I’m sorry I haven’t responded to your email yet. It’s just that I’ve been reading a really interesting piece called - “The top five French novels that are actually overrated.” You know the one that lists Madame Bovary, The Red and the Black, and A la recherche du Temps Perdu in the top three?
I’d been sent to this article by my search engine who saw I’d already clicked on the “8 things you need to do before 40” article, which had peaked my curiosity simply because I’m over forty now, and I need to regret what I didn’t do.
I know I shouldn’t be reading all these kinds of articles, but how can I resist? They’re addictive, they’re bitchy, and at the end of the day, they even make you feel smart.
Just the other night, I wowed my guests at dinner when I mentioned in 1-2-3 fashion the three best Serge Gainsbourg songs for karaoke, then followed it up over cheese with Hitler’s top 4 military mistakes in WWII. Of course I didn’t let on that I’d gleaned these bits of gold from articles I’d read that day. Instead I let them assume I knew the stuff– kind of like the guy who makes you think he’s read the book, when he’s only read the first three paragraphs of the book review.
But honestly, who really wants to hear about Hitler’s tactical blunders in a detailed way anyway? Especially over dinner. My audience that night and everyone else it seems nowadays wants power point bullet points; in countdown fashion- and they want it now. That way they then can prattle off the info at the next dinner to their friends. And so on and so forth.
Hence why I’m not so surprised editors want more and more of this stuff. In the good old days of 2010, the “ranking” type article was reserved for year-end review pieces in the December issue, or “the power 100 in media” piece which was always a great read – unless you weren’t in it. Now though, they’re on equal footing with normal articles (remember the ones that were a pain in the ass to write- because you had to do boring stuff like interviews and research), and all I have to do on Monday is come up with “The top 8 eco-vacation sites that have WIFI” and everyone’s hunky dory.
The problem is this kind of writing has started to spill into my personal life.
Last night I caught myself saying to my kids: “Give me the top 3 overlooked reasons why you should be able to watch TV right now?” And while taking out the garbage, I told my wife “Honey you’re watching one of the top 4 most underappreciated things I do each day.” Even this morning over coffee I pointed out to my cat that he was currently one of the seven reasons people are living longer in metropolitan cities. He seemed to appreciate the gesture.
It’s a tic I know, something you’d think you can just turn off and on, but it’s not that easy. Just last weekend over wine with friends, I couldn’t help but rank the bottles we were drinking on a scale of 1-10. And earlier this month, I even instructed my psychiatrist to attack the “top 4 reasons I keep avoiding success” - one each week - as way for us to stay on track.
Deep down I wonder if this obsession we have with ranking anything without any real reflection is just one big devious invention concocted by the internet to hierarch all of our tastes and map our personal tendencies. And if so, we’re screwed. Forget all the other labels anthropologists and writers have given our generation. We’re not the “social media” generation, nor the “consumerist/anti-consumerist” generation, nor the generation that lived at home with their parents.
We are the “the generation that ranked shit all day” generation, which isn’t really that different than older generations before us. I mean come on, don’t tell me you think the Ten Commandments is anything more than a “top ten things you should probably do or else…….” list.
You see? Aren’t I smart? I just made a biblical reference and sociological statement, and thanks to the article I just read, I now know of three great books that are actually overrated; which I’ll of course be sharing with my new “top five friends I didn’t expect to have” who will all think of me I’m sure as one of the “top five people who’s intelligence they underestimated this year.”
OK fine top ten then.