess that makes us all slacktivists.)

If you haven’t begun work on your taxes by Easter, and you are white and have a savings account with more than $500 in it, real panic sets in. People sit down at their desks with stacks of old receipts, paperwork, pencils, a calculator, an abacus and a protractor, and set to work. “Doing the taxes” requires absolute silence, respect and must be interruption-free. It will take a white person anywhere from one 1500 hours to complete their taxes. Depending on their level of education, street smarts, and math skills. (Enron execs did theirs in 15 minutes, a world record!)

tax forms

When they are done with their taxes, white people spend a lot of time worrying about getting audited. The “audit fear” will last until May, at least, when the person will shrug off the worry and enjoy the summer. Then repeat it all again next year.

Stuff White People Hate: #1 Traffic

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traffic

White people hate traffic.

In fact, they hate it so much that they obsess about it. Especially in California, where you must talk about what route you will take to your destination (i.e. Driver: “Let’s take the 405.” Passenger: “That’ll be too crowded, let’s take the 5.” Driver: “Cool.”).

White people pay taxes, at least in part, so that the highways and roads can be “kept up”, or “expanded” in order to “lessen traffic”. New roads, on-ramps, and traffic lights are sometimes constructed or added to ease traffic. Somehow, they never do. Maybe it’s because white people tend to love “cars”, and have approximately one per family member of driving age. My aunt Susan even has a “dog mobile”, or the car she drives the dogs around in because she doesn’t care if it gets hairy seats and slobbery windows.

White people also prepare for traffic. They go to the bathroom before they leave and they don’t drink too much coffee en route, “in case there’s traffic”. They leave early, “in case there’s traffic.”

White people also think of traffic as a competition. They think that if they plan well enough, and because they are smarter than “other” people, they can “beat traffic”. Examples of beating traffic include getting up at 5am to get on the road early, to “beat traffic”. Leaving late, usually after dark (especially when you are at the beach), to “beat the traffic”. Other people who leave during usual, or so-called “rush” hours, are “idiots” or “morons”.

If people are still caught up in traffic, despite adequate preparation and planning, they simply try harder the next time.

And white people always, always, complain when they are in traffic. Sometimes, ranting can be accompanied by hand gestures and frantic waving, or epithets such as “Jesus H. Christ” or “shit”. On rare occasions, when a sense of false confidence in traffic avoidance skills is involved, a sense of panic will descend in traffic because the white person involved fears that they will be late.

Look for entry #2 in a few days for Stuff White People Hate: Being Late.

Stuff White People Like

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One of the entries on the popular new WordPress blog, “Stuff White People Like”, should be “Stuff White People Like”.

Since last week, approximately 17 different white people have told me about “Stuff White People Like”. They rave, they are addicted, they think it’s hysterical that “other” white people are so lame. No one I know thinks – or at least will admit to thinking – that this blog depicts them.

Hmm.

They do know that this blog is satire, right? Dead on, really funny, well-written satire. But satire, nonetheless. That means that if you are white, you are American, you are middle to upper-middle class, and you are a hipster, urbanite, yuppie, mid-20s to mid-30s person, this blog is about YOU. Not the person who thinks they are cool just down the street who listens to bands you’ve never heard of, but you. You – who think that because you have non-white friends, you are cool. You – who are laughing at the “bike” craze entry, but grab your yoga mat and head out the door because you are late for Hatha 2.

Really, I think that this blog should be entitled “Stuff Rich, Navel-Gazing, White People Who Live in Urban Centers Like”, because this list doesn’t really pertain to poor, white people or people who live in Iowa. I should know because I’ve been a part of both groups of white people; I grew up trailer trash, and now I’m (a little resistantly) in the hip, urban class.

In that vein, I’m thinking about doing a piss-take blog called “Stuff Poor White People Like”. Maybe entry #1 will be “Fried Food”.

My daily fast is over, which has probably made me cranky, so I think that I’ll stop harping on about white people liking “Stuff White People Like”, and go to Church’s Fried Chicken.