Slowly, but surely every single article you read online will be in the form of a list. The number of items in the list don’t even have to be classic like Top 10 or Top 25, you’ll find lots of articles that say shit like “17 Reasons God Hates You” or “73 Ways To Get Dog Vomit Out of Your Lingerie”. It’s a little tiring to see over and over again, but everyone loves reading these things and here’s why:
1.) People like categorized information. It’s in the human brain’s nature to group information about everything in life to make it more digestible. Whether it’s grouping food into “dairy” and “gluten-free”, or grouping people by ethnicity or even grouping dumbass internet articles, your brain loves grouping things.
2.) You can stop reading at any time and walk away like you gained some information. Most articles that are not made of listed bullet points require reading the entire thing to feel like you absorbed the information, but with lists you can just read random points quickly and gain information or if it’s a Top 36 list you can just scroll to the bottom and save yourself the time of reading the rest of the bullshit.
3.) The internet loves fads. When something has proven to be successful everyone else jumps on board like a bunch of brainless lemmings. In today’s internet culture we like to think everyone’s original and interesting, but the fact of the matter is people are even more brain dead than ever before and can’t wait for the next bandwagon to jump on so they can feel the comfort of being similar to millions of complete strangers.
4.) They’re easy to write. Writing a single cohesive article that flows together into one single thought can be very challenging, but if you just say “Here’s 5 things about something…” You can just write out the numbers first then add your stupid bullshit in throughout the day without losing a train of thought because there is none.
5.) You can just make up the last one when you realize you don't have a complete list. Then you can just cap it off with a summary.
People love numbered lists, bloggers like writing them and old women love reading them. That’s 97% of the internet right there so as long as that’s true numbered lists will be come more prevalent until every single thing on the internet is a damn list. Won’t be long before you log onto Jackmaster.org or whatever porn site and you see things like “Top 74 Interracial Bukkakes” and “39 Reasons You Need A Bigger Vagina”