3 …… A Listicle About Listicles

The good, the bad and the ugly

Listicles, shmisticles, listicles (pronounced like Heracles, the Greek and original version of perhaps the most famous of all heroes), the Listopolis (this is the ancient temple dedicated to the listicle which overlooks the city of Athens and is criminally unknown) — call them whatever you want, they get a bad rep.

And actually, that bad rep is kind of deserved, at least in large part as far as I’m concerned.

Why?

Cause they’re bloody annoying for one. Anything that exists in such volumes becomes tedious over time. The sort of stuff they seem to focus on as well— keys to success, maximising your efficiency, the habits of elite entrepreneurs and money and money — would test the patience of all Heaven’s angels.

Moreover, listicles listify how we think, how we want to think and human thought itself.

In this regard, listicles are a bit like baby food — the food’s already been mashed up for you which means you don’t need to suffer the ghastly hardship of having to chew.

Instead of people critiquing what they’re reading, they jump from one point to the next taking only one predigested snippet of thought with them that has been packaged for the benefit of their watch at the expense of their intellect. In this regard, listicles are a bit like baby food — the food’s already been mashed up for you which means you don’t need to suffer the ghastly hardship of having to chew.

The listicle is also the weapon of choice for those snake oil salesmen and saleswomen who will have you believe you’ll be a millionaire yesterday if only you do yourself the great favour of running through their limber little one-to-five.

And there’s more. And there’s more. But there’s also some good. So, instead of me trying to continue to describe water, let’s go swimming.

1. They’re good if …

To my mind, they’re not at all bad if they’re occasional and not simply in listicle form as a good way of selling a bad idea, like, for example, the 5 toiletry habits of billionaires or 3 sure-fire ways to blow smoke up your boss’s arse without them knowing or 4 techniques for charming your pet octopus with the power of music (actually, that last one may have some merit).

To put it in a nutshell, if you’re not firebombing your audience with get-rich-yesterday or get-smart-today bollocks, and your listicles are occasional, then they can work well to spice up your content, and can also be fun, educational, entertaining and really quite useful for quickly getting across a few simple ideas.

Here, the essential goal is the rapid transfer of a number of core truths and not overly in-depth analysis. The listicle is perfect for this.

The listicle works well for humour pieces and for a bit of light entertainment. It also works well if you want to communicate a few core facts and not dig down too deep into what you’re speaking about or interrogate it in great detail. Here, the essential goal is the rapid transfer of a number of core truths and not overly in-depth analysis. The listicle is perfect for this.

Here’s an example of how well it works for humour with one of Medium’s best poets and most original writers, Carlo Zeno, who I highly recommend you acquaint yourself with as mandatory reading on Medium.

’10 Ways To Avoid Getting A Boost’ — it’s funny, it’s self-aware, it’s highly relatable and just bang on the money. It works great as a list. This is how you do a listicle and what the form is great for.

Here’s me with something a bit longer and wafflier, as is my wont and compulsion. It’s tips on how to write a good short story, and whilst I do go into some detail on each point, the main thing I wanted to get across was the core idea for each point.

A listicle is a bit like a premade meal or a preprepared sandwich — it saves the reader time and gives them what they need without making them work too much for it. And in this we see both the beauty and horror of the listicle — it is very much a blessing and a curse.

Let’s continue swimming.

2. They’re bad if …

They’re bad if you no longer even try to rustle up a nice meal for your readers — something which they can take their time over, slowly digesting, slowly savouring — but instead churn out an endless stream of baby food and premade convenience slop for them to guzzle down to get whatever nutritional content resides in your glorious piece just as fast as humanly possible.

There are many ‘writers’ who trade in this kind of ‘food’ with most every ‘article’. There are a number of problems with this.

The first is that you are listifying thought and knowledge. It is good for people to put in some effort to gain an understanding of something. Understanding is deeper when you have to make the journey to get there yourself and knowledge sticks better when there’s some deliberation and discourse involved.

Listicles cram knowledge into little cubicles with the reader then quickly popping into one after another to grab the main takeaway before moving on to the next. The whole process entails minimal meditation, scant contemplation and little interrogation of what’s being discussed.

