Christian Lander delivered the keynote address yesterday at the second annual BASiC Ampersand Conference. Lander, who graduated from McGill in 2001, is the founder of the popular blog Stuff White People Like, which netted him a publishing deal two years ago. During his address, Lander talked about his own experiences being creative in the digital age and how to excel in this new environment. The Tribune sat down with Lander before his talk to discuss his experiences at McGill and how he managed to transition from blogger to author.
Were you excited to come back to McGill?The second I was told that there was interest to bring me back, I was just like, “Are you serious? Really?” I couldn’t wait to go back [to McGill]. This was something that I always thought would be amazing to happen. I mean, I wasn’t a really popular dude at McGill when I was here. I didn’t really tear up the campus. So, I was really, really excited to come back. I also wanted to come back to Montreal with my wife. I needed bagels. I was dying.
You worked at the Tribune for several years. Do you think your experiences at the paper helped you to get where you are now?Well, yeah. The Tribune journalism program – which is, you take five classes and you work on the paper – is pretty intense. The amount of time you spend writing and editing and reading and going through that whole process is absolutely helpful. It was huge to go through all that. For me, trying to make it as a freelance writer, I came out with a portfolio – an actual printed portfolio you can take with you.
Your blog, Stuff White People Like, has become very successful and very popular. When you started it did you ever thing it would become this big?No. I like to use the analogy of a lottery ticket. When you buy a lottery ticket, you’re thinking, “I know I’m not going to win, but wouldn’t it be nice if…” There wasn’t even a “wouldn’t it be nice if” in the back of my head. It was really just to make my friends laugh. That’s all I thought it was going to be.
Was there a point when writing in the blog when it went from “making my friends laugh” to “making everyone out there laugh?”I think the moment it set in was when I would meet people for the first time and I would tell them about the blog, and they had already heard of it. That was a really odd experience. It’s hard to say when that exact moment hit, because every time something really positive or big happened, it felt like, “That was it. This is awesome, [but it’s] never going to get any bigger than this.” But it kept getting bigger.
Your blog is pretty accessible. Do you think that the broadness of the topic helped make it more accessible and more popular?Yeah, of course. Even when celebrities, who are already famous, write blogs about what they did today, people still don’t read them. I mean, I unfollowed Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. I don’t care about his dumb-assed kabala meetings, and he’s famous. [Stuff White People Like] doesn’t try to do a million things. It does just one thing well, and that’s it.
You seem to have come along at quite a good time for people trying to be funny on the Internet and capitalize on that. Do you think that’s a big part of your success?Absolutely. Without a doubt. Luck is such a huge, huge, huge part of it. It started up right as Obama stuff was taking off and these white people were getting all excited again because Bush was finally going to end. I don’t know how all of the things mashed up like that. I was really, really lucky that it did and that was it.
What’s next for you?The publishers would definitely like to do a second “Stuff White People Like” book: “More Stuff White People Like.” The only reason I’m a little resistant to that is I’m not sure I can keep the quality up, because you can get a little burned out writing about white people. It’s the same thing TV shows go through with jumping the shark. One of the things that I’ve wanted to be for a long time is a comedy writer in Los Angeles for television and things like that. I think that’s something I would like to do next more than anything else.
