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Just love the lists
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The year end sees us obsessed with lists, rankings, the crème de la crème as well as the worst of the year’s things, events, movies…BHUMIKA K. wonders why
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Hot shots Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone figure prominently in the top ten
You’re surfing channels lazily this year-end vacation and as you flit across channels, you are looking at the top 10 Hollywood hits, the best of Bollywood lineup (Shah Rukh Khan just doesn’t seem to get off your TV), the top hit heroes an
d the “top” flops and fallen stars, top 10 new year resolutions…
You are being asked to SMS your choice of the top 10 people of the year, you are being asked to vote for whoever or whatever you thought were the top 10 hot things this season…your radio is blaring the top 10 songs of the year contest…
You get the drift of what we are saying, right? We are obsessed — with lists, rankings, the “top”, the crème de la creme, the top of the bottom, the worst dressers of the season, etc etc.
It’s quite a nonsensical way of trying to find an order at the end of a chaotic year. It also shows our obsession with celebrities as most lists centre around them and their lives.
Tai Moses, senior editor on the alternative news website AlterNet wrote a year-end analysis two years ago: “Top 10 lists are a staple of a culture obsessed with ranking things, yet in recent years the ubiquitous best movie, book and music lists have become so baffling it seems as though their only goal is to eclipse the Top 10 lists of other critics. Still, lists can tell us much about ourselves -- our obsessions, anxieties and passions.”
Trawling the internet, you are sure to find top 10 hotspots to hit this new year, the top 10 cheap flights to get to such destinations, top 10 new year’s eve alternatives if you are not hitting these hotspots, movies, songs, stars, hits and misses, controversies, clothes, top ten greeting cards, diet ideas for the next year, websites, addictions, best of Youtube, top 10 ways to kick start your finances in 2008, top 10 boring things of the year…there’s even a hideous site dedicated to “top 10 reasons why men are better than women”.
“I think we are basically people obsessed with comparisons,” is how Ramesh R., a call centre employee explains our obsession with these compilations and lists at the end of the year. “We all like to compare ourselves with others, or compare one person with another person. We want to know who made it to the top.”
Sathya Simha, an electronics consultant, believes these lists are decisive and give a verdict to people who haven’t been in the loop. “If you are talking of, say, the top 10 movies, sometimes you don’t even remember which movies released this year! People would have easily forgotten. I think stars also get an idea of how people rank them. Of course individual choices vary and very often you may be against the tide, yet it’s nice to have a compilation.”
But not everyone is for these lists, though one would want to believe it’s so with the sheer volumes of lists floating around. Chitra S. John, a senior executive with a technology company says: “These lists really mean nothing. They are just convenient and lazy ways for TV channels and media houses to generate content for the year-end when nothing else is happening. There’s no need for any real or serious analysis and review also. They need to fill up the space or air-time na!”
Even as people are seeing through the mindlessness of these random anthologies, there are blogs rating things and people rating blogs! It’s a fish-eat-fish situations, with each list generating the other or gobbling the other up. Two lists that really sounded smarmy were the “current Top 10 Man Boobs” (I’m not joking) and the “top 10 weirdest and funniest Japanese condoms”.
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