Celebrating the dawn of a new literary art form. Or not.
1. Okay, lists, right…so first. I’m never confused about where to start saying, “Oh, yeah! I totally get that!”
When I read articles that have, like, lots of paragraphs. I never know when its my turn to talk. That can be kind of a bummer, so sometimes I just scan the first sentences of each paragraph and say stuff about that.
2. I feel like I finally understand why math matters.
When I’m reading an article that’s a list, I know how far I am from the end. So, if I’m reading number three in a list of ten, I can text my friend Stacy and ask about lunch.
3. If I get a phone call, I can remember where I am in the article by holding up the right number of fingers.
Once, I was reading Moby Dick and I got a phone call and by the time the fucking call was done, I had to start the whole goddamn book over. Fuck!
4. My boss is a total asshole.
5. When I’m halfway done with the list I can Twitterize it and post it to my Facebook page.
Lists are great because each entry in the list is a good way to guess what the rest is going to say. So I can pretty much guess the whole rest of it and post it to Facebook.
6. Reading lists improves my self esteem.
When I read articles that are lists, they become more popular and start climbing up the list of popular lists. This is a huge boost to my self esteem because I’m part of that social media thingee.
7. Dave Letterman taught me this art form.
I read lists because they remind me of Dave Letterman. So even if they’re not funny, I can be Dave doing that WTF? face and I remember what its like watching Dave on TV.
8. If number eight is stupid, I know the whole thing is almost over.
Meh.
9. Reading lists gives me a feeling of accomplishment.
Reading lists make me feel like I’ve finally completed something. I’m not just some asshole who can’t focus, puts things off forever and just avoids stuff. Mostly.
10. Lists are deeply human and invoke the inevitability of death.
Sometimes when I’m getting to the end of the list, I imagine the list is like the universe winding down to some final cosmic silence of darkness and death. I even feel my heart slowing down. Like my blood is slowing down. Dear God, I’m so fucking scared. The darkness… it….
Image of Top 10 courtesy of Shutterstock.
I remember a test like this at school which at number 10 said ingore all the previous questions in the list.. but I think that was disciplining us to read them! 🙂
…must be a generational thing.
The chaos and anarchy that reign with the absence of lists. Oh, the humanity? Zombies are second only to the end I the world that starts with a list free society.
Lists provide those byte sized chunks of digestible info. Cricket inducing posts calm my soul. There appears to be no in between.
Top 10 ways become an advocate for lists! Now THAT’LL be a great post.
Jason
This is hilarious and very true.
Sadly, I find that, on my own web site, “list” type articles bring in tons of hits and comments while more in-depth articles are typically met with *crickets*. It’s annoying but it seems that lists are what people want, for whatever reason.
Thanks Jill,
Yep. You gotta love those crickets.
Regarding #7, you didn’t pay enough attention to Mr. Letterman. Otherwise you would’ve known that the lists starts at number 10 and ends with number 1.
“Doh!” (Slaps forehead.)
Great response! 🙂
This is a great list. If I made a list of the best list of all time this list would definitely be number 1.
Haha, Shawn!!
You should make a list of the best lists of all time. I’d publish it.
Thank you so much for writing this! List articles are the lazy writing of authors who are more obsessed with attention or a retweet than saying something meaningful. And half the time it’s bullshit. Even better, this list is actually funny.
hahahah this is awesome. i totally read every one of these, too, except i started reading every fourth or fifth word from #6 to whatever the last one was.
So true…and sad.
11. It makes commenting so much easier. Just refer to the number you want to comment on. 🙂
Now, see, that is funny.