This does a huge disservice to thought, knowledge and the reader. Life is messier and greyer than little prepackaged snippets can capture and so we get a highly simplistic and hugely distorted view of anything approaching what could be called a ‘generally-accepted’ reality.

In addition, listicles encourage laziness of thought: why do any thinking and weighing up of what’s being said when someone’s already done the work for me?

This is an egregious tendency with vast implications and is far bigger than my little listicle and pertains to how information is presented, disseminated and digested.

In essence, when you spoon-feed people too much, they want to be spoon-fed; this is not good.

Secondly, and very much following on from the first, it makes people who already have a poor attention span even less able to concentrate on information where and when it has not been placed in a strict cast-iron mould. In essence, when you spoon-feed people too much, they want to be spoon-fed; this is not good.

Next is that listicles kind of use human nature against us. We want a quick fix even though we know they rarely exist and those saying they do usually shouldn’t be trusted. The trickster, the charlatan, the snake oil salesperson and the non-writer are heavily overrepresented in the listicle format. Beware the person who trades in recipes for success written in recipe-form.

Lastly, and I could go on; it’s fuckin’ boring when listicles are all you bring to the party. If you don’t have much time, then publish fewer listicles and more pieces of greater depth. If you’re only or mostly firing out listicles, then you’re doing a disservice to yourself, your readers, thought and knowledge, and you’re not a writer in my book; you’re a list jockey.

3. Profitable? The ugly truth

Are listicles a good way of making money on Medium?

On the one hand, it’s far easier to bang them out like Domino’s Two-For-Tuesday barbeque specials, which means you can maximise on quantity, at the price of your soul and sanity of course.

On the other hand, readers rifle through listicles just as quick as your body refuses to have any dealing with that 8-meats-special that you’ve just shoved in your gob, bestowing upon your fine self the dubious benefit of absolutely nothing of value being derived via digestion.

Let’s take an example.

I have been boosted twice. I have never written about it and won’t tell you how much I made cause I’m not a cock. Not that everyone who talks about it is a cock and there is no case for discussing it, but many who do decide to divulge their dalliances with the hallowed boost do it for less than wholesome reasons.

The first article that was boosted surprised me a lot because it’s longer firstly, and because it is controversial for many as it dares to turn the spotlight from Russia on to the West, its partial culpability for what eventually exploded in Ukraine and talks about the propaganda and ideology that we are constantly swimming in which serve to perpetuate and entrench the dominant Western view whilst also suppressing its anti-hegemonic competitor.

In short, it doesn’t seem like the sort of article Medium would boost. But they did and I am and was impressed. Fair play Medium)

The article is 10 minutes long with an average member reading time of 4 minutes and 59 seconds and a total member reading time of 84 hours and 19 minutes. The average reading time has been up towards 6 minutes too.

The second article that was boosted hails from a wholly different universe. It’s a listicle detailing 5 words I learned from The Simpsons. It’s fun, it’s playful, it may be kind of original and maybe even a little educational. It talks not at all about how much moolah it can help you earn and does exactly what it says on the tin, meaning it’s not clickbaity. It’s a good subject for a listicle.

This is exactly the sort of article I would expect Medium to boost, i.e. it’s fun, frivolous and contains not an iota of controversy.

The average member reading time is 2 minutes and 17 seconds, but it has been down at 2 minutes, with a total member reading time of 9 hours and 48 minutes.

The first has 3.9 more views than the second. Which should mean that the total for the former should be around 40 hours, were the average reading times to be anywhere similar.

They are not.

Readers read listicles far too fast. The points and headings function like stepping stones allowing whoever’s reading to jump, skip and hop through your piece with a minimum of effort. Again, in this we see the beauty and horror of the listicle — they are a curse just as much as they are a blessing.

And there is the larger question of course, alluded to above, of your soul and sanity.

My feeling based on the above evidence is that you will have to write a lot of listicles to be making the same as with longer pieces. If you have hordes of followers and readers, then I suppose you’ll be fine. If you don’t, I’m not sure how great the listicle-form will be for your wallet.

And there is the larger question of course, alluded to above, of your soul and sanity. I am not sure what spitting out a deluge of such pieces does to you over time; I don’t think it’s going to be anything good though; let’s just leave it at that.

And that’s my little, or not-so-little, listicle about listicles. Let me know your thoughts on this much-maligned form in the comments.