Stuff White People Like - Christian Lander [32]
77 Musical Comedy
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 instead of being serious, the song has funny lyrics. It’s not any more complicated than that, yet white people can’t get enough of it. Weird Al Yankovic, 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 just mix them together to create something that will entertain white people.
So how can you 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.
78 Multilingual Children
All white people want their children to speak another language. There are no exceptions. They dream about the children drifting between French and English as they bustle about the kitchen while they, as parents, 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 overpronouncing a few key words. This failure is not attributed to their lack of effort, of course, 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 United States, they would be living and working abroad for the United Nations or some other organization with 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 Lycée or Ecole Française. But the vast majority will abandon their dreams when they realize that they will someday need a second mortgage so their child can one day 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 considered expert-level white-person behavior to have the children speaking Asian or 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.
79 Modern Furniture
When white people envision their dream home, a key part of the fantasy involves at least one piece of furniture designed by a famous architect from the ’30s.
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. 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 designer’s 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