Here's an idea.
Lists don't destroy culture.
They create it.
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This episode is brought to you by Dropbox.
So you've got your vlogs and your GIFs.
And as a kind of subtype of blog post,
you've got the listicle, an article in list format.
I might call these things internet native formats.
They're so strongly foundational to the internet experience
that browsing would change remarkably in their absence.
Though the listicle is different from the rest.
Vlogs and GIFs, blog posts, podcasts,
and comment sections are all internet native formats
with one foot firmly in pre-internet practices, sure.
But modern technology still defines their operation.
The listicle is just a list in article format.
It requires no special code to run or to make.
It doesn't rely on internet technology to become itself.
And yet, it is exclaimed as the quintessential internet format.
Jake Marshall on Digiday called ours "the listicle era."
Writing for the "New Yorker," Mark O'Connell
said that we recognize that the list is
the signature form of our time.
And Maria Konnikova writes that lists
are one of the most ubiquitous ways
to package content on the web.
It's the article format which has helped
build online editorial empires.
But also other editorial empires.
Yes, that is good.
But what about-- yes, that is also appropriate.
But actually what I'm talking about is-- yeah, that one.
That is the one.
The Viral Texts project at Northeastern University
is studying popular 19th century texts.
And after studying 2.7 million pages from 500 newspapers
to determine what kinds of things
may warrant being called viral by 1800s standards,
they figured out that among the most popular formats
was the list.
Specifically, "The Fates of the Apostles,"
a list detailing the various and occasionally gruesome
demises of Jesus' followers.
Other popular primordial listicles, they say,
concerned the life spans of different animals.
And a piece titled simply "Facts Worth Noting," perhaps penned
by Matthew Santoro's great grandfather.
The point being that even if it feels
like ours is the listicle era and that listicles feel
super internet, you can hold that VOIP phone
because they are super not.
Their prevalence on the hypo-compute global magnet
is a reflection of the fact that they
were prevalent in the hypo-analog local minor spheres
which came before it.
And listicles have that staying power
because they are undemanding.
Seven thorough analyses of the concept of justice
a good listicle would not make.
That's another thing.
We call it an essay.
Listicles are inviting.
They're readable.
And lots of what accounts for that readability is the subject
matter we tend to associate with them.
Stuff like "Eight Unusually Large Musical Instruments."
"37 Alt Rock Songs You Haven't Thought
About Since the Late '90s." "10 Signs He's Low-Key Into You."
Or "21 Failed Inventions."
That last one is really good, I promise.
Though lots of people may see those titles and groan
in exhaustion.
Which brings us to listicle stigma and their reputation
as digital draws, albeit absurdly popular digital draws.
Partially, there's a sub-stigma here carried by "click-baity"
headlines, which listicles are very likely to have.
As Cracked points out, though, we may complain,
but if something's not titled list-ily, you don't click it.
You just don't.
The larger stigma, though, argues
that listicles aren't real.
They're lazy or incomplete.
And so the information contained within them
is worthless or idle.
Writing for "Good" magazine, Jennifer Billock and Katie
Wudel positioned listicles as the opposite of thinking,
saying that they let our brains off the hook
and they cater to distraction while abandoning nuance.
Abby Stern at "Lady Clever" writes
how bored are we as a society that with all
of the political and social issues
going on in this country and all over the world,
we still give this kind of vapid verbal vomit so much attention.
And so we may be led to ask.
If they are so hate-able, what are the top eleventy reasons
listicle are so in demand?
As is often the case with things like mass
produced baked snack foods and particularly emotional pop
music, there's a degree of guilt at the intersection
of public stigma and private self-awareness which
causes us to think we should not be enjoying these things.
But then also there's that voice in the back of your head
that's like, go ahead.
Do it.
One won't hurt.
It's fine.
What's the big deal?
And then it's amazing.
And as long as it's not the only thing you
consume, what's the problem?
