Listicles are everywhere. They were around before the internet was invented in magazines such as Cosmopolitan (21 Amazing Things You Can Do With Scrotums!), and they will probably be around long after civilization collapses due to climate change (7 Tips & Tricks for Outrunning Packs of Cannibals: Tip 1. Don’t Knock It If You Haven’t Tried It!).
Don’t misunderstand; I read them, too, and they aren’t all bad. For one thing…
1. Their headlines tell you what you’re in for. Is the article short (3 Reasons Why The Listicle Is So Popular), medium length (7 Sex Tips from Cosmo That Will Put You in the Hospital), or long (66 Pieces Of Bad Cosmo Advice From What Are Assuredly 66 Virgins)? Also, the titles don’t leave much to the imagination so, again, you know what to expect. If you see an article with the headline Stupid And Criminal Things Trump Did This Week you could be in for three paragraphs or something that would make the novel War and Peace look comparably short. Who has the time for browsing or serendipity?
2. Apparently, they are marketing gold. There’s a reason they’re everywhere: they drive traffic. Almost everybody on the Interwebs wants to sell you something: a product, an idea, or a new diet. For whatever reason, people respond to them, which leads to listicles about listicles, such as Writing a Listicle: The 11-Step Guide and Why They’re Awesome. Unfortunately, sometimes what they are selling is ad space, which can lead to the dreaded:
3. One. Listicle Item. Per. Page. Oh, this one chaps my hide! It’s kind of a bait-and-switch. Here I was thinking that I’d be reading a short listicle, but I end up with one of those horrible one-slide-per-page thingies. This is because the website gets paid per page view. The problem has gotten so bad there’s a sub-genre of articles that will teach you how to convert them into a single page view, such as Skip “Next Links” with the PageZipper Bookmarklet (you’re welcome).
4. They’re arbitrary. There’s one thing you can be 97% sure of: The author totally pulled the list out of their ass. Oh sure, the listicle might actually contain solid information, but there was no kind of peer reviewed study to come up with the list. Except this one, of course. We researched the hell out of this listicle, um… article. (I mean, you can tell from our article publication dates that we aren’t exactly on a tight production schedule here; you can trust us!) So, when a writer has content that needs generating to meet a deadline, the listicle can be a handy format for the author to use.
5. They’ve focus-studied the shit out of the format itself. You may or may not have heard of Buzzfeed, but they have a LOT of listicle-format content, and they’ve got the data to crunch. According to the research, odd numbered lists are more effective. Here’s an article that gives a quick breakdown, including links to the more number-crunchy research: Love ‘Em or Hate ‘Em: 9 Interesting Facts About List Posts. An interesting thing about this article is that it says that the optimal number for listicle items is “25” to get a higher view count, but the article only lists 9 items. Good for you, @neilpatel, you have authorial integrity for not padding your piece out with 16 unnecessary entries!
6. So, wait, listicles are really just a way for a website to manipulate me more effectively? Ding ding ding, you win a prize! (Just post your email, physical world address, birth date, the name of your first pet, your city of birth, and the last four digits of your Social Security Number in the comments section below to claim it… *) People in the marketing world have been systematically studying consumer behavior for almost a century now, and they’ve gotten pretty good at it, but that doesn’t stop them from looking for new ways to get your business. We live in an era where companies track your online actions in order to help you find products you may not have even realized you “needed” by doing things like sifting through your email or social media posts to attempt to machine-learn your interests. The goal being to funnel your attention to their products with no effort on your part. The trend is helpful in one sense, but creepy AF in another, and sometimes both at the same time. What a world!
7. Sometimes listicles are lazy. Like, REALLY lazy. Remember way back in Item 6, that thing about 25 items being the optimal number? Sometimes an author writes from a place of true inspiration. They’ve got something to say, and gosh darn it, they’re going to say it in print! Sometimes, an author is a hack who needs to meet a deadline. Listicles are kind of ideal for the latter, but even then some are hack-ier than others. Ever read a listicle where several items are just redundant or stupid? That’s some formula writing right there!
8. Hmm. Kind of running out of steam here.
9. Yeah, I probably should have stopped at 7. But damn, I already wrote the headline and I’m not going to change it now! I’ve bookmarked some listicles to read, and I’m behind!
*We’re pretty sure you won’t, but PLEASE do not do any of these things. Thanks!
I did that thing with pros and cons where you split a piece of paper in half and jot down a few items in each column to figure out how you feel about something. In the end, it was an even split, with one clear loser.
tl;dr It has been determined I am pretty ambivalent about listicles.