I, like any busy person, love lists. I love being able to flick through a news article or blog post, read a two-sentence introduction, and allow my eyes to flip quickly from bullet point to bullet point. I love numbered lists, where I can tell not only how far I am down the list, but how many more I have to go.
It’s a psychological thing. Anyone versed in business writing knows that it’s easier, quicker and simply more efficient to read lists and bullets than big long paragraphs. And nowadays, we’re all about reading short things, quickly (i.e. Twitter–140 characters, doesn’t get much shorter and quicker than that).
But I’ve just about reached my limit of end-of-the-year/decade/whatever top 10 lists. I just can’t handle it anymore! It seems like every where I’ve looked–starting December 1st and still ongoing–there’s another top 10 list for something. There’s lists of the top celebrities, top people on twitter, top books, top gadgets, top political scandals, top news stories, top movies, top albums… everybody and their brother has their top 10 list of [insert subject here] they want to share.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty too. Even today, I’ve tweeted at least one link to a top 10 list (Engadget’s wonderful Top 10 Gadgets of the Decade). But there just needs to be some kind of restraint here, it’s overwhelming!
I like how Time Magazine does it. They put ALL of their top 10 lists in one place, a neat little index for you to flip through, nice and organized and not too much to handle. But for things like Twitter, I feel like the service is just swamped with everyone’s lists for this and lists for that. It’s drowning out the content. The breaking news. The #FollowFridays (it seems I’m not the only one who almost forgot about that today–it seems totally absent from my feed, at least).
Thankfully, this only comes around once a year. And in a way, it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure, reading all these lists. But when it gets to the point where all media is just saturated with it–like now–and the real content seems to disappear, I feel like it’s time to step back and ask: do we really need all these lists? What do you think?
January 1, 2010 at 10:34 pm
I do believe that a Top 10 reasons why you are tired of Top 10 lists would have been quite hilarious…although a little hypocritical…but I completely feel your pain…I’m tired of them too =)
January 2, 2010 at 12:11 pm
I’m with you. Somehow the lists make me feel an obligation to expose myself to all top 10 items, and there are only so many hours in the day … so I’m starting to avoid them.