Elevated Nickels

We live in an instant gratification society. We like to be told what to like, told what to think, told what to do, and told how to do it… and we want it fast. It really has become fascinating watching our culture turn into drooling idiots that spend an average of 7.5 hours a day staring at one type of screen or another. You’re looking at a screen reading this. I was looking at a screen writing it. When I get done writing this, I will answer some text messages, and when I get home, I will watch TV while looking at a tablet.

And so on

And so on.

And so on.

Surprising that Japan is so low on the list.

As a matter of fact, even the information that we receive on those screens has changed to the growing need to have instant access. Now, THIS phenomenon is something that I have just noticed in recent years. It started by me just noticing it on websites or blogs on geek-culture, but it has become more and more mainstream.

Heck, even I dabbled into it here on Happenings and Happenstance, which can be read - HERE.

I am sure you have figured it out by now. I am talking about the “Top 5 List.” 

Ah yes, the fan favorite of little nuggets of information presented in a way that is fast, informative, usually funny, full of opinion, and a way to engage the audience. In fact, there are even Top 5 or Top 10 lists that explain why Top 5 lists are so popular.

Soak that in. 

A list to tell a person why they like lists.

Worlds within worlds.

We have truly entered into a Bizarro world, where on the surface, it appears that we have abandoned all reason and rational thinking. It scares me to even entertain the factuality of that statement, but there it is.

So, in truly Bizarro fashion, I think I will join with my fellow mouth-breathers and provide some helpful assistance.

The Top 5 List Of Topics You Can Find Top 5 Lists For! 

(abridged version)

1) Top 5 “Pop Culture Anything”

For all intents and purposes (yes – it is not intensive purposes), this particular type of Top <blank> list can be glommed together with movies, music,video games, or really any type of entertainment based media.

These types of lists run the gambit from the Top 5 most violent video games, to Top 10 dumbest movie plot twists, or even Top 10 most underrated prog rock albums. The categories are endless. If you want to find any information concerning any type of entertainment, I guarantee that there is a Top <blank> list to outline it for you.

It's like seeing who can out-cool the next person.

Here’s a crazy thought though, why don’t YOU decide what the most violent, underrated plot twist is?

Well, we all know that isn’t going to happen, so when you get a free chance, check out the website WhatCulture.com. 

This website is almost exclusively lists based on entertainment media or entertainment themed subcultures. When I was checking this website out, it almost appeared that this website alone has created the template for short attention span blogging. I just googled "whatculture" and got:

Ranking Blink-182’s Hit singles from worst to best

10 Superstars that hit rock bottom after WWE

The Cure’s Top 20 songs

10 YouTube celebrities who earn more money than we ever will

25 best Alex Turner songs

Blah, blah, blah….kill me!

This website even gets more absurd with: 10 Movies that are one mistake away from being masterpieces. Give me a freaking break! It’s websites like these that encourage the sentiment that one opinion matters, but another doesn’t.

One of the movies that was “one mistake away from being a masterpiece” was Prometheus. I got some news for you Mr. Writer Guy, that movie was so disjointed and pointless, even fixing one mistake wouldn’t give it “masterpiece status.”

Next thing you know, this guy is going to try and tell me that The Graduate is overrated. Oh wait, someone just beat him to it: Smiling LDS Girl's Blog: Ten Most Overrated Movies (yes The Graduate is on her list)

How can this ending shot be anything BUT genius?

Don’t get me wrong, expressing your opinion is great, but when did an anonymous blogger become an authority on what is or is not overrated?

I want to be perfectly clear on this, I encourage making and speaking your opinions. I do it myself, and I support the blogging community. What I am attacking is this societal ideal that if you read something, it must be taken as an expert opinion.

Maybe that’s a blanket statement, but make your own opinions! Don’t let strangers make them for you.

2) Top 5 “Random, Useless, Garbage”

Have you ever thought to yourself that some people seem to know everything – well, what I really meant to say, people who think they know everything? Yeah? Me too.

Or, have you ever watched Jeopardy and thought to yourself, “How in the heck do they know that?”

His Jeopardy swag is FIERCE!

Do not worry your pretty head, dear reader. 

