Top 10 reason why most top 10 articles are worthless (and why you should care)
“Top 10 reasons why Google is a woman”. I’m really not making this one up.
“Top 10 reasons why you can’t trust pit bulls”. Oh yeah? and you think I need 10 reasons for that?.
“Top 10 reasons why you love your mom”. Well thank god, I wouldn't have known that before reading your article.
Our attention span is shrinking to a Twitter-esque 140 words limit. We care more about a summary of things than about their details. I confess, I have read hundreds of these articles and I always felt pretty dirty afterwards. It’s far easier to read a “top [put number between 3 to 10 here]” article than reading a 3000 words thorough report.
So here is a list of the top 10 reasons why I think most of this articles are worthless:
Number 10: You probably won’t remember anything in a few days/weeks after reading them. Value added to your Brain = 0.
Number 9: Your brain enjoy reading them because they are like fast food. You are basically training your brain to be lazy. You know you will learn nothing, but the urge for the big fat tasty “top X” articles is huge. Your brain is probably already wired now to skip through a long article and go right where the big fat numbers are (1 to 10 is all you care about), so you can enjoy your meal without the hassle of reading anything before or after it. If you do this, you are already infected.
Number 8: You develop a more simplistic view of the world. It’s like reading TMZ or the Daily Mail everyday and avoiding any complex problems or complex analysis of issues.
Number 7: The authors start with the premises of having an exact number in their mind (e.g “Top 10") and then adapt their article to the almighty number. They try their hardest to fit in all content and make it look 100% fit (See what I’m doing here?).
Number 6: Articles are more geared toward ranking on search engines (SEO) rather than a genuine interest in the subject from the author. Most of this articles contain hidden affiliate links, offers or email subscriptions. Even big newspaper and respected companies such as NYT, Washington Post and TIME, have loads of this articles. There is even a “Top 10 Top 10 listings of 2013" on the NYT blog, it include a video called: “The 10 Greatest Farts In Live TV History”, I kid you not. TIME have a “Top 10 Memes” and a “Top 10 Miley moments”.
Number 5: Following the article advise won’t lead to you having enough understanding of the subject. Imagine having a conversation with friends about a subject and you want to shim in : “Sorry guys but there are top 5 reasons why there is no global warming” or “There are top 3 reasons why drinking coffee is bad for you”.
Number 4: You become more addictive and want to read more from the same website or similar websites.
Number 3: Authors of such articles are mostly people contracted from websites such as Odesk, Elan or Fiverr. Most contractors don’t know enough about the subject they are writing about. They are paid to get the articles done in no time. Quality doesn’t matter, only keywords/SEO are important.
Number 2: time spent on those article can be better spent on reading real in depth articles or even reading a book on the subject. Training your brain to be more productive and being able to make sound arguments on different subjects.
And the number 1 reason why those articles are worthless: By reading them you are directly supporting the increase of their numbers on the web. You are telling the authors, the marketing guys, The editors and Google: “yeah, I want more, gimme more”.
I hope you enjoyed this article, if not, don’t worry in a few Days you won’t remember any of it.
