Why oh why? Who decided that? I don't remember the news item, "Good evening and welcome to the 10 o'clock news, just in - the Council for Actualising Midly Amusing Information Online (CAMAIO) holds groundbreaking meeting that decides the format of amusing Internet articles will now be reduced to a series of lists."
To ironically explain my incredulity and disbelief whilst also explaining what I believe are the causes of all this, I have created the below list:-
1) I blame Twitter. I love Twitter, sincerely I do. Not only is it a forum for multiple postings (I like posting more than once a day) but it's the kind of world where you can chat to your favourite popstars, find out what type of jam Gok Wan prefers, and share jokes in the nicely succinct medium of a 140 character tweet. But, the 140 character tweet is also the very problem. We're so used to seeing information broken down into short bursts, spat out at 30 minute or less intervals, that now it's assumed our attention span is only capable of dealing with itemised information, chunked down into smaller sizes, like Jamie Oliver's methodology for making posh meatballs. (I dunno, I watched a cooking show with my Grandma once...)
2) We love lists! Organising our thoughts, ideas and other such bits and bobs into lists is not a new idea. Us human folk don't like reinventing the wheel much. We ran out of pictures to use as memes, so now we've decided the only way forward is to write lists. Because, you know, lists never get old.
3) Advertising. Know those sites that put each item on a list on a separate page? So annoying, right?
And then when you use your iPhone you almost always accidentally hit the advert on the side with your finger when you try to press the 'Next' arrow shaped button, hiding amongst a forrest of further arrows, which you hope will take you to the next item on the list. Whether you hit the advert with your finger by accident, or hit the wrong arrow, you somehow manage to get redirected to the site: MEET HOT SINGLE DINNER LADIES or something like this.
4) Peanut butter.
Or, actually, rogue items on a list. It's supposed to be funny I think. It's just a bit nonsensical really.
5) You're doing it now aren't you?
Also known as 'You're smiling because you just got fooled by item number 4'. Again, I think it's what's passing for comedy. It used to be really funny in fact. But when it was hilarious I also still had a MySpace account, had a Lycos email address and had never had the misfortune of discovering what I now like to term 'list abuse'.
6) It's meant to be cool.
I have quite a bit of a problem with this though. It means that now, something which would be funny in a non-list format, is automatically forced into a list, even when it doesn't quite fit. It's a bit like trying to fit an extra syllable into a line of song. It just really doesn't work. It's all, "3 reasons why salad doesn't go with cupcakes". Err - what do you mean this is an article with 1 screenshot of an autocorrect fail? That's not what I bought into!
(For some reason I seem to think someone might be able to text their friend "I just bought cupcakes for my salad" where 'salad' is just an autocorrect. That's probably not even possible, right?)
7) Buzzfeed. And for all I have issues with lists at times, there are some pretty amazing things on Buzzfeed. There are also some pretty horrific things on Buzzfeed, and so sometimes, I wish it hadn't been invented. But really, it's probably the reason everything is just lists now. Yeah.
If you liked my list, you can read another of my witty creations below - enjoy!
