9 Reasons Lists Are Demonic

9 Reasons Lists Are Demonic

Lists are running rampant on the net these days. Here are maybe, approximately 9 or so reasons that lists are written by demons from Hell, written by yours truly, self-proclaimed authority on all that is holy and unholy, me, Jack Valtrades, AKA The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Please enjoy, and don’t forget to subscribe to my mailing list!

  1. DEADLY SINS

I hate #lists. Most of them, anyway. They’re a symptom of an Internet full of hacks catering to the lowest common denominator, kowtowing to what people want to read rather than what the #writer wants to write. They cater to people’s desire for a quick fix, contributing to laziness in reading and learning. But…

  1. TEMPTATION AND DEMONIC POSSESSION

Anyone Can Fall Victim to Their Allure, including me, the guy who just said he hates lists. I can’t help clicking on their catchy titles. Sometimes it’s because I’m genuinely interested, and sometimes because I want to nitpick about the writer’s choices. Like this Rough Guides post on the top 10 countries to visit in 2016. Why isn’t #Thailand on the list? It’s my favorite country to visit. Who gave this writer the authority to leave Thailand off the list? The writer did, that’s who. And don’t you forget it.

Every once in a while I come across something I agree with or find valuable. But it’s rare. More often than not I’ve wasted my time reading garbage that I disagree with, which is fine. I understand what I’m getting myself into.

  1. FALSE IDOLS

Who the hell is writing these lists? Are they experts on these topics, or did they just scour the net and throw together a #hodgepodge of items? I’d say it’s often the latter. When anyone can pretend to be an authority, how can you be sure if someone really knows what they’re talking about? I guess one way is to be well-read on the topic yourself. And reading lists doesn’t contribute much to becoming well-read.

  1. GO TOWARDS THE LIGHT - MISSING INFORMATION

Maybe the list is missing the one thing you need to make your life complete, or at least the one thing that would somehow be useful to you. For example, this article doesn’t mention that you might want to stretch or do #yoga before #meditation. And I don’t agree with the tip on posture. As I meditate, as I get more and more relaxed and notice the slight movements my body makes as I sit still, my spine starts to straighten naturally, on its own. I remember when I first started meditating years ago, trying to force my back straight, and feeling a bit awkward and tense.

There’s nothing wrong with tips. But some things are complicated and can’t be summed up in ten easy steps.

  1. IMBALANCE - ORDER OVER CHAOS

I purposely made this list out of order. #chaos needs love, too. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with order. It can certainly be useful. But just by putting a group of items into some arbitrarily determined order, a writer can magically imbue it with an air of authority. Just follow the obsessive-compulsive ritual of putting things in numerical order, and the gods will grant you clicks. It reinforces the idea at the back of your mind that there is a standard value for everything that is always determined by others and not by YOU.

You determine a thing’s value to you, by your own authority. If you want to delegate that authority to faceless bloggers, or worse yet, DEMONS!, that is your right. Up to you.

  1. SOUL CRUSHING - DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PEOPLE WITH MISSING FINGERS

Ten - the number of fingers humans are usually born with. Also the basis of the most popular counting system on the planet, base ten. The connection is obvious. Ten is a revered number because that just happens to be the number of convenient counting thingies that we evolved to carry around at the ends of our arms. But not everyone is in possession of such a glorious number of #grabby-appendages. Failed #yakuza, Jerry Garcia, my late grandfather - the list of digit-impaired people goes on and on. Oh, god, there is a list for that, too. How do you think they feel when they read top ten lists and are subconsciously reminded that they are not like the rest of us ten fingered folk?

I’ll tell you. They feel like their souls are being crushed by #demons that want the internet to be a desolate cyberscape of bland #homogeneity.

  1. PARABLES - NO READING BETWEEN THE LINES

Lists insult the reader’s intelligence by breaking things down into easy to digest morsels of oversimplification. They don’t leave enough space to read between their rigidly ordered lines. Sometimes the best lessons are not so clearly laid out. #ambiguity can encourage critical thinking and creativity.

  1. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

If you’re a Christian, God already gave you a list. It says you shall worship no god before him. So stop worshipping goddamn lists. If you’re an #atheist you shouldn’t be buying into the authority of an invisible person who lives in the cloud anyway. If you’re in between these two extremes, you probably have your own master list already as well. Personally, I believe in the Captain, a non-being that defies definitions and gives me my authority, which includes the authority to make distinctions between shit and Shinola. The Captain doesn’t do commandments, but he has two suggestions. Number one is believe in yourself, number two is learn how to swim in the sea of bullshit.

  1. APOCALYPSE - LISTS WILL END THE INTERNET

If people don’t wake up to the reality that lists are being made by impish demons who want to dumb everything down, the Internet will devolve into a bunch of lists, with a master list dictating which lists are reliable and authoritative and which ones aren’t. Our device screens will open up and suck us into the belly of the beast, where we’ll be forced to read lists of Justin Bieber’s best and worst moments for ever. And ever. And ever.

To see this article in its original form, head over to the SPG Blog

Published on Hive on 2016-07-17. View the original post and discussion on Hive.