Top 5 Reasons to Hate Top 5 Lists

The modern day written entertainment usually doesn’t come from newspapers, long form books or writing, or even tabloids anymore. The style of writing that has become the most responsible for informing readers is, “Top 5/10 lists.” Otherwise known as some to be the “literal cancer and garbage of the internet.” As is tradition, I’ve taken it upon myself that I must play my hand in creating a “top” list of my own. Yes, this is bashing on a bunch of the current and future members of the Johnny Green staff, but I feel there always needs to be a weight or counter balance to anything.

As a quick disclaimer, I’m pretty sure everyone and their mother has watched or enjoyed these lists (including myself). It’s just fun to poke at yourself and society sometimes without heartbreaking tragedy or nonsense.

Here are the top 5 reasons why these lists shouldn’t exist:

5. Lack of Subsistence or Creativity

In all admittance, no one particularly likes to read anything long form. Even if it’s one-hit and off sorta thing where it’s a quick read, my attention span is becoming more on the ADHD levels. And more than likely yours are being corrupted by how fast modern media is moving today with the level of basic stimulation required.

Besides, most top style lists are usually created somewhere and then vomited out onto places like Buzzfeed where the bastardization of media takes place. Taking news or knowledge and turning it into palatable pieces. Which would normally be a good thing, except when it’s lacking in practically anything.

Example; upon inspecting Buzzfeed I came across something called “17 Annoying things Foreigners need to get right about India.” I can understand why some might be upset that there might be some sort of cultural offensiveness or anything like that. All that can be seen in the list is small phrases without any explanation of really why they’re wrong or examples. And seemingly meaningless gifs. If you take a stroll through any sort of website that has poorly done top lists, you’ll see what I mean.

4. The Entirety of the Story Isn’t Told

Sadly, most of the time, when a small list of stories is being presented, there’s usually wrong or non-factually sound information, they’ll mess up names or dates. Certain important details that are needed to paint the full reality are seemingly left out. Anything political on websites that are list-based are usually guilty of this sin.

3. Arbitrary Ordering

There’s honestly no reason for anything to be ordered, when something is so casually plucked out to create a list of 5,10, even up to a 100. Numbers become less and less meaningful when anything is rated. This also ties in with the previous point of lack of information. When someone is listing, “top 10 worst crimes,” it’s completely opinionated, and there is no top 10 worst crimes. All crimes committed against the public are bad, and there cannot be a definitive worse one.

Even if you disagree with this point, that’s fine. I’ll bring up the point of it being completely based off of opinion. If someone made a “top 10 best foods,” clearly it’s based off of what they prefer instead of anything definitive.

2. Little Information Ascertained

No one really learns anything truly valuable out of a top list. Even though value is subjective, did you take anything you read off a top list to heart? Didn’t think so. So when someone posts “25 Pictures that Proves Matthew Gray Gubler is a Real Man.” There’s just random pictures of the guy from Criminal Minds doing random things and someone trying to prove why he’s a real man. How does this picture even remotely prove that he’s a “Christmas legend?” All the poor man is doing is wearing a festive sweater and measuring a Christmas tree.

1. Modern Media

Fellow journalists (if I can even call myself one), content creators, and even the consumer of such media is all to blame for it. Even people like you and I. We as a people don’t want to take the time to read long form, we don’t want to sit around and twiddle our fingers over something long. We want all of our information to be fed to us rapidly and in an entertaining way. The lists are very compact, easily readable and very heavily skimmed.

You could even break it down to science. With the “Serial Position Effect,” and how digits such as 5 or 10 are more appealing than any other number and attract your attention more than other things do, depending on relation to yourself and familiarity. In addition, calling back memories in list form as primary memories, but way more importantly, they generate way more traffic than most any other things do on websites. If you see 10 pictures of puppies versus a Dutch journalist that was killed by ISIS in Libya, you best be sure that the recently deceased Jeroen Oerlemans is going to have to wait until I gawk over those puppies.

Then again, picking on this style of writing is similar taking candy from a baby, shooting fish in a barrel, or bashing on Fox News for having a fake former CIA expert and advisor.