The Null Device

Stuff German People Like

Ich Werde Ein Berliner is a Stuff White People Like-style blog only purporting to unmask the hidden rules of being a member of the "Elite German People" (the word "German" is used there in the way Christian Lander uses the word "White") who populate the hipper parts of Berlin, ostensibly for the benefit of the numerous auslanders moving to Berlin for its creativity, edginess and bohemianism. The blog presents a tour of the various hipster leks, arms races and balancing acts for demonstrating one's cultural bona fides as a Berliner (and that one is not one of the Wrong Types of Germans), subtly underscoring the contradictions and absurdities beneath their surface.

There are, for example, entries on personal transport (summary: two wheels good, four wheels bad), techno music, obsession with Japan China, the 10% of (mostly bourgeois professional) Germans who model themselves on Americans, café culture (one thing one can't argue with there) and the semiotics of soft drinks, audio-visual media (apparently not having an interest in it is considered by Berliners to be a sign of deep sociopathy), the precarious balancing act of Berliner irony and Berliners' relationship to other German cities (apparently Cologne is not so much a mecca of underground electronica as a boringly bourgeois provincial town inhabited by orange-tanned, Ed Hardy-attired "guidos"; Munich, meanwhile, exists solely so that Berliners can slag it off for its conservatism and boringness) and the inevitable ordeal of family Christmases ("One good rule of thumb is - the more artiste, urbane, and bohemian a German person appears, the more remote and redneck his family background will be. For example, all those cross-dressing, Ketamine-addicted, full-body tattooed gay skinhead minimal-techno deejays (so, roughly 20% of the population of Berlin), stem from (remote rural towns in south-western Germany).")

There are 2 comments on "Stuff German People Like":

Posted by: Johnston Tue May 18 13:05:27 2010

Hi, long time lurker here, thank you very much for the link to this awesomely funny blog. I know many people who are fascinated with Berlin and dream about moving there, and of course they are the exact same type of mock individualists and lazy pseudo-artists that are being made fun of in the "berliner" blog.

Posted by: Ominously Pseudonymously Sun Oct 24 11:11:24 2010

I'm late to the party but through the wonders of Google somehow stumbled upon this. I'd just like to thank you for mentioning this awesomely hilarious blog. Ever since Nathan Barley ended, I've been longing for someone to take over mocking the faux individualism and excentricity-by-the-numbers that you can find in East London, and apparently, Berlin. This is definitely the best written yet.