I now have a new goal in my pseudo-internet-life — to somehow get my picture into the new addictive blog, Brown People. What is this “Brown People Blog”? Why it is almost the best form of wasting a Friday work day ever (second only to creating 55Friday Fictions.)
random photos of brown people.(thats it. that’s the concept.)
How you use it up to you. . .as a reminder that different brown people are doing their thing, use it as detox from reading 17 magazine, use it to find ideas for a haircut, to remind yourself you’re not an invisible freak, to procrastinate on your postcolonial studies paper…whatever you please.)(this is of course not one of those stupid rating things though.). [link]
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p>The bloggers on this site are anonymously fabulous in their selections of brownz ranging from the SM (in)famous Kal and Parminder all the way to the non-famous brown faces on flickr. Our very own ANNA has even made an appearance to the site. I liken this site much to a desi version of the high school yearbook — you never quite know how to get your picture in the yearbook, but you know it’s significant to your popularity when your photo is in it.
Come on, it’s a Friday. Check out the site. They source all of the pictures so it has a real potential to suck you into hours of brownz web surfing. To quote Ismat, how are you going to use this site?
yeah i learned some new things from this photojournal. like, i had no idea jonathan rhys meyers dated a brown woman. 🙂
that being said, did anyone seem to notice that most of the photos seemed to be of hipsters/artists/musicians? not that there’s anything wrong with that, i’m just making an observation.
Crimony, that site is addictive! Are you trying to get us all fired?? 😉
A great find. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah I noticed that too. It’s like we are a collective statue of Aphrodite Kallipygos gazing at our own beautiful and shapely perfect naked bottom.
I’m going to pound the streets and photograph some ugly as hell brown people and upload this weekend. Toothless, cross eyed, obese men who work in Indian grovery stores with haldi stains on their face, stuff like that.
taz, thanks for using the term brownz.
I noticed that, and it’s not surprising. Brown people, myself included, get way too excited when there is a brown presence in the popular mainstream. Likewise, unknown hipsters/artists/musicians tend to crave attention, I know a little about this as well, thus you get the other half of the coin.
I’m on there too!!!!! (3 pics below ANNA)
The artists/musicians all seem to stem from the same clique of EthnoTechno images. If it’s anything like a yearbook, then you can expect the popular people to post their gorgeous images.
Thank god, there were ONLY 140 entries. That was close, phew!
Taz, who are you kidding, homie? You’re a geek like the rest of us 🙂
I hesitate to use “brownz” because we’re not the only browns (and also because it is zimbly delightful to get Razib frustrated 😛 ), but I checked out that foto-blog thing, and dayum! brown is so hawt I can hardly stand it!
I dunno if I agree the posts are all “hipster/artist/musicians” – I think they are catering to photos of browns in the N. American diaspora, and those that fit into the 18-40 age range. I mean, I see ABDs, FOBs, AILFs, actresses/actors, people in court, sports folks, protesting folks, bloggers, activists….
Or maybe it’s just cuz here in Los Angeles, the definition of hipster/artist/musicians is so narrowly defined it would never include the likes of science geeks, phDs, Arundhati Roy, lawyers, or University of Iowa staff councils. In LA hipster would mean you are working on a script on the side…
The dude in the 2nd pic needs to get his eyebrows waxed. There’s 3 birds, a spider and a couple of hens in there.
Shruti,
I’m not just a geek- I’m a geeky nerd. I full on admit it.
And as much as I don’t like the term “brownz” too- (perpetuating the American ideas of racializtion and myth of race and not supporting ideas of ethnicity) well, it is a blog called “Brown People…” It was appropo.
Long Live Brownz. I wonder who’s ass we have to kiss to make it on the site…
I will not rest until yeti is bouncing around on that site.
As usual, wikipedia to the rescue… Hipster. I guess even ‘Hipsters’ have a history.
Taz, do you know how they select the pics?
How does that work? Who puts the pictures on there? I loved it, so many different brownz. My fav was the gaggle of old ladies in saris buried some 80 entries deep.
Ok, I just read the rest of the comments…
meow.
meow.
The beauty of this blog and those who read it, my dear, is that it becomes apparent that you are one of many.
Hail Brown!!!! Lord knows I’m addicted to this site already!! Damn you Sepia.
ah, nothing like rolling into work at 2 pm, hungover and red-eyed, and then wasting the rest of the day checking out another sweet time wasting sight brought to my attention my sepia.
god bless you.
Tony kanal made the sight, sweet.
Not to hijack the brownness or anything, but in the general spirit of internet creativityness ,has anyone checked out geriatric27 on Youtube? Is he for real? The New Yorker seemed to believe so….
Too bad he didn’t post one of my shots of you!
Dude he’s brilliant. I LOVE him. And I have no reason to believe he is not. I dought it’s something like Lonelygirl15.
“Dude he’s brilliant. I LOVE him. And I have no reason to believe he is not. I dought it’s something like Lonelygirl15.”
you mean he isn’t a college student out to make some $$$ while they aren’t partying???
he is a student , for sure ….check it out for yourself
you should put your site back up then silly 😛 and when am I getting that CD????
Who is the lady wearing a pink ghaghra and sitting on floor with a cigarette in her hand?. Is she someone famous? Her pic is posted on 10 October 2006 @ 03:53 pm in 2nd page.
Karan: If you notice, every photograph has a below it a “(*)” with a link to the site from which the picture was obtained. You can find out all about the lady in pink there. Let the stalking begin ! 🙂
oooooh, bring on the random brown people.
Okay, my favorites:
This woman is the coolest:
And I’ve got to get my hands on this version of the Make Poverty History shirt. And add Talvin Singh to the enjoyablitiy factor!
Overall fave is the girl with the blue hair with her mom in the coordinating blue sari. cute.
And love the little (*)‘s…they’re like perfect little morsels of procrastination between two parentheses s of temptation.
Sima – thanks for the link to the Women Without Borders story. I’m going to check out the documentary on the swim project.
Some of the (*) don’t have explanations of why the pictures were posted or who those people are. I’m not sure I understand how one makes it to the site or the significance of it…
I think to get on the site the pre-recs are: be brown and/or hot and/or cool. And then every once in a while someone not hot to balance things out. But yeah, thats a pretty “lookist” presentation they got going.
It reminds of a guy who told me once “I know you South Asians have really high standards of looks”. I honestly had no idea where that came from, a group of 1 billion people with “high standards” of looks seems really unrealistic and kind of vain. But if you’ve been to Desi Progressive events, its usually a grouping of hot people, and honestly, the hotter you are, the more likely you are to be in leadership positions.
Uh oh, yeah I went there.
Peace and love
Btw thats not directed at anyone in particular as I know no one on this site, but if Desi Progressives generally are going to do good for the desi community, this lookism issue should be at least “looked” at in a serious way
but its an asthetic forum, its pictures of cute brown people. its interesting pictures to look at, and I think its actually a departure from the stick straight hair LV purse desis I see on campus (and I’ve been known to be one of these girls from time to time) and also a departure from the dominant Bollywood/Asian Brige Magazine asthetic.
I kinda dig this page for what it is (which is quite a simple unfussy concept)…hand selected images of diaspora browness. Mostly people my age, and its interesting to browse through.
If the bloggers were to say they were trying to capture a representattive sample of browness, then that would be a different story.
On the seperate issue of lookism in progessive circles (desi or otherwise), I don’t think its about coming into the world being conventionally gorgeous, but working what you got to celebrate your hotness.