Top 10 Things That Suck About Top Ten Lists

I was delighted when Fernando Fonseca agreed to be a guest on The Top 10 Blog.  When he told me about his proposed topic I must admit I wondered what I was letting myself in for (turkeys voting for Christmas and all that!) but it is my duty as a good host to share his thoughts with you.  I offer no further comment other than to tell you that Fernando has an excellent blog The Home of Zargon and that you can follow him on Twitter @fjfonseca

Top Ten lists have become quite popular and with that popularity came over-sharing. While some people think, from the comfort of their boring lives, that Top Ten lists are la créme de lá créme for people that lead busy lives, those of us that indeed lead busy lives can do very well without badly written, and most of the times full of useless information, posts about the Top Ten reasons you should brush your teeth, change your underwear or make a to-do list before you travel. Mostly, we don’t need Top Ten lists about what a non-tech person thinks are the 10 best tech people on Twitter–we need that in our lives as much as the United States needs more religious fundamentalists.

Those of us that lead busy lives want to read content that is well-structured such as a one paragraph post on Posterous about investment strategies, the latest release by a really good band or a 34 page document about innovative strategies for the marketplace. If it is worthwhile and brings added value, busy people will take the time to read it since they don’t see it as wasting time, but as productive.

Having said that here are my Top Ten reasons why Top Ten Lists suck.

1. Ten reasons is just too much. There is really nothing that can justify making a Top Ten List about why it’s cool to have an Android phone instead of an iPhone. One phrase is enough: it just is and there is nothing more to add to it. Really!!!!

2. On the other hand, 10 reasons don’t even cover the minimum grounds of why Apple is Evil, for example, or why Facebook is a threat to national security (even if you live in a country where Facebook is banned). To constrain yourself to 10 bullet points while writing about something that you really need to share with those that read your work is similar to castration: painful and wrong (except if you have a cat).

3. If you are a geek writing Top 10 list posts you are bound by your code of honor to only include 2 reasons. If you don’t understand why this is you have no right to call yourself a geek and should be ashamed of yourself…then go castrate your cat right now.

4. See? This is really the problem with Top Ten lists: Suddenly there is nothing more to say and you just keep burning your brain cells to come up with other reasons that will lead you to that magic number that you imposed on yourself (see point 1).

5. There is nothing inventive or original about Top Ten lists. As you force yourself to either stretch a topic you could easily explain in a paragraph to 10 juicy points or cram 300 ideas into a list of 10, you come out looking like an idiot. The stretched list is anti-climactic and dull. The condensed list is unintelligible; it’s making fast food when you have the ingredients for a three course meal and dessert.

6. If you, like me, live on the side of the planet where something called (un)United Kingdom is just a couple of hours away by plane you will know that the number 10 is synonymous with bad judgment, horrible fashion sense and a lousy health and public transportation system.

7. Remember the movie “10?” Don’t you think it is reason enough why the number should be banned forever? And, please don’t tell me that 10 is the base of our society since it adopted the decimal system. When we were using the dozenal we didn’t have weapons of mass destruction that don’t exist, did we? And, how hard can it be to say, “I have 9 and 1 one fingers?”

8. No one can take their eyes away from a beautiful person of the opposite (or same, if you lean that way) sex, an intriguing work of art or even a circus freak show; they give you something: ideas, inspiration and/or knowledge–be the information positive or negative, it’s still information. Top Ten lists give you none of this–they are the monster truck rallies of blog posts when you could be reading the Grand Prix.

9. You are bound to insult someone. Someone is going to disagree with what you say or the order you put your list in. “Number 6 should be number 3!” …or they’re going to think monster truck rallies are the greatest thing in the world.

10. If none of these points have actually convinced you that Top Ten posts suck, I have the ultimate and definitive reason that will make you change your mind: they suck because… *drum roll* I say so. #thatisall

Conclusion: This post could be reduced to its introduction and point 10. As you can see, I actually had to invite Donna Winter to collaborate with me because I could not come up with enough reasons that would not end up in “because I am telling you so.” To her, my partner in crime, I am forever and always thankful.

Many thanks to Fernando for a well argued and entertaining Top 10.   I am going for a lie down in a darkened room now!

Let us know what you think about Fernando’s opinions of Top 10′s.  Is there a place for Top 10 blogs?  Should I carry on? (sobs loudly)