The prevalence of countdown-type articles is a rather telling tale as to how society understands writing and language. As a child (and the many children I’ve watched over can attest to a similar experience), I dreaded the adult’s rather arbitrary use of countdowns. As the numbers fell in descending order, I always shook with fear knowing that whatever freedom and agency I had, it was rapidly draining. Now, as an aspiring academic fascinated with language and its self-proliferating, intractability, the ubiquitous postings of “Top 10 x, y, and z” has me at a loss. Analogously, I see their popularity as a metaphorical inhibition of textuality and the activity of reading.

If there was anything professors warned me about, it is to use examples as a basis for extrapolation. However pertinent the metaphor, my childhood experience should not substitute for the meaning behind any sort of countdown, including the ones circulating social media. If there was anything friends warned me about, it is to take social media blogs and articles (“largely opinion pieces”) seriously. However, I was always a recalcitrant student. For the first warning, I wholeheartedly agree, but I would like to qualify the analogy as a (personalized) simulation of logic. Though metaphorical, my memories and associations of the topic-at-hand allowed for that marginal space integral to my thought and reasoning. Second, I was never one for exonerating others. I have tried writing an Op-Ed-esque piece on Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual, but for convenience’s sake I will summarily state a point yet to be elaborated: I do not believe in the representation of the intellectual as representative of intellect itself. Though Said is a proponent of the intellectual serving as a critical voice, the unattached and marginal presence that makes way for questioning (not a wholly bad idea), I don’t believe such responsibility should be held by a select group or individual as the “intellectual.” So long as a few rather than all individuals are held responsible and believed to be capable of criticism, then there will always be a hierarchy. So long as you make room of an intellectual, you make room for a tyro ready to be confused by status quo ideologies and the indomitable pugnacity of the intellectual. Such things considered, I will take every thing written as a (serious) text, regardless of its intentions and intended. Just because something is an Op-ed or published as “infotainment” does not mean it should be free from perusal or scrutiny.

The digression serves to explicate the importance of my argument, mainly that “Countdown Pieces”, which are really permutations of blogs-as-news media, are not harmless banalities. They function to agree/disagree as stabilizers. An example of one is “Top 10 Ways to Know You’re a 90s kid” (not real). It speaks to a readership ready to validate their cultural identity, hearkening to an irretrievable yet more desirable past. The text is literally structured as a hierarchy, with the language creating a center that differentiates the reader from everyone else. Reader x is a 90s kid who identifies with a defined set of discrete cultural references, with each reference ascending in order of authenticity and authority.

Then there are similar texts that serve as “Guides.” On Medium, there is a popular “Gentlemen’s Guide to Rape Culture” that somehow confuses the totality of patriarchy, while predicating the dominance of men over women with the singular act of sexual aggression. I disliked this article because it incriminates all men as perpetrating agents rather than ideological subjects of “rape culture’s” perpetuation. The difference lies in complicity. Are all men signs of violence and dominance? By virtue of existence, do they continue the teleology of patriarchy, fueled by rape culture? Are women made to be afraid or are they conditioned to be seen as weak and inferior objects of aggression? Bluntly put, the article speaks for women, assumes that we all live in fear, and the writer takes it upon himself to corroborate why women should be afraid. To make things worse, it assumes that all forms of patriarchal dominance are practiced and manifested sexually (the physical act of sex rather than gender assumptions), thus remaining within the margins provided by law (which falls short by restricting itself to regulating sex whenever genderpolitics arise). To return to my point, countdown-type articles that fill the blogosphere are condensing the nuances, contexts, and discourses available to any sort of discussion. How can we be aware of progress and its attendant problems if everything is condensed into a barely elaborated, stable point? Still, the article unintentionally touches upon a very controversial point — the problem of subjectivity. Feminists have argued over this for decades: how to reject an imposed subjectivity and how to change it. It is a delicate binary that can undo whatever legal progress is made in the name of sexual and social equality. Whether or not this point will be dated is up for grabs, because most readers are concerned with the accuracy and correctness of a guide rather than critiquing the presuppositions of the world established by the guide.

Rather than being absolute and authoritative, I wish the general public took it upon themselves to interact with a text and to see them as a continuation of a long discourse. Should “guides” and “countdowns” inundate social media — the main medium for any sort of international discourse (or intercourse as Marx would prefer) — then everything is manufactured, ready-made, inorganic, and unchanging. An opinion becomes normalized rather than a state or philosophical premise ready to shift with each ebb and flow of conversation.

End of Part I