Listicles Are Making Us Dumb
What are we writers to do about it…
I miss watching The Simpsons. It was must-see TV when I was growing up. Come to think of it, a lot of shows were must-see TV in the early ’90s — In Living Color; Beverly Hills, 90210; and Married… With Children come to mind. I’m pretty sure that The Simpsons is still running but that sort of must-see TV vibe doesn’t exist anymore because it’s been replaced with see-everything-at-anytime TV.
Treehouse of Horror IV is an episode that I distinctly remember. Homer is taken to Hell, which comes in the form of the devil taking him on a trip to the “Ironic Punishment Division” and forcing him to eat “all the doughnuts in the world.” And with hysterical laughter, I witnessed Homer eat every doughnut with pleasure, puzzling a devil who was certain that this torture tactic would drive him mad.
I can’t help but to think that we’ve all become Homer Simpson, in a way.
Not with doughnuts, but with content. We consume YouTube videos, podcasts, Netflix shows, Instagram feeds, Snapchat, Tik Tok, Twitter, and hopefully this Medium article with a similar insatiability that Homer swallowed those doughnuts. I mean, if you’ve ever experienced the sheer horror of checking your weekly screen time usage on your phone, then you’d know. And we… can’t… stop.
It’s an alarming evolution especially when it comes to the written word. If you’re one of the few people out there that still enjoy reading, chances are that you’re spending much of your reading time on a particular type of content. It’s the 6-Minute Abs, the Ponzi Scheme, the Human Growth Hormone of written content — listicles.
It’s a regretful modern addition to our vernacular, like selfie or fomo. I feel dirty and dumber for writing it, reading it, and saying it.
And the word fits. What has the reading experience become? What happened to show, not tell? God help us all if publications like The New Yorker or California Sunday ever go away, but these long-form labors of blood, sweat, and tears are growing more esoteric with each passing day. We are no longer sitting down for a nice, long meal, enjoying the salad and bread, then the appetizer, then the main entree, with a digestif and dessert to top it all off. Instead, we’re Postmating our content, getting the reading over with because there’s so many other things to see and we have to make sure that we ourselves put up our daily fire content for the gram.
If we could just ram a cartoonish-sized needle through the back of our heads like Neo in The Matrix and simply download everything, we would.
And I, by no means, am here to say that I’m above all this. In fact, I’m sure that as a writer in today’s climate I am contributing to this trend. Attention is the new currency, it’s one giant competition for clicks, and 7 Ways To Get 6-Pack Abs is going to beat My Incredible Fitness Journey nineteen times out of twenty.
I guess I’m saying I don’t know how to fix this nor am I fully convinced that anything needs fixing. Listicles do serve a useful purpose — they are to the point, no frills, and you know what you’re getting, like a shot of whisky after a shitty day in the office. But I’m starting to believe that the space they are carving in our reading world is growing larger with each article posted who’s title starts in a number. I can’t be alone in my concern.
What comforts me is knowing that great writing is great writing, no matter the format. The romantic in me believes that writers like King, Rowling, Bukowski, Vonnegut, Ebert, and Bourdain would be equally prolific had their writing journeys started today. And it would be an absolute shame if the next generation left these titans of the craft undiscovered, opting for the more snackable, downloadable written works.
That choice will be left up to the individual, but we writers can do our part to encourage a slower burn of a reading experience through good writing that’s devoid of numeral lists, piquing curiosity and allowing the readers’ minds to formulate their own takeaways, flex those comprehensive muscles without having it shoved down their throats.
As a writer who appreciates the power of words, I will try to do my part. But I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that I will continue to hate-click these list-based headlines on the Internet. If I didn’t, how would I ever find the time to scroll through my social media feeds for the requisite fifty times a day?
