Don't worry, this won't take too long

I was thinking recently about how absurdly popular top ten lists are. You know, things in magazines like "The Top Ten ways to Look Like a Hooker". Almost everything is a top ten list now. It never made sense to me before.

Then I realized, it's all in the subtext. What it's saying is: "Hey, don't worry, this won't take that long. There's only 10! Even you can count that high!"

I can't remember the number of interesting things I've never read just because I started thinking "How long is this going to take? Hey, I wonder what's on tv right now.." The funny thing is that the top ten list could be just as long as a regular article, but it feels shorter because you know where it's going. I bet you could even get away with getting people to read books by putting them into top ten lists. Like chapters. Hmm. Oh..