{"id":38349,"date":"2014-03-06T22:27:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T02:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=38349"},"modified":"2020-07-10T22:27:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-11T02:27:31","slug":"why-are-people-so-fascinated-by-lists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=38349","title":{"rendered":"Why are people so fascinated by lists?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"border-image alignnone wp-image-38350 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sheep.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"265\" srcset=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sheep.jpg 490w, https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sheep-300x162.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 490px) 100vw, 490px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Throughout any given work day, there are a handful of sites that I peruse for entertainment, education or just to plain pass the time.\u00a0 Generally, I like to be somewhat in tune with the news of what\u2019s going on locally in Atlanta, what\u2019s going on in the country to some capacity, and to read about stuff that interests me like baseball, video games, and\u00a0<em>LoL<\/em>.\u00a0 I enjoy keeping my mind stimulated by interesting content, and it also helps pass the time, when I have an excess of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">One of the sites I regularly visit because I think they occasionally have some decent content, I made a mistake of clicking on an \u201carticle\u201d that was about stars of today when they were child actors.\u00a0 Admittedly, it appealed to my nostalgic side before I realized what I was clicking into, and then it turned out to be this putrid list that contained maybe 70 words, several animated gifs, some YouTube videos, and was a cherry-picked list of fairly C-level actors that clearly are niche preferred by the writer (they don\u2019t deserved to be called an author).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The first thought that came to my mind was that this post was a piece of shit, and it was basically an even-poorer BuzzFeed post, if that\u2019s even humanly possible.\u00a0 Naturally, since today\u2019s conglomerate bloggers are all attention-seeking egomaniacs who\u00a0<em>need<\/em>\u00a0to have a blurb at the end of every single one of their posts that extols their \u201chistory\u201d and \u201cachievements,\u201d it wasn\u2019t the least bit of a surprise when this writer\u2019s credentials included, a past internship at where else \u2013 BuzzFeed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Mystery of why the post was such so shitty, solved.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But it brings to attention the fact that the content of today\u2019s internet has pretty much become very list-heavy.\u00a0 Actually, I can\u2019t really say just the internet, because it\u2019s apparent in all sorts of media, when the content well becomes a little stagnant and desperate for content, a parade of lists ends up coming into play, and often time people seem to eat that shit up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">I\u2019m not going to pretend as if I\u2019m completely above lists, because I\u2019ve enjoyed my share of them too, but looking back at varying lists that I have enjoyed, they\u2019ve all had one thing in common \u2013 they were substantial.\u00a0 As in, everything listed had some modicum of justification, explanation and actual thought behind why they were placed in their list.\u00a0 Then again, on the radio and on television, it\u2019s a lot harder to get away with a single sentence, followed by an animated gif, blown up to appear more substantial than it really is.\u00a0 And in print, it\u2019s obviously impossible, although I wouldn\u2019t put it past a lazy publication to start publishing actual URLs of YouTube clips onto paper, and actually expect a reader to type out \u201cyoutube.com\/x8HF7Av9\u201d given how lazy, negligent and inconsiderate people are these days.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">On the internet unfortunately, there are way too many bullshit lists that pollute the world wide web with their lack of substance and the lazy nature in which they\u2019re constantly churned out on a daily basis.\u00a0 I get that running websites is business for many, and revenue is based on clicks and page views, and pervading the eyes of the unsuspecting with ads for shit they don\u2019t need, and in many cases, don\u2019t want.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The thing is, it\u2019s no secret that bullshit sites like BuzzFeed are known for 90% of their content being the same list posts filled with nothing but animated gifs and YouTube videos, written by retards, but when the obsession with lists goes so far as to where (seemingly) legit outlets for news and content become so desperate to tap into those clicks and page views, to where they join the masses and start producing bullshit lists and thoughtless countdowns themselves.\u00a0 At that point, it kind of becomes a little bit pathetic, and makes me feel piteous towards them.\u00a0 Well-written, thought-provoking content is losing the battle at keeping someone\u2019s attention versus a bunch of dumb gifs put in a subjective order with a YouTube clip as justification.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Not everyone is like me (thank god), but for those that are, websites can only go so far with constantly producing inane, repetitive and simply just not entertaining crap, before we simply give up on the site.\u00a0 And it\u2019s just not giving up on the site, it\u2019s, like in my case, straight up distain for it, to where I make efforts to blacklist crap producing websites as spam on my Facebook feed, and use their lack of ability to create content as motivation to better myself at doing so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Ultimately, I don\u2019t really have a problem with lists as content, but only as long as there is some substance to them.\u00a0 Personally, I find the BuzzFeed style of animated gifs to be thoughtless, effortless, and reason for the people producing them to be embarrassed with their integrity for being able to call that \u201ctheir job.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t have to agree with why things are on a list, but a little bit of explanation, and thought stimulation would be kind of nice.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Throughout any given work day, there are a handful of sites that I peruse for entertainment, education or just to plain pass the time.\u00a0 Generally, I like to be somewhat in tune with the news of what\u2019s going on locally in Atlanta, what\u2019s going on in the country to some capacity, and to read about &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=38349\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why are people so fascinated by lists?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,15,156],"class_list":["post-38349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-fail","tag-og","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38351,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38349\/revisions\/38351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}