Art and Culture # 62
Why I Hate Listicles!
-For the Uncensored!
The constant question that comes to mind is: Why don’t I like listicles. It’s often associated with butt cancerous ideas, as an example, “Best villains of the Yu-gi-yoh franchise,” when by all rights, it doesn’t help convince anyone who hasn’t read Yu-gi-Yoh of its true value. But alienate the newcomer. It also decreases the value of long sentences. It creates this stigma of “readers are stupid and they shouldn’t be taken seriously.”
In a 2013 New Yorker article, Maria Konnikova describes in “A list of Reasons why our Brain Loves List”, “The article-as-numbered-list has several features that make it inherently captivating: the headline catches our eye in a stream of content; it positions its subject within a preexisting category and classification system, like “talented animals”; it spatially organizes the information; and it promises a story that’s finite, whose length has been quantified upfront. Together, these create an easy reading experience, in which the mental heavy lifting of conceptualization, categorization, and analysis is completed well in advance of actual consumption—a bit like sipping green juice instead of munching on a bundle of kale.”[i] Ms. Konnikova goes onto ascribe the reason with “List-style headlines often provide that optimal balance of information and ambivalence, intriguing us just enough to click, on the chance that we’ll come across something particularly relevant or exciting.”
I don’t prescribe to this nonsense above. It’s more insulting that with each short article, like a listicle, it’s only used to dumb down the content and the range a writer has earned to understand the subject, or topic at hand. It’s hard to create a listicle about quantum theory, because there’s so much to break down. This appears in Screen Rant and CBR.com, or even Gawker, a now defunct hit piece magazine that told truth and lies just enough for people to click and get their attention. These publications to me have this generalization of the audience. A big Hollywood type of idea that “the audience is horrible” which I don’t think so.
I amazed an English teacher when I said, “I think I trust the reader too much,” and she said, “Maybe you shouldn’t.” That’s an odd idea, to me. It’s an elitist view of art and culture, and perpetuates the stigma of low expectations. The phrase “bigotry of low expectations” is what creates elitism in every category of business and life. To understand this is like knowing the ultimate dilemma. Nothing is certain. Trying to create a list for someone is not going to garner the same results, and will probably be forgotten after the article is finished. According to an October 29th, 2021 Taylor & Francis online, by Jason Freeman (a Bringham Young Graduate), Christen Buckley (Pennsylvania State University), and Yitang Chai (also a Penn State University graduate), “Regarding listicle type, it was found that clickable listicles led to more perceived control, which in turn made people more likely to focus on pictures when they process information. Listicle type was also found to influence one's memory.”[ii] So if images are the primary mode of concern, then what good are words?
Anna Colibri, of Colibri.com, claims, on August 25th, 2015, “The first listicles featured the likes of the Ten Commandments, and in modern history, important documents such as the U.S. Constitution.”[iii] While this is paraphrased nonsense created to advance listicles, it doesn’t fit the Taylor and Francis online article, regarding what the information has to prove. Regarding context, she claims it’s a “table of contents” but this is not proof that listicles have any real function other than to waste our precious time with short fused brainlet thinking.
To the arts, and my are of expertise, brevity in a novel can often help it create condensed, but satisfying, or unsatisfying result. Depending on who you talk to, and context given in the argument. It’s hard to grasp, but there’s a complaint made against long and short work. It’s simple: Long works demand a lot of attention and sometimes can take longer than people expect. Short works offer a quick dose of words, almost in an article like format, but with the added benefit of character and an abbreviated plot. It’s not easy to do either one. A short and a long work of fiction.
Listicles offer no point of value for me, as a writer, because sometimes, two or three sentences doesn’t create this long lasting appeal or a personality that people can identify with. I get the idea of just having the basic facts, but how many listicles of “10 best Ryan Phillipe quotes” can you read until you start disregarding the value of the person behind the article.
A personality that actually cares about what they are writing. Hell, if you do it, and you enjoy writing listicles, fine, I understand that and praise you, child. But a dumbing down of information also leads to one final problem. A lack of retaining information over a long period of time.
Retaining and remembering information is tough to the Attention Deficit generation, like a millennial as myself and others. When articles and podcasts are instantaneous, it doesn’t create a long lasting value who takes his time, crafting every word of the article. To know that a personality is there and I welcome you at all times. Listicles don’t offer that, and I understand that’s what a listicle is. But is the listicle the main mode of communication. No, like the aforementioned, podcasts and articles offer context and personality. Not information.
Books will always retain character, wit, intelligence, and structure that creates empathy as words together, make more sense with repetition., Blindly believing a story on its first read is how readers only want the immediate takeaway, and not giving into cadence or story driven plots. Unlike what Ms. Colibri admires about tables of contents, I don’t remember Lord of the Rings for its tables of content page. And images are fine if you’re reading a comic book or graphic novel. But listicles don’t serve a story telling basis, or growth in personality.
As a believer and writer of books, this does present some consequences. What will happen to the next generation of readers? They have been online for a long time now, including myself. But a book, with the smell of its pages, creates a contact high in the nostrils. Something I will remember up until my death. And even beyond.
And I hope that one day people can read my work and smell the fresh pages its printed on, when I’m gone.
[i] https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/a-list-of-reasons-why-our-brains-love-lists.https://archive.ph/keFdd#selection-651.142-651.347. Found 01/12/2022.
[ii] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13614568.2021.2001581?journalCode=tham20. Found 01/12/2022.
[iii] https://colibridigitalmarketing.com/the-psychology-of-listicles-5-reasons-why-you-click/. Found 01/12/2022.
-Louis Bruno is the author of more than 19 books, including, The Michael Project, The Michael Project: Book 2: The Lost Children of Eve, Thy Kingdom Come, The Disintegrating Bloodline (and the original text re-released in 2019), Apocalypse Soldier, The Data Chase, Selection: The First Book of the Life and Death Saga, and Blinking Eyes: The Second Book of the Life and Death Saga, Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep, The City of Sand, To the Moon and Back, The Villain Lives and The Villain Lives: The Divided Pinpoint, Come Home, Young One. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English from University of Phoenix. His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Lulu. He can be found on Gab, https://gab.com/thereallouistbruno, Minds https://www.minds.com/lbruno8063/. Instagram @lbrruno8063 and @louisbrunoofficialbook. Our Freedom Book https://www.ourfreedombook.com/thereallouistbruno17. He has written for the Intellectual Conservative and Ephemere. His next series, City of Sand is out now:https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/louis-bruno/city-of-sand/hardcover/product-rke9jz.html?page=1&pageSize=4. Also, if you can’t subscribe so that you can get members only content, please be sure to share the articles, as well. Subscribe as well so you can get my articles in your inbox every time.