Member-only story
Why Listicles Are Killing the Credibility of Blogging
They’ve been done to death, and a lot of us are sick of them
When you think of a listicle, is there an outlet that immediately springs to mind? Perhaps it’s Listverse or even BuzzFeed, regardless, they aren’t the only ones at it. In fact, even local newspapers have been getting in on the action. It has certainly overtaken the blogging world.
It seems as though we assume people won’t read content unless we put it in list form to make it easier to digest paragraphs. We’ve been systematically dumbing down the way we produce content leading to the dumbing down of the nation. That’s a fact and it’s why listicles are killing the credibility of blogging.
The Problem With Listicles
Ever-Shrinking Attention Spans
Social media has contributed to our shrinking attention spans. Think about it, while Twitter has expanded its character limit, it started with 140 characters. It’s difficult to convince anyone to watch a video over 5 minutes, every outlet tells you how long it will take you to read an article, and good luck gaining engagement without an image or twelve. We love to consume it which is what has contributed to the “art form.”
