While Cracked are disciples of the church of lists, I wouldn't attribute the unfortunate trend to them: it has been a checkout line magazine mainstay for many,

While Cracked are disciples of the church of lists, I wouldn't attribute the unfortunate trend to them: it has been a checkout line magazine mainstay for many, many years. "10 Food Ingredients That Will Tighten Your Tummy!" "6 Sex Tricks That Will Drive Him Wild!" "9 Common Household Items That Will Kill You!" I blame Digg v1.0 (now taken over by Reddit) for it becoming a common tactic online -- As the Digg front page was taken over by lists, that accessible format allowing for easy upvotes, it encouraged an invirtuous cycle of other sites desperately adopting it as traffic started becoming much more clustured, and "winner takes all" became more important. Sites had less success existing in their niche given that even their normal readers were spending most of their time with the herd, so if you can't beat them, make a list about how to join them.