According to Christian Lander, the idea behind his popular blog "Stuff White People Like" began when a "shamelessly racist" friend advised him not to trust white people that don't watch The Wire.
Instead of watching the HBO series, Lander said, these white people were spending their time doing such white things as going to yoga, receiving therapy and getting divorced.
This anecdote set the tone for Lander's talk last night at the Penn Bookstore. Arriving an hour and ten minutes late, the infamous author still managed to draw a large crowd of about 80 people.
Lander's tardiness, which was due to a flight delay from Columbus, Ohio, meant that he did not read selections from his book as he informed the audience he usually would. Instead, he discussed his history as a blogger.
Initially garnering hits only among Lander's close friends, the blog started on January 18 and generated only about 25 views per day. After just one week, however, Lander described how the blog accrued 1000 hits in one day.
Lander's excitement over his blog's sudden apparent popularity prompted him to publish his work on a private host site, where it exploded to hundreds of thousands of hits in one day, effectively crashing the low-bandwidth, private site.
Forced to take his material back to its original site on WordPress, an incredulous Lander watched the hyper-exponential growth of his blog peak at 800,000 hits before being contacted by literary agents eager to buy his material in late February last year.
However, soon afterwards Lander was aggressively contacted by four of the five Hollywood talent agencies. He eventually signed with William Morris.
The rocketing trajectory of the project, which began with an obscure blog and crested in July with a New York Times bestselling book has landed the unassuming Lander with a signing advance of $300,000 and a guest spot on The Conan O'Brien show alongside Tim Gunn and Jerry O'Connell.
Lander, a Toronto native and self-described "white guy," was keen to make the point that his writing is not an indictment of skin color, but rather a commentary on well-educated, liberal, affluent denizens of North America.