Listicles, like snack cakes, are engineered
to touch these parts of your brain that go, ooh!
OK.
Nice.
Unfortunately, I don't know too much about brains.
But luckily, Vanessa over at Brain Craft
is standing by to talk about some
of the psychology of the list.
You know, Mike, listicles and snack cakes
have a lot more in common than you may realize.
When you see a snack cake-- let's
call it shortbread-- the neurotransmitter dopamine is
released in your brain and you crave the shortbread.
You expect this reward.
So when you eat it, you experience pleasure
and your brain learns to want shortbread even more.
Other than seeking out delicious food,
we also seek out information.
In one study, macaque monkeys were offered
a rewarded that varied in size.
And by selecting a certain target on a computer screen,
the monkeys would seek out information
about the size of their reward before they received it.
And then researchers noticed that spike in dopamine,
normally seen before a reward, appeared before the monkey
received any information.
The monkeys came to anticipate and want more information
from a computer.
The reward mechanism that leads to monkeys loving information
or us loving junk food is the same thing
that encourages our love of listicles.
Their titles allows us to perfectly anticipate
what's in an article, so we crave that information.
They're satisfying because we consume what we expected
and then we want more.
Listicles are information dense and easy to digest.
The perfect little snack cake.
For more, head over to my journal "Brain Corrupt,"
or watch my full video.
Link listed in the doobly doo.
Our brains are, of course, a big part of the story, but not
the whole one.
We don't sit down in front of our computers and go, hm,
time for some brain chemicals, before typing
B-u-z-z-f-e-e-d.c-o-m.
The fact of the matter is that we-- people,
humans who live in societies and cherish
our precious civilization-- love putting things in order.
If humanity had a motto, it would probably
be putting stuff in order since between 200,000
and 60,000 years ago.
This is especially true if you're English.
But especially if you're German.
But especially, I recently learned, if you're Austrian.
Hello, Austria.
But I mean, also, hey, let's talk about the internet
for a second.
The internet as a set of technologies and communities
with their own culture is all about putting things in order.
By and large, the internet-- the websites
that we interact with most frequently--
are powered by databases.
And the database is really just a list.
Under all of those listicles, it's just lists all the way
down until you get to the turtles.
But then maybe at that point, it's just lists of turtles.
I don't know.
I like turtles.
Sometimes the top level internet
lists that we interact with are explicitly
ordered and ranked, and sometimes implicitly
through the comparison of prominently featured metrics.
And I mean, staying in sync with the amount
of time it takes the planet to rotate around the sun is cool
and all, but we all know that the real reason the year ends
and then starts again is so that literally
everyone on the planet can make their best of the year list.
Lists structure so much of our internet
experience because of how they communicate or impart
authority.
Bram Vijgen-- whose last name I am probably butchering,
so Bram, if you end up seeing this, I'm really sorry--
writes that the listicle author specifically, quote, "always
tries to imply a certain form of authority
via the title of the listicle.
The only way to check if this authority holds up
is to browse through the listicle itself," end quote.
The listicle is incomplete without judgement
by its audience.
Whether that authority holds up or not isn't the question.
It's that authority is posited in the first place.
Basically, the list-- with the listicle
being the most visible pop cultural instance of it--
is the first item on the list of things
which help us organize stuff, often into categories which
denote qualities, and qualities indicate status,
and status, like the spice, must flow.
Status extends life.
Status expands consciousness.
Status is vital to space travel?
I mean, I guess, yeah, actually.
Even if listicles aren't ordered,
status is implied by the fact that these specific things
have been collected.
The author is saying that these 15 hedgehogs with things
that look like hedgehogs are the hedgehogs with things
that look like hedgehogs worth putting into a list.
And by reading the list, you are gaining knowledge
about the hedgehogs with things that look like hedgehogs
worth knowing about.
And you're going to be able to do it quickly
because the title tells you everything you
need to know about the content.
Isaac, et al, called this cognitive economy.
