- They’re lazy. Formatting a blog post as a list is a really cheap way organize it. It spares the author from having to actually put their thoughts together in a logical, coherent manner because the list automatically imposes an organizational structure on the post. You don’t have to worry about making one idea flow smoothly into the next because you can just throw down the next number as abruptly as you want.
- No intro or conclusion. You can get away without these basic elements of writing your high school English teacher wouldn’t shut up about. You don’t have to write an introduction because you just put #1, and you don’t have to write a conclusion because you can just stop writing after the last number. Usually you go for 10, but if you run out of ideas you can always have a “top 6″ list.
- They’re an excuse for more ads. Most websites will take a top 10 list with about 200 words of actual content and then split it across 10 different pages just to force you to click through them all so they can show you more ads. If you’re really lucky, there’ll be a “view all” or a “print” link you can use to spare yourself the irritation.
- They’re totally arbitrary. Are these really the top 10 reasons lists suck? I’m sure you could think of some others, and they might be even better (worse?). There’s no objective standard for judging the “top (or bottom) X of Y”, so it’s kind of a stupid claim to make.
- They’re an excuse to get laughs off other people’s content. Yes, yes, I know that’s sort of the point of the internet in general, and blogs in particular. However, in my experience, list-format comedy sites are especially vulnerable to the Family Guy-brand of “Remember X funny movie? We saw it too!!!” humor.
- They build false suspense. This is especially true of “countdown” style lists, which usually ask at the outset, “Which band/movie/potato/athlete/game/celebrity will be number one!??!” Ooh, gee, I really can’t wait to find out which specific example of some general category some website chose to make you click the most to read about. See #4 above.
- The comments are never interesting. Every comment section on a list will invariable devolve into a big, pointless argument about the elements which were omitted from the list but should’ve been included, and the order of the elements that were included. Commenters of the world: quit complaining and write your own list. It’s really not hard. (This list was ordered by random number generator).
- They rarely tell you something new. Related to #5, lists on websites skew heavily toward referencing things their readers are likely to already have heard of. Video game sites will include mainstream games everyone has played; ditto movie sites; music sites are a minor exception to this rule. Since the number of people who listen to a band is inversely proportional to how cool that band is, a top 10 list on a music site will usually include one or two bands nobody has heard of, just to prove the site’s writers are still cooler than its readers.
- They’re written for people with ADD. Another charge that could be leveled at the internet in general, but list-writers are especially guilty of breaking down everything into bite-sized three-sentence bits. If you’re the kind of person who can’t stand ideas or jokes that require more than a paragraph of development, you’ll feel right at home reading lists on the internet.
- People frequently try to be ironic by complaining about lists in list format. And somewhat more rarely go for the double-ironic meta-joke by pointing this fact out in their list.
The top 10 reasons lists on websites suck
September 12th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Shameless link-bait
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You’re a dork.
Dork is such a clever, novel word.
What can I say? I’m a traditionalist.