Last night, I picked up an issue of Stable Management magazine (I used to train horses for riding and jumping). Leafing through, I stopped at one particular article: Top Ten Ways to Organize your Tack Room, or something like that.
Wait. A “top ten” in my stable management magazine? The last place I ever thought to see “top ten” articles? The last place I wanted to see those types of articles?
I was looking forward to a good read on working with horses, organizing a stable or the latest on some equine illness. Instead, I found myself browsing a list of ten common sense suggestions like buying dollar-store baskets organize little things in tack room lockers. Amazing! Rejoice!
Duh.
“Top ten” (or “five best” or “13 most popular”) is a format that works. It attracts attention. People want to know what everyone else is doing, what’s hot so they can do it, what’s popular so they can be popular too, and new solutions they haven’t tried yet to old problems they still have. Plus, the format makes for great screen reading, fast and easy to skim.
“Top ten” works so well that it has left the building, snuck off the Internet and leached into print magazines. We soon won’t be reading anymore – we’ll just be scanning checklists. How nice.
Me? I think we can do waaay better, folks. Here are my top five reasons I think we should rise above top ten lists:
- If everyone writes on the top ten of X or the best of Y, then we’ll have a lot of identical articles floating around (and we already do). Where’s the original angle? There’s nothing creative about a top ten list that has been done a million times over by a million different writers – the top ten won’t change, only the name on the article.
- Who decides what makes it to the top ten list? What criteria do they use to add an item to the list? Is it popularity? Is it just interest? Is it because it works?
- Top ten lists usually don’t give advanced suggestions. I know that baskets are popular for sorting and Dora the Explorer items make a great toddler gift. Repeating common knowledge or common sense doesn’t give anything valuable to the reader.
- Top ten articles aren’t articles – they’re lists. We need to either find creative angles, areas that haven’t been covered, or expand on information found elsewhere to make the Internet a better place for learning and education.
- A list-style article assumes that I don’t have the time, interest or intelligence to read a more in-depth article that explains and educates me. While this may be true for me on the Internet, when I pick up a magazine, I expect a little more quality and respect.
Let’s find something better to write about, people.
