1. It detracts from the real, important news stories of the day.

2. It’s lazy. It took me about four minutes to write this post.

3. It rarely allows for much context or nuance. But people like lists!

4. It may be easy to read, and even mildly amusing, but see points 1. through 3.

5. You, and most other people, already knew 4 or 5 of these things.

6. When it’s a « news » piece, it’s bad journalism, partly because of all of the above.

7. Clickbait is the worst.

8. The author can run out of steam, and it becomes obvious this should’ve been a Top 5 list instead.

9. Random tangents frequently pop up, like, have you seen the latest Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer?

10. You finish reading them only to realize they were basically a waste of your time. But you’ll still click on the next listicle, because you never learn.