Going in, we already know how everything fits together.
The form, content, structure, and our experience of it
all work in concert to create a piece of content which
draws utmost attention to the manner of its creation,
leaving us free to move from item to item without having
to do the intense cognitive work of figuring out like,
how all of these hedgehogs relate to one another.
Listicle titles are kind of like The Dude's rug.
They tie it all together.
The Dude abides.
However, far from being empty entertainment calories,
it is arguable-- and I think convincingly
so-- that the list and the listicle
are how we determine, assort, and communicate our values,
our very culture.
Arika Okrent wrote for the University of Chicago magazine
that the listicle is, in fact, a literary form.
In the way the novel cuts a rather nebulous figure--
the novel isn't and does not deal with one particular thing,
but is rather a form which organizes content-- so too does
the listicle.
Dismissing it out of hand is like dismissing essays, albums,
or portraits.
The list is not perfect for everything,
but everything, including the list, is perfect for something.
She writes that lists may not lead us
to a deeper understanding of the world,
but they give us the reassuring sense
that understanding is at least possible.
Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, who wrote
"The Name of the Rose--" which is
one of my favorite books of all time.
And if you haven't read it please do so.
It is so good.
Goes some steps further.
He says, beyond helping us understand our world,
lists allow us to structure it.
This may not be surprising coming
from a man that wrote a book titled "The Infinity of Lists,"
but the position is defensible.
The Bill of Rights, Martin Luther's 95 Theses, the top 10
ways to make sure that you definitely don't go to he--
I mean, the 10 commandments, dictionaries, encyclopedias,
ledgers.
All lists which provide structure to life.
This, Eco says, makes the list the origin of culture.
What does culture want, he asks der Spiegel?
To make infinity comprehensible.
And how, as a human being, does one face infinity?
How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible?
Through lists.
Through catalogues.
Through collections in museums and through encyclopedias
and dictionaries.
In the same interview, Eco goes on
to describe Google as both list and tragedy?
So it's anyone's guess how he may feel about the listicle
specifically.
No doubt he would balk at the idea of its internetness,
though.
For me, I do see the listicle not only
as something of a possibly easily abusable literary form,
but also as a way for us to construct, communicate,
and define our values and preferences.
Sometimes, those values or preferences
seem minor or unbelievably niche.
But it's no matter.
As Eco says, it's a way for us to deal with infinity,
with the infinity of what's out there
and the infinity of what needs sorting within ourselves.
Creating and reading listicles helps, I think.
But maybe you don't.
Let me know your top seven thoughts
about lists in the comments.
And I will respond to some of them
in next week's comment response video.
In this week's comment response video,
we talk about your thoughts regarding language
being a virus and "Metal Gear Solid."
If you want to watch that one, you can click right here.
Or find a link in the doobly doo.
Thanks again to Vanessa for enlightening us
about the relationship between lists and brains.
If you haven't already watched her video,
there's also a link to that in the doobly doo.
And of course, while you're there,
you should definitely subscribe to Brain Craft.
Also, you may have noticed that things look a little different.
The set is moving.
Where we shoot Idea, the studio is moving.
And the stuff moved before we did.
So we had to kind of improvise.
Um.
Here's a weasel here.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a sub-Reddit links
in the doobly doo.
And the tweet of the week comes from Dan Sanderson
who points us towards a web tool that allows you to simulate
complex systems using emoji.
I've spent some minutes with it.
Um, I think I'm starting to get it.
But what I definitely do get about it
is that it's interesting and more than a little strange.
And hey, in case you were curious,
this episode of Idea Channel was sponsored by Dropbox.
If you're designing, presenting, writing, or building,
Dropbox makes it easy to work together on any file.
Because hey, if you can work with anyone, anywhere,
any way you want, the world will surely
be full of more interesting things.
Dropbox.
All yours.
And the last but certainly not least, this episode
was brought to you by the very hard work of this list
of very talented people.
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