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In the last episode of Idea Channel
we talked about listicles.
Let's see what you had to say.
Gil Hong writes a comment about the economic factors
that influence the creation of lists and listicles.
This is something that we didn't get into it
all, and I think is a really important and interesting part
of the conversation.
Because, especially if you're making
a list where each item is a page,
you can force people to look at more ads,
because they're loading more pages.
And I wonder if-- I've noticed recently
that there has been a change in these kinds of articles.
Where there used to never be an option
to view all items on one page, that now seems to be pervasive.
And I'm really curious about what led that to be the case.
When did that change?
And why?
Because I would imagine that, after a certain amount of time,
you know, like, people would become
frustrated having to just load ads-- especially
if you're on your phone and using your data.
Because that's just-- that's a lot of extra data.
But, yeah, this is a super important part
of this conversation, and it was a great comment.
Alice Pow talks about how lists can
tap into that part of our brains that
likes hierarchical thinking, but that, of course,
the world is not made entirely of hierarchies.
And that you might ask someone to think that way,
and it will cause them pause-- that they will have
a bit of a hard time with it.
This makes me think about this thing
that I heard about a couple days ago, which
was people who-- this study, where people would put on,
like, an Oculus-- Oculus Rift VR thing--
and they would chop down trees in the VR experience.
And then, in the second part of the study,
a researcher would spill a glass of water.
And those people would use fewer paper towels
to clean up the spill after having chopped down
trees in the VR.
And this makes me wonder, like, what-- I wonder,
if you were to have people read a bunch of listicles
and then do some action, like list their favorite things,
would they be better or worse at it?
I wonder if this study has been done.
I'm gonna go do some Google.
So caleB Goodwin gets to, I think,
another aspect of why the listicle has been sort
of saddled with so much hate.
And that is, I think a lot of publishers and editors
know that knowing what the next item in the list
is, is reward enough for our brains,
and so they can skimp on actual content.
And so, there's this kind of weird tension
that happens when you read a listicle a lot
of times, which is that you get the pleasure of knowing what
the next item is, or what the full set of things is,
but you don't get the actual pleasure of learning anything
about those things.
So is it allows the people who are creating
these things to, again, place ads on pages,
get people to look at them, but doesn't
have the full satisfaction of gaining information.
Relatedly, NerdSync talks about the Completion Principle,
which is this idea that, as human beings,
we need things to be whole, and finite, and complete.
And so what the listicle does is it gives you one little insight
into what is going to be talked about,
and then your brain goes, well, now I
need to know the rest of it.
And I think that's-- you've probably heard that referred
to as the "curiosity gap"-- that was Upworthy's contribution
to the space.
I think it was them.
That they pique your curiosity, leave a gap,
and the goal is to get you to jump the gap
and to look at their listicle.
NaryaJJRT says something really interesting
that never occurred to me.
They compare the listicle to more of a,
kind of, spoken format.
That the listicle more approaches a speech
than it does an article.
And this really sort of gives me some pause.
And this is a thing that I'm going to keep thinking about.
But I wonder where the listicle fits
in the kind of constellation of things
we consider internet native formats and the Venn diagram
of, like, speech acts.
Because I think of chatting and vlogs
very much as being like speech, but it never
dawned on me that the list is in some way supposed
to ape, or mimic, or channel the way that people talk.
I don't know.
What do you guys think about this?
Is there a connection to be made here?
Tim O'callaghan, yeah, that's-- I mean, me at a cocktail party,
"Umberto Eco, Umberto Eco, everybody?
Yeah, I'm cool."
Who am I kidding?
I'm-- actually, at this point, I'm mostly talking about
MasterChef Junior, so.
Crispy Bacon has it out for Buzzfeed,
and uses them as an example of how listicles can barely
even ever qualify as content.
They are completely devoid of any kind of useful information.
And uses-- one of the examples that they
use is a listicle that is just smiley faces.
And I'm all for, sort of, being judgy or critical
of the economic forces that cause Buzzfeed to do things
like instrumentalized demographics-- you know,
23 reasons you know that you are this person
from the specific place, because we want you,
belonging to this demographic, to look at our website
so that we can gather information about you.
And, yeah, that is-- we should ask
all kinds of questions about that and be critical of it.
But I also wonder at what point that method leads Buzzfeed to,
kind of, test the genre of listicle.
Because, sometimes, I'll look at a listicle on Buzzfeed
and think, this is like a Scott Walker song.
Like, this is a list, or a listicle, in the way
that Scott Walker songs are songs.
They're kind of, just, some weird set of ideas
crammed into a familiar format.
The difference, of course, being that Scott Walker,
and other people who write sort of avant-garde song type
things, are inspired by artistic inspiration and reasons,
whereas Buzzfeed, you could argue,
wholly economic inspiration.
So, the ouroboros is complete, I guess.
Jacob Rogers, yes, the Wikipedia "List of lists of lists"
is a beautiful, beautiful internet thing.
Now we need, of course, to find the other list of lists
of lists, and then put-- is it two things that make a list,
or do you think it's three?
Like, what's the point?
How many others lists of lists of lists
do we need to make a list of list of lists of lists?
I'm sorry.
Patrick Hogan, whenever HowToBasic
needs any of my expertise on breaking eggs-- which, I mean,
probably pales in comparison to theirs-- I'm available.
I'm on board.
If you have a connection, you just
let me know what kind of Bat signal--
what kind of egg-shaped Bat signal to project into the sky.
MrDrProf talks about the idea of cognitive misery--
which is that human beings want to use as little cognitive
power as they possibly can.
And so listicles and lists are attractive,
because they allow us this-- I think
we talked about it in the episode a little--
this kind of cognitive economy.
And this makes me wonder about the list as a kind
of rhetorical technique.
And I haven't been paying close attention to the way
the candidates in the American presidential election process
have been speaking.
But this makes me wonder, like, in the debates, how often
a list is deployed as a rhetorical technique,
as an attempt to maybe get people on board or to agree.
And I would guess it must be frequently,
but also, weirdly, invisible.
So this is another sort of one of those things where
it's great to sort of know what to look for,
so that you can shine a light on how you're being communicated
with, and how that might just sort of play along
with your brain's pre-built biases.
So, yeah, that was a great comment.