Why I will never write a ‘top 10′ list.
Originally posted on Medium
Because it’s cheap, insincere and lazy. Let’s not beat around the bush for niceties sake, shall we?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for them too. Who can resist the tantalizing prospect of quick fix knowledge?
It’s like fast food. I’m not going to spend three hours slaving away at a lavish home-cooked meal that’s likely to result in an utter disaster when I could get the same nutritional value from a $2 burger at McDonald’s in mere minutes.
But Lucian, I hear you cry — A McDonald’s burger won’t give you the same nutritional value, what are you talking about? That’s nonsense and everyone know’s that? Well of course. They do know this. But yet Sixty-Eight Million people still stuff themselves with this trash every single day and you’re reading your 15th top ten article in the past hour, diligently avoiding putting any of them to actual use, and stuffing yourself until you’re sick.
That’s what we’re effectively doing. Now, I’m not here to claim that the people writing these articles don’t know what they’re talking about, or that the McNugget morsels that they entail aren’t valuable insights. Potentially.
But what I am going to tell you, is that it’s shameless pandering. Everybody know’s that today’s society, for the most part, has the attention span not even equal to a goddamn goldfish. So naturally every top ten article that claims to give you the inside knowledge on how to gain readership will undoubtedly tell you to make use of short list articles that can be consumed quickly and leave your reader wanting more, so throw in a few hyperlinks to your other top ten articles, and if they stick around long enough, they’ll hit that follow button, and BLAM — you’ve ensnared them with cheap parlor tricks.
This is a con. More often than not this writer isn’t giving you anything new that you didn’t already know. They’re just reiterating already established notions and putting their own twist on them, repackaging them up as ‘THE TOP TEN SECRETS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE’ and hitting publish. C’mon. Are we not better than this? —
— Ah, yes, right on cue, I hear an indignant cry from the back — ‘well isn’t everything ever created just somebody else’s re-imagining of something that someone else once did, but what sets it apart is their own unique voice?
Okay. Well yes, Mr. Smart ass, I’ll concede that generally is the state of creativity now. Everything has been said before and we’re all scrambling around here in the bushes, desperately searching for fresh spins. But mostly what I take issue with is the mentality they encourage and the behavior that elicits from them. They’re diversions. Distractions. They’re crack.
You could have just read the ultimate top ten. Your perfect model of how you can change your writing habits/gym habits/morning routine/perspective on life — it spoke to you deeply at every single integer. But no sooner are you done, minutes later you’re absently feasting on another. With maybe 10% of the previous one retained.
And if you hadn’t already guessed — yes, I’m including myself in this bracket. I’m writing from experience. This is what I do, and I’m as bad as the rest of you. I do not excuse myself. But I will politely excuse myself from forcing upon you, and I, anymore top 10 lists that feed your habit and contribute to our collective addiction to diversion, and quick-dopamine hits.
