The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Today on Nerve's TV blog: Dance, Hipster, Dance! Plus: our latest NewsCrush — and why one army brat is breaking up with Army Wives.
When I first checked out StuffWhitePeopleLike.com — because everyone I knew was checking out StuffWhitePeopleLike.com, and recommending, repeatedly, that I check out StuffWhitePeopleLike.com — I couldn't stop thinking about an internet date I'd been on a few weeks after I first moved to New York.
The girl was from Queens, a short, pale, pretty thing with fierce black eyes and a gap between her front teeth. She took me to an old-school Italian restaurant that I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to find again. I got there by taxi. She showed up twenty minutes late via two subways, a bus, and a twenty-block stroll. The restaurant was called Angelino's. The owner — our waiter, her father — was named Angelino.
At first, it all seemed like a grand experience.
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Hadn't I moved to New York for this very authenticity? Here I was, on a date with a member of a faraway culture at a restaurant with red-and-white checked vinyl tablecloths and no Zagats listing. But something felt off.
When we compared the usual notes — the schools we went to, the things we did on weekends, our feelings for our deceased childhood pets — nothing matched up. "You're funny," she told me near the end of the date, her "you're" sounding remarkably like the outer-borough "yo-wa" you hear in the movies. But she didn't mean I made her laugh. She meant I made no sense. "Well," I said, feeling hopelessly bourgeois, "I guess you're pretty funny, too." I never saw this girl from Queens again.
I drink too much bottled water (#76). I wear overpriced vintage t-shirts (#84), loved studying abroad (#72) and stand completely still at concerts (#67). I'm a fan of Michel Gondry (#68), Apple products (#40) and Stephen Colbert (#35). I've threatened to move to Canada on more than one occasion (#75). And I don't mind that StuffWhitePeopleLike.com — a blog that lampoons the over-educated yuppies and hipsters who populate the nation's trendy urban centers and mixed-use development zones — pinpoints me with such eerie accuracy, assessing my predilections like a gifted psychic reader. The site is a fairly amusing send-up of the slightly embarrassing, clearly predictable culture I'm a part of.
But the fact that it also describes virtually my entire dating history — that really unnerves me. When I moved to New York, I imagined my dating repertoire would reflect the diversity of a Barack Obama rally (#8). But this doesn't happen, or at least, it didn't for me. I ended up dating exactly the people StuffWhitePeopleLike.com depicts: other white people who'd come to New York lusting after authenticity, ponying up their ample disposable income to purchase something that feels like "the real thing." People like me who moved here to drink from some mystical font of urban cultural capital, then just kept on dating within the tight-jean pool.
If you're one of these people, you can supposedly appreciate the irony (#50).
How many nights will I find myself at Whole Foods (#48) picking out produce for a romantic, organic (#6) dinner for two?
For instance, take another date I went on soon after arriving in New York, one far more representative of the date I would typically come to find myself on. We met at an Asian-fusion restaurant (#45). I ordered the vegan teriyaki (#32), she ordered the sushi (#42). We bonded over our bad memories of high school (#83), and compared the uselessness of our respective liberal-arts degrees (#47). She told me about her work at a non-profit (#12). I told her my reasons for not owning a TV (#28). We both agreed New York was the greatest city we knew (#26) because of the diversity (#7), the indie music (#41) and the architecture (#34).
It's not that I haven't dated captivating, unique girls within the Stuff White People Like cultural spectrum. It's just that there's a Groundhog Day sensation that comes with repeatedly dating people cut from the same American Apparel-purchased cloth. How many times will I be asked to a dinner party (#80) on the fourth date, to meet her friends? How many nights will I find myself at Whole Foods (#48) picking out produce for a romantic, organic (#6) dinner for two? How many Sunday mornings will be consumed pacing the sidewalks outside breakfast places (#36), waiting to indulge in another post-coital brunch?
