The blog Stuff White People Like makes me hate what I like.  I like Asian fusion food and Arrested Development. I need coffee and plenty of people in lots of non-white places (China? India?) drink more tea than I do.  It’s annoying and far too common to classify a bunch of things that a group of people like because they’re white or gay or left-handed or still sleep with a stuffed animal named Ronald.  Sometimes you like camping (#128 on the White People list) because you like pinecones (Stuff People Who Like Pinecones Like?) or sea salt (#119) because it really does make your fries taste better.  

And then there’s some stuff that really, really deserves to land on a list of Stuff White People Like because it’s stupid.  No offense to Ernest Hemingway or {insert canon writer} who needed a moleskin notebook (#122) to keep the booze and sea water off of his writing, said notebook isn’t going to make you, said White Person, into Ernest Hemingway.  

I am more passionate on this topic than I thought! But that just must be my White Person-ness. Regardless, some of the items on the Stuff White People Like are really very nice things and I will tell you why. I will also deliver an urgent plea for White People to stop liking some of the things that caused Christian Lander to write Stuff White People Like in the first place. 

1.) Stop liking moustaches! Have you noticed that these are everywhere these days? There is the hipster variety in a neat little upper-lip covering or the variety that hangs down onto the wearer’s collar in thin curls.  And there is also the non-hair variety. Moustaches come on mugs and stickers you can paste onto your upper lip, little party favor sticks and ice cube trays.  Moustaches signal virility, guys and gals.  Do you really want to be that easy? 

2.) Bacon is made from pigs, not plastic. Bacon is delicious and I highly recommend it in better quality cuts than the Oscar Mayer variety. But bacon mints are disgusting, bacon wallets look like shit and bacon watches, what the hell?  Eat bacon, people, don’t make a shrine to it in the back of your closet.  It makes a mockery out of a very real love: woman and her meat products.   

3.) Yoga is a lifestyle, not just a workout.  You’re not going to be told that your thighs look thunderous, your underarms need toning or that the only six-pack in your apartment is the pack of brewskis you bought for dinner.  Give it a rest, SWPL, yoga is going to be around long after White People have gone the way of the dodo.  

4.) Farmers’ markets. Yes, please. Whatever, SWPL. 

5.) Counterculture festivals. I don’t really understand why people who are so comfortable with cubicles for every other day of their lives are so enticed by painting their bodies in fake blood and running around like zombies, but that’s what happened in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood this weekend.  Beats me, White People, just wipe the paint off before your boss asks you why you’re so pasty.  

6.) Tight clothes. Not so, so many tight, TIGHT things on one single body, White People. 

7.) Denying you are hipsters. This is a classic every hipster says about every other hipster. But maybe “hipsters” are tired of second-guessing every piece of clothing they buy, every political statement they make and every morsel of food they put into their mouths because someone will certainly say “you are such a hipster!” Sometimes a cross-stitched whale onto a herringbone sweater is simply that, a cross-stitched whale on a herringbone sweater.