5 Minutes About Your Awful List Posts

Project 365 #140: 200509 Hell's Kitchen
They told me to never bring a knife to a gunfight but no one said one word about flame throwers so I figured fuck it, if you are going to try and throw a few grenades about you might as well do it.

And then I remembered the timer is running and that I only have five minutes to tell you about how some of your list posts are awful.

Here goes:

I HATE list posts about men and women collectively or separately that tell the reader what they don’t know about the other sex. That’s because they invariably rely upon gross generalizations that really can’t be applied collectively.

What I hate even more is when you point out the lack of specifics and substance and they say you can’t understand because you have privilege that prevents you from understanding why group XYZ feels as they do.

Fuck you and your comments about privilege.

Yeah, I sometimes swear on this blog.

If you want to have a conversation about a topic because you think it is important then let’s have a conversation. Let’s talk about the whole thing, the good and the bad and see if we can find some common ground.

But don’t tell me I can’t possibly understand and call me ignorant or unenlightened because I disagree with your perspective. Maybe your privilege is based upon telling people to STFU when there isn’t enough substance to support your POV.

List Posts Based Upon Popularity

Let’s not pretend that lists of the funniest, best, smartest or greatest bloggers that are based upon popularity have any real meaning because they don’t.

If your list is based upon who got the most votes you have created a meaningless moment in the sun for some poor Joe who hasn’t realized that popularity stopped carrying weight when we got out of school or at least it should have.

Sometimes it does creep back into things. Sometimes popularity means you don’t have to work as hard as others because you have that certain something that creates charisma and people think you are clever, meaningful and handsome.

In that case I congratulate you for being lucky too.

List Posts I Like

I do like some list posts. I like the ones that provide a little meat, they come with a little comment about why things appear on the list.

If you list your favorite plugins I like reading about why you like them and how you think the KIWI widget is faster loading than some of the premium versions out there.

When you say you have a list of the best cellphones and you provide criteria for why, like ease of use, operating systems, cost and how efficient it is I smile.

That is because there is substance and specifics.

Maybe I am too anal for gross generalizations and too grumpy for popularity contests. Don’t know, but five minutes is up.

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2 Comments

  1. Larry June 6, 2014 at 1:55 pm

    List posts are in. People read and respond to them at a higher rate – generally, or so I am told.
    Anyway, why you so pissed off about it?

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