There is a Top <blank> list to help raise you to the status of those fortunate individuals who have an endless supply of potpourri uselessness filed away in their heads. 

So much uselessness, that it appears to be useful.

I know that this may be a shocker for most of you, but there is a website called…wait for it… Top5.com. This was the freaking mother-lode!!!!

It was everything that I ever wanted right at my fingertips, and right at the top of the page, there it was. It was a shiny beacon of hope calling out to me to explore everything that embodies "Top 5": AMAZING FACTS.

Not only were these facts amazing, they were broken down into history, science, and RANDOM!

 random AND amazing???

It can't be, can it?

Yes!

Top 5 things you didn’t know about gold

Top 5 most garish celebrity graves

Top 5 strangest things found in the belly of a shark

Top 5 most terrifying roller-coasters

And my personal favorite…

Top 5 crappy, shameful, junk-on-wheels, American cars

I just LOVE the judgmental, indignant tone of that last one. The mere idea that the opinions of whoever wrote these lists is espoused as credible or noteworthy takes narcissism to a whole new level.

The authors of that blog.

Not all lists that purport to provide the reader with amazing insight to useless information are as bad as I might be painting them out to be. Take, for example, the website Buzzfeed.com. This website can actually make the reader become dumber for wasting time on it.

Their list, 23 useless facts that you totally need to know is a lighthearted piece that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is literally 23 useless facts. 

In a lot of ways, it’s hard to take Buzzfeed seriously at all….even their attempt at news.

3) Top 5 “I have traveled to this place to make you feel jealous”

Ah, travel! So many do it, so many others wish they could. Did you guys hear about that Dutch student who faked an exotic vacation “as a project” for her university? It was all done through Photoshop. She simply took pictures of exotic locales and shopped herself into them so well, that the pictures looked extremely authentic and believable. Her reason for doing so was to demonstrate how our online lives can be manipulated to become anything that we wish. We can do or be anything without anyone being the wiser.

Doing it right!

As a point of research, this experiment is really fascinating to me, and true with anything that goes viral, not only this project became a meme and joke unto itself, but it created a trend of fakecationing (like what I did there – with that portmanteau of fake and vacation?). 

It actually created a nice Top 10 list, Ten ways to fake the ultimate summer vacation.

So this presses me to ask a question: Why is it necessary to create the illusion that our boring, mundane, 9-to-5 lives are filled with glamorous retreats to exotic destinations?

Simply put, because everyone else is doing it.

The website HomeAway has an incredible Top 10 list called “The 10 best vacation spots you may not know about.” 

How exciting would that be? You and your loved ones or your closest friends taking off to a place that is so incredibly awesome that the only people that know of its existence are its residents!!!

I tell you what. You would have plenty to brag about on Instagram and Facebook.

This list includes such exotic locales as Charleston, SC; Orange Beach, AL; and Lake of the Ozarks, MO. When did South Carolina, Alabama, and Missouri become places of interest?

We don't take kindly to city-slickers.

The Nest's Top vacationing spots list is a little more what you might think would be traditional locations to truly want to go to: Paris, Brazil, Greece, Hawaii, etc. But hey, why bother even going?

Purewow’s 8 Easy ways to go on vacation without leaving your home can give you that perfect experience without stepping on a plane. Once you choose the right filter with your Instagram account, you will be painting your friends’ faces GREEN with envy from all of the pictures from the exciting adventures you have been on.

4) Top 5 “Things we noticed, because we don’t get out enough”

I think that it is funny how something that is made of plastic with children’s candy hidden inside has become synonymous with “kitchy-meta-reference.” My friends, I am talking about the easter egg! 

Not that one.

Lately, it seems that movies and video games (especially video games) have really made a lot of effort in providing little inside jokes or clues to let the viewer or player part of the inside joke. It isn’t anything that is new, but it just feels like it is becoming more and more common.

It is agreed upon by most that the first easter egg was in an Atari game called Adventure, where a programmer secretly inserted his name in the code, so the player could find it if he or she wanted to spend the time looking for it.

Yay! You found it, now go outside and play!

There’s the rub. If they wanted to spend the time looking for it.

So there are two things that are possible here. Either, gaming journalists have extensive teams constantly seeking out any possible easter eggs in video games, or there are waaaay too many people with toooooo much time on their hands.

