I Hate Lists

also i believe, like i think i've heard michaelangelo and some others say, that i rather futilely believe that obsessively ordering my aesthetic life will bring some sense of order to my wider life.

also, list making is fun.

so, they're a desk-distraction, a chance to show off a bit but, at best, they're an opportunity to shake some misconceptions and alternate-canon-build.

of course, if no one does anything with these lists afterwards, one could argue that it's all been a bit of a waste of time...

Er, if I think I understand your question, I'd say what little difference there is that when I'm obsessively listing things, they're coming up not in order of importance or worth, but in whatever order they come up (usually alphabetical for me, as I have my collection online). Ranking things gets a little too into the "x is better than y" thing. Not saying that that's not important, just that a lot of the times it misses what interesting/crucial/important/unique/whatever about both x and y.

Plus, if I wanted to see who has the best batting average, I'd read the Sports section.

There's nothing wrong per se, esp. not CAPITAL-OFFENSE WRONG, but sometimes it just rubs me the wrong way. I mean, it's music, not a football game (although I like football). My capacity for appreciating something doesn't have to be limited to what it isn't. Too often people use talking/writing about music as way to express hatred, and that's fine when done well, but can get really boring really quickly (cf. Pitchfork, for starters).

(also hstencil, these are legit qns on my part, plz dont infer any snarkiness.)

None inferred. Yu're askin' good questions.

BTW jess, saw your DJ Sammy piece in the Voice, liked it (even though I haven't heard a lick of his music). One question, though: if he's all about bringing anonymity back to dance music, why the Brian Adams remake?

Baseball/football stats are worth it if you're doing a fantasy league. Maybe we need to come up with a fantasy music league thingy!

you think you've got it bad, hstenci, i'm afflicted with both.

But as C. Eddy noted on the c/d c/d thread, isn't it more that there's a huge amount of 'this is nice' albums out there, for instance? And similiarly songs. It may seem like a mushy disguise, I prefer to think of it as more "Actually, that's probably about right."

Lists are inherently meaningless, yes, but they're greating for prompting discussion/argument....and who doesn't enjoy that? My only real beef is when they're presented so pompously (hello Rolling Stone/Spin) as if begotten by some divine omniscience.

1. "This list sucks. How could they put x there?"
2. "This list sucks. How could they leave x out?"
3. "This list sucks. How could they include x?"

And yes, "appreciators" is a word. Not a very pretty one, granted.

That would be rude.

Ha: also I don't know enough different stuff, so I prefer talking about one thing at a time.

I would guess it is "natural" (if you can say that about any modern human behavior) especially in the online context where we generally know each other only through language, is there any more effective way of saying "this is me, I'm the shit" than a list of your favorite stuff?

put another way, who would you like better: someone with good taste in music, or someone who writes well?

I'm disturbed by all this talk of it being "natural" -- if so, why is it so predominantly a music thing? (You don't see bookworms and film buffs doing nearly so much of it.) Isn't it more that music has less discussable content, less concrete linguistic and narrative stuff to unpack and discuss? So we make lists because it's one remaining way of talking about it?

I think it's worth trying to fight past that, sometimes. Yes, it's harder to discuss a song with someone than it is to discuss a text, but I think the effort's worth it. Otherwise we're just holding up our personal visions of how the universe should be -- our subjective little canons -- and never actually communicating about them.

Probably because you get top 40s in music and the like regularly whereas you only get top tens or so for movies. Maybe?

Unannotated 'top 10 of an artist's work' listmaking is surely only of any fun to the person doing it? Why would anyone be interested in reading a bare set of competing lists? Can someone explain??

HOW long have you been my friend? HOW easy is it for you to ask me to fill in these gaps?

(I heart Dan, of course. :-))

click on them and go through it. it will take you five seconds to tell whether it goes anywhere.

btu i mostly say don't bother. its all shit.

Use of word "anal"=shorthand for personality type we all recognize ("a person who is compulsive in his orderliness, stubborn and stingy. Called 'anal' because it describes the stage of psychosexual development in which the focus of pleasure is on activities relating to elimination"--for example, obsessing over which entities to leave off your latest pointless list), regardless of its dubious scientific basis, which nobody takes seriously anymore anyway.

if all of you are so big on not bothering, why the thread?

1. Grocery
2. To do
3. Ignore
4. Laundry
5. Pet Peeves
6. Desert Island Disks
7. Today's blue plate specials

I'm bothering to tell you that i hate the stuff.

got it!

While I did start this thread, back whenever it was, partly because there were so many list threads on ILM, and I did phrase it with the intention of annoying some people (cos I'm just obnoxious like that), I am really more interested in the larger question of why list-making is so central to music listening. I mean, music is an artform whose central critical institution consists of hundreds of people submitting lists, compiling them into one big list, analyzing the minute statistical permutations of that list, and then generating more lists out of it. I know movie critics do this too, but not in such an obsessive manner. And it's not just music critics--obviously many people who are "just" listeners do this too. Speaking as someone who is probably fairly obsessed with music, but has very little desire to make lists about it (every now and then I think about doing my 100 favorite records or something, but I just can't be bothered), I find it genuinely odd.

here is a list of recent iLm list-type threads that might be annoying to you:

The Beatles OP10 (or, that would be, only pick ten) (55 new answers)
POX: Budgie (Unanswered)
The Rolling Stones OP10 (or, that would be, only pick ten) (57 new answers)
The Replacements: POX (5 new answers)
OP10 Madonna (29 new answers)
POX: JUDAS PRIEST! (7 new answers)
POX - Blur (23 new answers)
POX - Madness (5 new answers)
Pick 10 Only - N.E.R.D./Neptunes productions/remixes (28 new answers)
Boyz II Men - Classic or Dud? (33 new answers)
Early Examples (8 new answers)
MOBY-"GREATEST HITS" (23 new answers)
PO10 - Prince (28 new answers)
Women in electronic/dance music (3 new answers, 72 total)
Spice Girls OP10 (29 new answers)
PO10 - Michael Jackson (8 new answers)
David Bowie OP10 (26 new answers)
Top 100 Bad Cover Versions (13 new answers, 105 total)
Blur - 13: PO10 (6 new answers)
Depeche Mode OP10 (39 new answers)
Search and Destroy : New Order (7 new answers, 54 total)
Best Record Labels (61 new answers) )
Blur - 13: POO (34 new answers)
Ween: Only Pick 10 (16 new answers)

ILM list fever ranking madness

I like the old one best. Better grammar.

Samhain just does that to people

SPORTS PEOPLE ARE WORSE

# S/D: New York-area baseball announcers, 1970-present (19 new answers)
# Isaiah Thomas: Classic or Dud? (26 news answers)
# Why the Tigers lost that one game (62 answers, 23 unread)
# Officiating (1492 new answers)
# Did you see your man Hernandez on ESPN.com? (unanswered)

Etc. etc. etc.