Clicking on a listicle is liking falling into a bottomless pit. A bottomless pit that you love to hate. If you also find yourself clicking on listicle after listicle on a Saturday evening then you’ve come to the right place. Get ready to relate and laugh because we have listed out listicles (read: listicle-ception) that you just can’t escape!
1. The Animal Listicles
The listicle about cats, dogs, hamsters or other generically cute animals giving zero f*cks. Because nothing makes a week full of having to give a f*ck more worthwhile than watching less evolved organisms not giving any.
2. The ‘Calm Down’ Listicles
The one about 36 Easy Health Hacks That’ll Make You Thinner/Less Stressed/Forget Your Existential Dread. You’ll religiously read ’em all and forget them faster than a writer trying to complete a… thing… word… begins with a ‘t’, rhymes with hot? Nah, never mind, I’ve lost the thread.
3. The Movie Review Listicles
The one about 29 Reasons Why The Blockbuster Movie That Released Last Week Is Awesome/On Point/ Problematic. Because are you even an involved netizen if you don’t read that kind of a thing before posting an opinion about a superhero flick? The answer is no.
4. The WTF Listicles
Actually, pretty much any listicle that begins with ’10 Reasons Why’, and follows that up with something utterly, mind-bogglingly bizarre. 10 Reasons Why Monkey Sex is Better Than Dandiya. You don’t want to know the reasons. Except you do. In incognito mode. And that’s ten minutes of your life you’ll never get back.
5. The One About Millennials
Seriously. It could be about anything to do with millennials. It could be called Why More & More Millennials Are Addicted To Kyrgyzstan’s Fiscal Deficit. You’d still read it, because those pesky millennials, I tell ya. Always up to something funny.
6. The One Where Everyone Is ‘Slayin’ It’
Any listicle where anyone slays something or someone. Not, you know, violently, but like ’15 Times Your Favorite Movie Star Slayed It In Red’, which, let’s be honest, sounds like the kind of vampire-viking crossover movie we all want to watch.
7. The Easy-Peasy Listicles
The one that begins with ‘5 Easy Tips’. It doesn’t matter what the tips are for. It doesn’t even matter what the actual tips are. It could be 5 Easy Tips To File Your GST and you’re on the third tip before you realise you don’t need to file GST because you don’t make that kind of money, pfft.
8. The Emotional One
Any listicle with the word ‘feels’ in it. Admit it. You a sucker fo those feels.
9. The Informative Listicles
The one filled with 41 Things You Didn’t Know About… whatever, the lower intestine, it doesn’t matter. What matters is it reads like an essay written by Captain Obvious and deconstructed into neat, bite-sized sentences for easy digestion. (Okay, I didn’t mean to go on the intestine theme, it just sort of happened.)
10. The Twitter Listicles
The one which is basically a compilation of funny tweets from strangers. Because honestly, who will go wading through the hate-fest that is Twitter to find those stray 280-character shards of fun? Someone a lot braver than me.
About The Author
Vedashree Khambete-Sharma is the author of Swear You Won’t Tell? recently published by HarperCollins India. She’s also an award-winning ad woman in her mid-thirties, which is okay because mid-thirties is the new mid-forties. Or something. For the past twelve years, she has peddled everything from moisturizers to magazines, like some kind of one-woman corner shop. Before that, she was a freelance reporter for several newspapers and wrote on a wide range of subjects from student suicides to types of boyfriends. Yes, that’s right. Throw in a middle-class Maharashtrian upbringing, a convent education and an English lit degree, and you get, well, confused mostly. But also, inspired to tell the stories nobody else is telling.
GIFs: Giphy
