always missing deadlines

I’ve been thinking about lists. The first thing I want to say about that is I think they’re kind of dumb. I should explain further that it’s not the form of the list that I find so irritating. Instead, it’s the way society has decided to take this incredibly versatile framework and pretty much reduce it to a countdown. The most persistent offender of this act is, naturally, the top ten. Want to know who the top ten Classical composers are? Some guy at the NY Times will tell you here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/arts/music/23composers.html?pagewanted=all. If Classical music isn’t your thing, then how about the top ten NFL quarterbacks? Here you go: http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/top-10-quarterbacks-in-n-f-l/. I swear I wasn’t trying to pull up the New York Times twice, but apparently that reputable journal of information has their hands in a lot of jars. And if you’re not a sports or music nut, how about the top ten most embarrassing moments at the Oscars? Well, I don’t have that, but I do have this instead: http://www.vh1.com/celebrity/2012-02-26/embarrassing-oscar-moments/.

Yes, the top ten has become to serious thought and analysis what pornography has become to real world working sexual relationships. They can be fun sometimes entertainment, but you rarely learn anything of real, practical value. So why do these things keep cropping up? Why does every show, sport season or group of guys who want to be a band they all like but aren’t good at anything but mimicry, have to have a top ten?

Lists, particularly fluff lists, are easy to digest. You don’t have to read through paragraphs of words, discern information and then come to a conclusion all by yourself. Nope, some ass with a keyboard has done all the hard work for you. So what if he’s sixty years old and thinks the top ten guitar players of all time all produced work between 1969 and 1973? Clearly he couldn’t possibly be biased by having grown up listening to those very musicians, nor would he let contempt for everybody younger than him ever cloud his musical judgement. No, you can trust that every single thought (often as little as one word) has been meticulously researched, polled and compiled with only the best intentions.

Lists make sure you know who belongs where. Let’s say you think Tom Hanks is one of the finest actors, but, in a cruel twist of fate, you have doubts as to just exactly how he stacks up against other actors like Al Pacino or Jimmy Stewart. The world demands that you figure out who would win if these guys had an act off. Enter the list. With barely a glance you can put your insecurities to rest and satisfy the most basic of human needs: judging other people on things that you yourself could never do. Maybe you want to just get an idea of who the best actors are. Maybe you’ve got a list of favorites and you want to see how they stack up against the be all end all. Then you can bitch and moan that the person who wrote the list doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about and come dangerously close to critical thinking.

Lists are final. Whatever gets printed in them goes. If Van Halen is only number three in the top ten list of most homoerotic hair bands, then that is the last word. You can lobby that they should be number two, but your complaints, typed in all caps because F#CK THESE IDIOTS. EVERYBODY KNOWS VAN HALEN RULES!!!!!, will fall upon blind eyes. All of the evidence has come in, everybody of importance who might have an opinion on the subject has been consulted and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it...except find some other website with their own list. Or write one yourself.

I’m not sure exactly what top tens and twenties and hundreds mean in our society. I don’t know why we feel that greatness is finite. Or that worseness is even more so. Call it sensationalism or laziness or an insatiable appetite for controversy, but so long as people accidentally let their nipples slip on camera or screw up singing the National Anthem, there will be lists, and people will continue to judge and judge again things and events and people that have been judged thousands of times before, only to come to the same conclusions.