Top 5 Reasons Why Top 5 Lists Are So Popular on the Internet Justin Hartfield
The "Top Five List" is an Internet staple. it is the solution to your weak web traffic and the remedy to your writer's block. The "Top Five List" belongs in a category all its own. It is part article, part list, and entirely populist. Without any additional extravagance, the PI would like to pay tribute to the potato of the Internet domain, the Top Five list.
1. All major themes/points of the article are easily identified
Even though there was text above this bolded and numbered item, you completely ignored it and skipped straight to the meat, which is consequently what you are reading now. Hey, I'm not judging you - I do the exact same thing when I read a Top Five list. I'm reading the list because the title explained to me all of the background information and assumptions I needed to know before proceeding to the first of the five central arguments. Any additional information would have wasted precious time off an existence which is already short. Top Five articles are like regular, smart people essays, just the cliff note version. Quintessentially, you are getting the same information in a smaller amount of time. Who's the smart one now?
2. Shorter and easier to read than a traditional article
These pentagonal reasoned pieces are usually short. This is intentional and it operates on the theory that Internet users have short attention spans, and are thus attracted to articles with less verbiage and ad banners with suggestions to "Punch the Monkey" to win a 4.5% home load APR from a slightly less than reputable Uzbekistani mortgage bank. Keep the user constantly bombarded with dancing pixels and tackless curse words, not paragraphs and logic.
3. Easier to write than a traditional article, thus there is a disproportionate amount
Top Five lists are the extra points of writing. If a writer is ever late for a deadline, they can always call on their trusted Top Five list (sometimes the Top Ten list if its several hours before deadline). I can imagine the conversation between a writer and his editor at Salon.com:
Editor: Where's that article on Bush and his possible ties to the slave trade of the mid-1700s Sidney?
Blumenthal: Oh. I got something else instead. Something better.
Editor: Well I want it on my desk in forty-five minutes.
(Blumenthal carefully crafts together an artful Top Five list in just under twenty minutes and hands it to Editor).
Editor: "Bush's Top Five Public Speaking Blunders"?? Blumenthal this is brilliant!
(Aside to other editors: Look's like we've found are cover story boys!)
4. Plays into the fantasy that by following five simple steps will lead to ________.
Most Americans believe in the ‘get-rich-quick’ fantasy. They believe that following some simple steps could lead to tremendous changes in their bank account, personality, love life, etc. It combines two of America's defining characteristics: laziness and the belief that they will one day be the person of their dreams.
5. Easily debatable and fun to mock.
People love the feeling of validation they get when the points they were thinking of make the list. They also love to comment with a phantom #6 write-in, which usually mocks the theme and tone of the previous five points.
The nature of the Top Five list is also wide open to debate. What qualifies as a #1 and what distinctions are made such that it is superior to the #5? Of course, there are no set lists and the rankings are arbitrary- just one writers opinion and certainly not more truthful than the readers (see Rolling Stone : The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time for further evidence to support this claim. Not one of my Top Five albums are in their Top 100!).
