Top 10 Reasons List Posts Suck
August 2nd, 2009
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If you’re anything like me, you’ve gotten quite annoyed with list posts. You know, the ones with headlines like “[Number] [Adjective] Ways To [Adverb] [Verb] Your [Noun].”
It’s not that anything is wrong with this kind of headline per se, except that it’s become a formula for lazy people to exploit the flaw in our evolution that makes us inexplicably drawn to numbers. And now that the internet has become saturated with this template, even the good list posts are lost in the noise.
Sure, I’ve written a list post here and there, with 1,000 Ways To Be Happy being a sarcastic example, and the post you’re reading now being an ironic one. But every time I see a Cosmo headline, I die a little inside.
Without further ado, here are the top 10 reasons list posts suck:
1. They’re hard on the readers.
WTF am I supposed to do with 213 Ways To Achieve Inner Peace? Don’t give me 213 ways. Give me one, and make it count.
2. They’re hard on the writers.
In the time it takes someone to come up with 213 Ways To Achieve Inner Peace, they could get plenty of more useful things done. Just because something is useless doesn’t mean it’s effortless.
3. Numbers don’t reflect value.
“This guy has 10 Ways To Make Money Online. OK, let’s get started! Oh wait, this guy has 20 Ways To Make Money Online. Wow, I’m gonna be rolling in it! Wait–OMG! This guy has 50 WAYS TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE! Cha-ching!”
4. List posts are easy to rehash.
Once you have a big list, you can crank out an unbelievable number of smaller list posts just by combining the items in different ways. Say you want to write about 10 Ways To Save Money. First, write a post about 100 Ways To Save Money, but don’t publish it.
Do you know how many lists of 10 you can get by taking subsets of those 100? A lot. 17,310,309,456,440 (17.3 trillion) in fact. And that’s assuming that you can’t reuse the same list in a different order. If a different order makes a list unique enough, you can get 62,815,650,955,529,472,000 (62.8 quintillion) lists of 10, starting from your list of 100.
Now what happens when everyone does that? That’s an awful lot of rehashed content.
5. Headlines are the appetizer, not the main course.
If you need a number and a spicy adjective in the headline to get people to read the post, what does that tell you about the post itself?
7. People can’t count.
Seriously, it’s ridiculous how many misnumbered list posts I’ve seen.
8. Lists give the illusion of substance.
Lists can be very useful for providing structure and organization. But in practice, they’re often used as a way to expand a few pieces of common sense into something that looks like a real post.
9. To reach whatever magical number they’re going for, bloggers often throw in a useless point.
Like this one.
10. List posts are easy social media bait.
Come on, you know you can’t resist the urge to Stumble and Tweet this. You know anything with a number is going to do well in social media, and you want to get credit for passing it along. We all do it, because the formula can’t fail. One of these days, I’ll give you 10 reasons why.
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:45 am
Haha, good one.
Some ideas can be expressed in lists, most can’t.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:55 am
I used to think that way, but then experimented with list posts when writing some guest posts for Zen Habits and actually find them useful…
As long as they’re well written.
The problem with list posts is that they allow for lazy writing because people tend to scan them more.
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
The list format is tired and over done. At best, it usually glosses over several interesting ideas/facts/suggestions without giving much information about any of them. At worst, well, they’re not even interesting.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:43 pm
@ Ivan, didn’t you just write Almost 39 Habits That Will Rock Your Life?
@ Alex, I agree that the format can be useful, but as you say, as long as they’re well written.
@ Wesley, yeah, in many cases I’d prefer them to go into depth on one than to just give a taste of many.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I’m right there with you, Hunter. Man… List posts are bummers.
OK – so they can be cool and quality sometimes–but they are overdone ad nauseum.
And there’s a simple reason for that: They’re easier to write, let’s be real. Moreover, it’s very easy to come up with a solid headline for a list post. Coming up with catchy headlines for non-list posts is much, much harder. It requires serious copywriting skills.
Look, I ain’t no hater. If anyone out there writes list posts and does really well with them–you have my sincere happiness for you. But I don’t really write them very often because I feel they don’t do a subject justice. That they’re not whimsical, and that they’re more an illusion than true, inspirational substance.
You gotta read this article. It says it all better than I can – http://writetodone.com/2008/06/02/why-single-idea-blog-posts-often-work-better-than-list-posts/
August 4th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
@ Bamboo Forest, I was shocked to see a post with that headline on Write to Done…until I saw that Leo didn’t write it!
Now I’m wondering if catchy headlines work if the post doesn’t support them. Like a headline of “100 Sure-Fire Ways to Achieve Eternal Happiness,” when the post only gives one way.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
They can be good if the writer actually explain what #1. XYZ actually means. When you just advise the reader to “just do this” without explanation, then I’m lost.
August 7th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
They’re like comments, Some you hate, some you love, most are useless self-promotion.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:29 am
@ Carla, gosh, I’d really hate a list post if I didn’t even know what they were talking about!
@ Nicole, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I guess it’s true when I think about all the spam comments that get automatically filtered out.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:26 am
LOL Hunter…I am glad I came to see this as I was just about to start a new article that, ready for this, was going to be a list post
But it is going to be a really valuable one, I swear – LOL
And the list is only going to be 5 numbers.
Ok, ok all kidding aside yes there are some list posts that you don’t know what to do with, as you said, who is going to remember anything over geez 20 tips really, never mind 100 or 200. Like you said, give one or two meaningful things to do not something most people will drown in.
But having said that, some are really good, and some really work for people, especially when they want to learn/scan something fast (again only if it is well written).
And wait a minute… isn’t this post of yours sort of a list post too
August 11th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
@ Evita, I’m sure you would only use list posts responsibly.
Yes, this is a list post, but only a list post about list posts can show the problem with list posts, or something like that.
August 12th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Thanks for the reply Hunter
Well I did my post on EvolvingWellness.com and as I started writing it, I realized that what I had in mind and what it actually evolved to turned out a little different. So instead of just one list post, I evolved it into an ongoing series. The length of the article was my deciding factor. But you bet, any list posts I do will be responsible, because I seriously want to add value and not just fill up space.
So thanks again for this article, it definitely gave me some good things to think about and helped me consider how to make my writing even more meaningful
August 27th, 2009 at 2:38 am
Haha! Ok, a couple of hours ago I was just talking to a friend of mine about how list posts seem to be really popular and then I come across this… CLASSIC!
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