We might be clones

There’s this website called Stuff White People Like (check it out if you want: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com), and being a white guy, I figured it would help me decide what I might like. In fact, it does list many of the things I actually like.

Here are some of them: #133 The World Cup, #23 Microbreweries, #123 Mad Men, #1 Coffee, #109The Onion, #96 New Balance Shoes, #86 Shorts, #2 Religions their parents don’t belong to, #83 Bad Memories of High School, #81 Graduate School, #35 The Daily Show/Colbert Report, #80 The Idea of Soccer, #134 The TED Conference, #50 Irony, #44 Public Radio, #40 Apple Products, #67 Standing Still at Concerts, #30 Wrigley Field, #28 Not having a TV, and #82 Hating Corporations.

And although I very well might write future blogs on each one of these topics, today’s blog is going to focus on #134 The TED Conference and #82 Hating Corporations.

Now, I like TED talks. Sadly, I might like TED talks for the reasons Stuff White People Like suggests.

One of the easiest ways to create something that white people will like is to create something that will allow them to feel smart but doesn’t require a large amount of work, time, or effort. There is, however, a catch. Whatever it is that you create cannot be a shortcut. You see white people like the idea of getting smarter quickly, but they don’t like the idea of people thinking that they are lazy.

Due to the broad audience watching the talks, TED speakers generally take very complex ideas and boil them down into a simple engaging presentation. So when a white person finds out that you have a PhD and attempts to engage you in a conversation about String Theory, you should know that all of their understanding comes from a twenty-minute talk they listened to while running on a treadmill. You should also be aware that the average white person considers their knowledge on the subject to be on par or superior to yours. 

But regardless of this, the other day I was running on my treadmill and watching Eli Pariser’s TED Talk called, Beware online "filter bubbles." In this discussion he informs us that search engines like Google are now programmed to filter search results in such a way that the results I get will likely not be the same results you get. The search engine calculates everything it can learn about who the searcher is and then selects the results that it concludes would be most in line with the type of person you are. Sounds scary right? Well I thought so, and for a few days after learning this I told people I ran into about the Big Brother scenario. They too were disturbed. 

But then I started to think about it. We give out identifying characteristics about ourselves constantly. We let the grocer keep track of everything we buy when we give them our value card to swipe. We let the hardware store know about our home improvement projects by offering them are ACE Rewards cards. In fact, I have so many rewards cards that I don’t even know where half of them are. But that’s not a problem, because the cashiers can easily look up my reward number and thus continue compiling data of my consumer tendencies. In exchange for all this data, I get some discounted gas or 10% off coupons in the mail. Seems like a deal. I mean now I even buy Lowe’s gift cards at the grocery to get the rewards points and then go to Lowe’s and use the gift card to get the stuff I was going to buy anyway. Oh yeah, I also buy everything with my credit card, so I can get the points, but also, so my credit card issuer can collect data of everything I ever purchase. 

So Big Brother has sucked us in; we are on the hamster wheel and happy to run. Well I guess I am. What’s wrong with Amazon knowing the books I like to buy and then suggesting others I might also like? What’s wrong with the local grocery store knowing what items I like and making sure they stock them and items that, based on previous purchases, I might also like? What’s wrong with a computer guessing what web sites I might like to visit? It seems pretty convenient to me.

Are we really that concerned about our almighty privacy? Nothing about us it all that private. When we can give up the idea of American individualism, we might see the benefits of corporations knowing stuff about us. I mean we all pretty much buy the same stuff anyway, we just don’t like to think that much about how the shirt I am wearing was mass produced and is hanging in ten thousand closets right now. I’m not really a unique consumer; I just like to think I am. I would even argue that most of what we are is what we have been taught to be. Do I really naturally and innately like white, cotton, button shirts more than my neighbor? So maybe Stuff White People Like should add two entries: 

I like thinking that I am a private individual while still receiving all the benefits of not being one.

I like the idea of making fun of what I like by listing stuff white people like. 

Archiving

One of the reasons I started a blog was to gather together the various stories and poems I have written over the past twenty or so years. Some of these are so old that I am not even sure I can read the files anymore, but I’ll try my best to dig everything out from the grave. With that said, however, here is a recent poem that I wrote during a visit to the Columbus Museum of Art. It is a free-for-all spilling of spontaneous prose in response to this three panel modern piece by Robert Bechtle called ‘61 Pontiac. He painted it between 1968–69 using oil on canvas. Here’s what it looks like: 

So here is what I wrote about it: 

american bald corduroy 

Response to Bechtle's ’61 Pontiac 

all-american family / intellectual serious matter-of-fact dad does not care for communists or poetry / button-down short-sleeve / cigarette-pack pocket / Spanish-rice dinners with whole white milk / proper undershirt / self-aware nurturing mom in bangs and sandals / sews just a bit and likes Gunsmoke and Roy Orbison / a skirt and long-sleeve sweater / modern / liberated / cautiously experimental / wants to look together, successful, perfect. 

all-american family / and maybe they are / maybe he does wrestle with the boy and play peek-a-boo with the girl / belly-laugh when junior pretends to read the New York Times /  believes he is lucky to sip Maxwell House on Sunday mornings while he and she do the crossword and sometimes make love / thinks his new ’61 Pontiac station wagon is exactly what his family needs / maybe she is perfect / not pretending at all / maybe she was the toddler in her mother’s arms in front of the black ’42 Olds with her US Army father / maybe she knew even then about perfect all-american families and patriotism and gratitude and grace / maybe he works with a black guy and chooses not to bowl with free-masons and bookies / maybe together and often they piously bow their heads and recite the lord’s prayer and have even seriously considered becoming leaders of their church’s youth group / maybe he inherently knew about kicking the tires before buying / maybe the tow-headed boy will grow into a football-star and marry the cheerleader and have two beautiful white-kids and no miscarriages or lumps / maybe they will stand in front of an red ’84 Chevy and be the all-american family /  maybe the baby will become the first american astronaut and marry a culturally sensitive California wine maker.

or maybe the way the father stands ever so slightly on his heels reveals that he is not really leaning in / that he actually is thinking lustfully about Joyce who works in the deli / that he wrestles daily with angst and ennui / that behind the beard is skin scarred with anger and regret / maybe the mother’s wide foundational-stance is hinting that she is trying not to fall over in tears swallowed by stained-laundry and bacon-grease / will he suffer a stroke in ten years and spend the remainder of his life in a hospital-bed next to the living-room window with slurred speech / will she start drinking too much gin and resort to eating TV dinners in a thin housedress and chain smoking filtered-cigarettes / will the all-american boy drive this ’61 Pontiac in ’74 (then a rusty junker), listen to Jim Morrison on an eight-track and pick up a hitch-hiker who will offer to do him for a few bucks and some weed / will the baby eventually drop-out of Ohio State, marry an abusive engineer, hide her black eye behind gigantic sunglasses, have a hyperactive child

for now though, this all-american family will remain forever still-lifed into this painting and allow all who sit on this bench and glance at their bliss to know exactly where we have gone wrong