meish dot org: life, unfolding

1. Nearly a decade ago, when I worked in the editorial department of a major ISP, one of the homepage editors had a theory that while lists were always a good thing, there was a magic list number - a sort of divine proportion, if you like - which was the perfect length for any list of items, where perfection is measured in people’s enacted interest which is proxied by the action of following a link trail.

   This number, I can reveal, is seven.

2. Her reasoning was this:
   • Five items is too short: it feels like there’s not enough content there, or not enough diversity in the items.
   • Ten items is too many to digest in a short time. People don’t have time to go through ten things, mostly.
   • Six feels too arbitary. Like, why six? Did they just run over? It’s like having eleven, or one hundred and two.
   • In the same way, nine feels lacking somewhat. Couldn’t you think of another?
   • Eight is difficult to read. People don’t like the word, for some reason, and besides, it means you can’t used the word “great” afterwards, because it sounds daft.
   • Seven is a natural, friendly number. People are used to sevens, because we work in them all the time - weeks, and so on. You can click through seven items easily.

   So since seven was the magic number, lots of galleries, lists and content was produced which conformed to or was jimmied into a septimal configuration.

3. I’m not sure that this theory necessarily holds water, especially as the appetite for snack-sized, easily-digestible and mildly stimulating content - the web equivalent of those energy bars you can buy at corner shops to give you easy, bland sustenance on-the-go - has grown rapidly in the age of linkbaiting.

   I’ve noticed - as I’m sure you have - the growing trend for listification of web content. Every day on del.icio.us, digg or any of the clones, there’s link after link to web content and blog articles of information which has been sorted into a list order and given a listy headline in order to catch people’s eye.

   • 34 Wordpress templates you won’t have seen.
   • 10 reasons to give up chewing tobacco.
   • 8 people you haven’t heard of.

   My favourite so far has been “137 ways to make your life simpler” which I thought was sort of funny, because surely having the lowest possible number of things to do would improve the simplicity of your life?

4. But what decides the number of items in the list? If the number isn’t scientifically or traditionally standardised - 7 days of the week, 24 hours in the day - or enforced by a limited supply of resources - 12 places where you can buy a trilby on a Wednesday, 8 airlines with a shonky safety record, 39,450 people called Algenon - then it seems that the number of items is instead dictated by either
   a) how many items the author could think of or be bothered to find
   b) a nice round or impressive-sounding number (see (1) above)

5. I have another theory about numbers, which is that everyone has numbers which they return to again and again. Not in a 23 sort of way, but because they are familiar in some way. This is often revealed when people exaggerate - I’ve only seen that film, like, fifty-eight times; there were about eighty-seven thousand people on Oxford Street this afternoon….

   I frequently drift back to 87, probably because I lived in a house with that number. Do you have a number like that?

   I’m not suggesting that the number of items in a list are always dictated by a number feeling particularly “right” to the author, but I do think that some numbers feel innately more familiar and pleasing than others, and this tends to be different for each person, with some golden/divine exceptions.

6. Then, of course, there are the omnipresent list programmes which no Saturday night schedule (or repeat-heavy sister-channel) is complete without. Though they may have their roots in the chart countdowns familiar to anyone who’s ever tuned in to their local station at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, finger hovering above the pause button on the tape recorder, such formats have spread like Santa-Ana inspired wildfire over the last decade to every corner of the schedules on radio and TV. Especially TV.

   In fact, you can barely switch on the box of an evening without witnessing a parade of talking heads mithering about why they hate/love [delete as applicable] some item or person or event which has haplessly made it into the countdown.

7. There’s no subject which cannot be listified. Years, events, jokes, music videos, people, places…the list of potential list subjects is, with no irony whatsoever, endless.
8. I want to make a list programme called “100 Greatest Numbers Of All Time”, which would go something like this:
   • First up, at number 100, we’ve got….100! Here’s an interview with Nick Heyward from famed Eighties one-hit wonders Haircut 100 about why this number rocks so hard.
   • Next up, in 99th place, it’s….99! Nena of Eurovision red balloon fame explains the lure of the nines, while Mr Whippy is in the studio to help us understand how the famous icecream snack got its name
   • At 98, it’s…..98! Here’s Stuart Maconie (or is it the other one? Collins?) on why 98 is brilliant.
   • Coming up after the break, we’ll hear from the Fahrenheit regulation board about why you should care about 97, plus The Alarm on why 68 Guns are better than 67. And much more! Don’t touch that dial!

   And so on, all the way down to three (amigos, stooges, blind mice, men in a boat, and someone from De La Soul talking about why it’s the magic number), two (some tango dancers, a couple of twins and an afternoon tea waiter) and, finally, one (Bono, obviously, plus someone from the Marley clan if they’re available).

   Ideally, I’d throw in a few red herrings, for variety. At number 20, we’d have the number 101, for example. Just to keep things interesting, you understand.

   And why not? My list, my decision about what goes where.

9. List-format shows are lazy programme-making, just as, in much the same way, web content in list form can be lazy content-creation. Pick a number. Pick a subject. Collect resources (links, talking heads, examples, etc). Lather, rinse, repeat.

   If there isn’t a good reason for content being in a list format - to make it easier to digest or understand, or to show hierarchical importance, or to explore a finite number of resources - and the list format is just being used in order to create catchy headlines which are digg-friendly, then ultimately, you’re not helping content become better understood or enjoyed. Which is a shame.

   Having said that, if you’re stuck for some content for your site or TV schedule, look no further than this handy list-o-matic generator, which will give you and unlimited* number of digg-friendly headline ideas for content. Delicious linkbait, guaranteed to have the crowds tuning in/clicking in droves**

   
   

   

    

   Try again if you’re not satisfied. And if you get anything particularly good, copy and paste it as a comment….

10. A numbered list makes any content seem more authoritative, even when it isn’t - as if there’s design in the ordering of things, when (mostly) there is none. Fact.

That being said, I make lists all the time. I’m not saying they’re bad, just that there’s a lot of tosh about.

* not mathematically true
** unenforceable by law