                                         

I say this because easter egg lists are everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE, and they are extensive too.

I went to Gamespot.com and simply typed in the words “easter egg” with the ‘articles’ filter selected and got over 50 articles with talk of easter eggs, including the list: The Greatest Easter Eggs in Gaming.

I tested it against Google, simply typing “easter eggs” with quotes around it. This search yielded pages and pages of video game and movie hidden secrets that I’m supposed to be impressed and amazed by.

The 5 most elaborately hidden video game easter eggs

All the ‘Jurassic World’ easter eggs you may have missed

17 amazing Google easter eggs

10 Skyrim easter eggs that will make you want to replay it immediately

11 amazing Marvel movie easter eggs you never saw

The 50 best Pixar easter eggs

The list doesn’t end…ever.

It’s like EVERYTHING has an easter egg now.

"What do you mean by - everything?"

There are so many easter eggs available to learn about, there is even an online archive that lists them all ranging from movies, software, games, TV shows, and books!

Why do we as consumers care about or enjoy these things? Well, without doing any research whatsoever, I think it’s because we all like being a part of something. 

We enjoy being “in the know.” We like being “in on the joke.” And, with the creation and popularity of social media, many of us like being the first to know the secret to either share it or brag about knowing it.

I actually tried digging up any reason as to why we love easter eggs so much, and yielded no results - only more lists, and a few instances mentioning Adventure and how it was the first one.

This damn game again!

Is it a cultural phenomenon??? I don’t know.

Being a gamer, and a lover of all things geeky, these are some lists that I love so much. The funny thing is, I never look for them, and if I find one, I don’t even realize it.

For example, I love the Fallout series of games. They are spectacular open world adventures, which place you in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. As with any Mad Max scenario, weapons are a must. 

There is one weapon in Fallout: New Vegas that is an exact replica of Harrison Ford’s laser tube from Blade Runner. In the game, it is referred to as “That Gun.” When I found it, I didn’t even realize that I had found something special or what “That Gun” was even referring to.

Wasn't impressed.

The gun sucked. I dismantled it and used it for scrap parts. Then, one day, I’m on WhatCulture.com (that site is addictive), and I see it on a list of Top easter eggs from Fallout games you may have missed, right there at number 8.

Truth is, I didn’t care. Having that gun didn’t change my experience playing that game, nor did I feel compelled to tell a friend that I had discovered it.

It just…was.

5) Top 5 “We know you like lists, but we can’t think of anything to make a list of, because anything about everything that can be put in a list has already been put into a list”

Here it is. This is the end all, be all of lazy writing and complete garbage being fed to us as consumers and denizens of the internet, and also, I’ve been trolling you this entire time.

The Original

You see, my wife told me that while she enjoyed the content that I posted about Seven Lions and the story surrounding that, she really couldn’t get that deep into it. She wanted more variety and topics that were beyond what I was pigeonholing myself into. 

I spent so much time thinking about new and different content that I ran into a pretty hefty bout of writer’s block.

This, but with less paper.

I promised you, my faithful readers, a post that was not Seven Lions related, and I struggled at what that could be. My initial thought was to create a list of some sort, but why? 

The more I researched, the more I realized that there are very few topics that have not been delivered in list format already.

If I were to provide you with the “Top 5 most action packed car chases” because I was just inspired by the complete awesomeness that was Mad Max: Fury Road, it would be no different if I posted the “Top 5 most incredible episodes of Game of Thrones” just because Season 5 just ended.

Those lists already exist.

They exist, because we demand them to exist. We demand them, because that has become the norm in blog-based journalism.

You deserve more from me.

That is why I gave you this.

I hoped you enjoyed our exploration of this topic. I think I provided you enough links and options to satiate your list craving for some time. But, take this into consideration – there is no reason why you can’t make a list of your own. People love them! Why not be on the end of providing something unique and spectacular or some form of insight that was never thought about before?

If you don’t think American cars are crappy, then make the “Top 5 reasons why the guy who said American cars suck is wrong.” Your opinion matters as much as anyone else's does. Express it. Don’t just take what some anonymous talking head on the internet said as the bottom line.

Unless that anonymous talking head is me!