Throwback Thursday: Why We Like Lists (Six Years Ago Today)

Why are we so fascinated with lists? You can't turn around without seeing them. I'm talking here about the kinds of lists that we read in magazines and newspapers or see on television.

For example, you're watching a football game and they show the ten greatest plays of the most recent NFL season. They could just show great plays, but no, they give you a countdown. Number 10, number nine, etc. Rolling Stone will have the 100 Greatest Rock Albums of all time... The 100 Greatest Male Vocalists.... the 500 Best Album Covers. Forbes annually does profiles on the 400 richest people in the world.

Our fascination with lists never ends, and we keep making more of them. Perhaps it's because we have an innate desire to organize the universe. I mean, if you just had everything out there in piles of information without lists, what would that be like? So we number things and rank them, greatest actors, greatest films, most beautiful out of the way places to hike, most exciting places take a romantic vacation, most helpful websites, shortest NBA professionals, best golfers, greatest battles, top party schools... There's no end to it. And the appeal seems equally endless.

Here are two sites that assemble unusual lists. Some in the previous paragraph came from http://www.toptenz.net/, a site that seems to exist solely for the purpose of assembling lists of ten. Today's list of lists begins with Top 10 Mind-Blowing Movies.

Maybe that's the fun part, just trying to guess which films or items will end up on their list. We can even argue with them about it. "Why wasn't Psycho on the list?" you want to ask.

http://listverse.com/ is another website that lists lists. Listverse differs from TopTenz in that they don't just have lists of ten. The second list here today is Top 15 Greatest Silent Films. Other lists this morning include, 10 Male Supporting Actors w Deserved Oscars, 10 Fascinating Facts About The Gift of Life, 10 Gamblers Who Beat The Casino and 10 Places With Morbid Names. (You always wanted to know, didn't you?"

So, why do we love list making so much? Here are the top ten reasons inquiring minds want to know...

Originally posted six years ago today here at Ennyman's Territory.