Today I was making a list of all the things I need to do this week, and I started thinking about how much I love lists. Something about putting your thoughts into numbered lines makes them seem so much more manageable. I hardly ever finish all the things on my lists, but just checking off a few of them makes me feel like I've gotten somewhere.
And then I realized I'm clearly not alone in my love of lists. The internet seems to have caught on as well. I get my news from theweek.com, a website that publishes a list every morning of "10 Things You Need to Know Today." I love it because it takes the work out of finding out the important things happening in the world. Instead of surfing through an endless sea of headlines, I get all of the highlights neatly numbered right in front of me. The Daily Beast does something similar, called the "Cheat Sheet," a vertical list of all the day's top headlines and a short blurb with each.
But we all know Buzzfeed is the king, making numbered lists out of anything and everything. Buzzfeed lists cover just about every subject, from "Jokes You Should Send Your Mom Right Now" to "Sad Meals Every College Student Knows." I even saw one today titled "8 Signs You're Wearing the Wrong Bra Size." Like, really? You need 8 signs before you're clued into the fact that your bra doesn't fit? But the point is, people love lists. They provide a refreshing burst of simplicity in the information overload that is the internet. They take all the noise and clutter and organize it into short pieces we can digest. In a world with an overwhelming number of voices competing for our attention, sometimes it's nice to just be told what you need to know.
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