Despite their apparent omnipresence on the interwebs, listicles are not a new thing. When I first went to work in the UK, every mid- and downmarket tabloid newspaper was running daily items such as “15 things you didn’t know about Jimmy Saville” (although they missed out the really important one).
I don’t think they were called listicles then, but they were a staple of journalism because the editors knew that the readers liked them. Oh, and they were (and are) very easy and cheap to compile (except that the researchers had to used the newspaper’s clippings library to find their facts rather than Google).
If only they’d have devised a way of making people buy more than one copy of the paper to find out the next fun fact, which is essentially what websites do know by requiring you to click through to the next page for another meaty morsel.
Anyway, it got me thinking about what kind of clickbait headings I might use if I lowered myself to the level of running regular little lists.
Here are some off the top of my head:
Ten celebrities you don’t give a damn about any more
Twenty foods that will make you even fatter
Seven sex positions that will send you straight to hospital
Thirty-five excuses for not going straight home tonight
Eighteen people you wouldn’t spit on if they were on fire
Eleven countries you never knew existed — and one that doesn’t any more
Three things you’ll have forgotten by this time tomorrow
Fourteen places you may have left your car keys
Six billion people who don’t even know you exist
