By K. A. Laity
If there's one thing I hate about the end of the year, it's the proliferation of Top Ten (and Top 100 and so on) lists. Everywhere you turn, there's another blowhard detailing what was really best about the last year or decade or even century. It really irks me.
To explain why, I have created my own Top Ten list in the hopes that the utter irony and chutzpah of this move will cause reality as we know it to implode or at the very least bore everyone so much that they swear off top ten lists forever.
10) Lazy Journalism
"Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence." -- Kingsley Amis
What's that? Your column is due and you only have half an hour to knock it out? Why not come up with a top ten list? For most journalists that’s the simplest solution. Even better, if you're already in a pub with your friends (and what good journalist isn't?), they can do most of the work for you and in the end feel grateful because they helped you write your column.
9) Elevating the Critic
Any idiot with a platform immediately seizes the reins of competence upon composing a "best of" list: the average critic has little more training than the average college student, though better connections. The confidence in credentialism in our culture assures a certain amount of trust for anyone whose name appears in a by-line regardless of the lack of merit the owner of that name (if that is their real name) might have.
8) Completely Subjective
When I lived in Connecticut, there was a film critic who proved a fairly accurate barometer of movies for me: anything he loved, I was bound to hate. Needless to say I never read a single one of his annual top ten lists without my lip curling into a satisfied sneer as I laughed at the films he identified as the very finest of a given year. With as much blatant "synergy" being used to promote every product, it's a wonder we trust anything we see, read or eat.
7) Cementing Biases
Hollywood is a-buzz: Kathryn Bigelow might be the first woman to finally win an Oscar for directing. Why have so few female directors been nominated for Oscars? Hmmmm. Let's look at some top ten lists…
6) Rhetorical Tools
Closely related to #7, there's the way top ten lists rhetorically shape the underlying discussion of what is superior. Why does MFA-style writing get rewarded in year-end lists and for lucrative prizes? Could it be that other genres really suck? Or are they consistently overlooked for some reason? Those who make the rules shape the debate.
5) Artificially Limitin
Who says there were ten best of anything? What if there were only seven? What if there were twelve? Ten is such a nice round number, no one looks much beyond it.
4) David Letterman
You will never make as much money with your top ten list as he does. No one will give you a television program and a bandleader. You will not get younger, more attractive people to sleep with you.
3) Encourages Trivia Hounds
There are people who collect these things; they follow statistics and calculate imaginary outcomes. This must not be encouraged. From football freaks to trainspotters, there is far too much obsessive behaviour in the world.
2) Adds to Free Floating Anxiety
The FBI Top Ten Most Wanted list (which still includes Osama Bin Laden; you'd almost think he'd have a special mention on his own) features information that will help you find these individuals (assuming you do). Alleged Boston mobster, Whitey Bulger's profile contains the following:
Bulger is an avid reader with an interest in history. He is known to frequent libraries and historic sites. Bulger may be taking heart medication. He maintains his physical fitness by walking on beaches and in parks with his female companion, Catherine Elizabeth Greig. Bulger and Greig love animals. Bulger has been known to alter his appearance through the use of disguises. He has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, and Mexico.
Now you're going to be looking over your shoulder at the library <i>and</i> at the beach. Do you really need that? The guy with the 'tache looks suspicious. Can you remember what it said about Bulger? He uses disguises and travels "extensively"—is that him?
1) They Make Us More Stupid
Yes, our brains need to compartmentalize in order to make sense of the endless input of data that comes through our five senses so we don't curl up in a ball and just rock back and forth. But we don't need to encourage the over-simplification that so many crave.
It's always been the cri de coeur: Don't make me learn, don't make me figure it out: just give me easy answers. "Do I have to know this for the test?" Every instructor cringes at those words and the jettisoning that seems to be happening even as it's asked. Yes, you do have to know it: not for a test, not for an assignment, but because you don't want to end up dribbling into a cup when you might have been one of those wise elders we hear so much about.
Image via about a girl music blog