10 Paragraphs About Lists You Need In Your Life Right Now

I’ll admit that the above is a little on the fatalistic side, but we all recognize that the list is the signature form of our time. (“37 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith in Pit Bulls.” “15 More Bizarre Kiddie Cartoon Conspiracy Theories.” “The 12 Meanest Ways to Tip a Waiter.” “22 Pictures of Miley Cyrus’ Open Mouth.”) The stream of content that rushes through our lives often seems like an absurdist spectacle of randomly generated specifics, a comic nightmare of futile enumeration.

.. In an interview with The Paris Review twenty years ago, Don DeLillo mentioned that “lists are a form of cultural hysteria.”

.. By not only allowing partial and fleeting engagement but by actively encouraging it, the list becomes the form which accommodates itself most smoothly to the way a lot of us read now, a lot of the time. It’s the house style of a distracted culture.