Top way to make your own lists!
Posted: June 16th, 2009 | Author: Foamcow | Filed under: Drunken Ranting, General | | 4 Comments »
I don’t know about you but I’m pretty fed up seeing endless, arbitrary lists of things being peddled as decent web content.
Very few of these are genuinely insightful or useful and they are generally just a way to drag more or less useless traffic to a website (normally a blog mostly consisting of lists) where said traffic can leave an equally brainless and irrelevant comment.
What’s more, these lists are often an arbitrary length. Top 50 and top 10 are pretty standard but a bit last year, so often we get “top 13″, “top 8″ ? Come on, make at least a small effort to get 10 or 15. Just goes to prove that much of what is posted is recycled crap backed by ameobic sensibilities.
That’s not to say there aren’t some great lists out there and I’ll freely admit that I’ve found some good stuff from reading these lists. I’d say the ratio of good to bad is something like 1:20,000,000 though.
The general modus operandi seems to be:
- Pick some topic, preferably something that’s been done a few hundred times before. If you can’t think of anything then just look for another list you like the look of.
- Type a few words related to your chosen topic into Google (or you can use Alta Vista, Dogpile, Excite – your choice really) and copy paste the top 7, 9, 34, 61 or whatever number you want, results.
- If you don’t already have one, set up a blog… or a MySpace page. It’s not hard but you could get a Ukranian coding team to help or failing that ask a grown up to lend a hand.
- Make a post and show the links you found, with some nice screenshots. Jumble them up a bit.
- Give your post a title like “Most awesomest <thing> ever!!!” or “<random number> essential <things> you must read or you’ll die in a pool of vomit”. Something catchy like that.
- Hit up ANY social network you can think of and whore your ass like a drug addled runaway teen. The important thing is keep repeating the same bloody thing over and over and over until someone tracks you down and jams a metal spike in your forehead… or AOL cuts off your internets.
- Sit back and bask in the fame and adulation of the intellectuals that leave comments telling you how great your list is and how much they will come back to your site. These people often also talk about gambling websites and sites with pictures of naked celebrities. This is normal. Don’t worry.
So, not being one to shy away from the bandwagon – in fact I prefer to pre-book in order to avoid the queues – here are my deeply meaningful and carefully compiled lists.
Top 6 Twitter users that follow me and wanted to be on a list
- @kassy4
- @spongeproject
- @alexeld
- @Japh
- @pixelcellar
- @thewebsiteplace
Top 4 Twitter users who follow me and didn’t want to be on a list
- @createsean
- @pixelcellar
- @petemorley
- name withheld
Top, er, one Twitter user that follows me and wanted to be on both lists to “cover all the bases”
- @iblamefish
There. Deep, meaningful and insightful.
I’m going to make a list that outlines the features of “a drug addled runaway teen”. Which having thought about it, could actually apply to any decent list of “Top 6 features for a tramp” or “Teenager’s list of ingredients – 8 ways to avoid the cliché”.
Great list!!”!1 I really liked the one about the hot celebrity gamblers. You suck.
(Have I covered all the stereotypes yet?)
Woohoo! I made it onto a list! I’m going to go and tell all my friends that I made it onto a list!!1!!!!!1!one
Oh, and other sphincter clenchingly unnecessary nice sucking up comments here.
On a serious note though – great post, it’s about time that someone stood up to the list epidemic.
My top 3 reasons for liking this post;
#1. It is true – top lists are everywhere!
#2. There are only so many re-tweeted top lists I can handle a day. 1000s of people RTing’ Smashing Mag top lists just gets too much.
#3. See point number one.
Are we running out of original content for blogs?