Why I loathe list articles – let me count the reasons
Lists often state or recommend things we already know, and those about food are among the worst
AEvery month, every media portal generates a ‘new restaurants to try’ list
s a so-called writer, I have come to loathe one aspect of my profession that has thrived with the digital age: listicles. This portmanteau comprises an article made from a list. If you’re online, they appear, teasing you with random but curious headlines – “10 things you did not know about Keanu Reeves”, “Eight undervalued stocks to buy” and “Look 21 again in seven easy steps”.
Examples of this form of content seem especially prevalent now, and in food writing. Every month there are new and disappointingly uninspired features about “best new restaurants”, “hottest cocktails and where to find them”, and “dishes you have to try now”.
Like everyone, I get curious and fall for the clickbait. I tapped a link recently that promised to reveal the best uniquely Hong Kong dishes. But there wasn’t anything new. In fact, anyone born in the city would already be familiar with the dim sum places, wonton shops and cart noodle outlets the writer seems to have just discovered.
It makes me wonder if the same person landed in New York, would they pen the same kind of listicle – perhaps claim discovery of Katz’s Deli’s Reuben sandwich, or tell Spanish Harlem why tacos are great and how to make them?
I have to disclose that I, too, have written listicles. I assumed most writers put in as much research as I did when compiling lists. But it seems they don’t.
A Covid-derived trend is staycations, and there’s no shortage of listicles trying to enlighten us on where to go for the “best” city stays. But they’re full of five-star hotels like the Peninsula, Shangri-La, Mandarin Oriental and Four Seasons, written as if most people have never heard of them. If these millennial journalists want to impress me, at least google some interesting stays in Sai Kung, Lantau or the New Territories that I don’t know about.
University of Central Florida lecturer and columnist Nathan Holic had the best rebuttal to listicle spam spreading on his Facebook feed. “Dear List Article, you are killing us,” he began, a tad hyperbolically, in a column. Ironically, his main points about why listicles are bad for you can be boiled down to a sub-listicle of three reasons.
1. Listicles don’t care if they are useful or not;
2. Their true purpose is to waste our time; and
3. They teach us to demand less of what we read.
What annoys me these days is that every month every media portal generates a “new restaurants to try” list, which I find mostly disingenuous and only selectively informative.
Lots of good new restaurants don’t make the cut simply because writers don’t know about them. Let’s face it, they are busy enough collating press releases – you don’t expect them to go out, investigate and discover new food and beverage outlets for themselves, do you?