10 Reasons Lists Are The Best Way To Communicate Ideas
1. They’re perfect for work, because the amount of time it takes to read one bullet point is just about as long as you can have something completely unrelated to work open without risking someone walking by and seeing what you’re doing.
2. If it takes more than a few sentences to say something it’s probably boring. Think about all the great works of Literature and how totally boring they are. Here is a synopsis of Paradise Lost: Satan falls from heaven and he’s all like, “Pfft whatever God I’ll show you!” and God is like, “lol OK let’s see how this turns out…” and then God wins. Just saved you like 900 pages there.
3. Everyone knows consuming smaller amounts of something over and over is better than consuming a huge amount of something once. For instance, if you tried to do ALL of the giant rock of cocaine in your pocket well, you might just hemorrhage and die. But a little bit at a time… A little bit at a time and you’ll be telling everyone at the party how awesome you for hours! Many, many hours! You still might hemorrhage at some point, but not before everyone knows that you actually came up with the idea for Gravity when you visited the Air and Space museum in 8th grade.
4. It’s much easier to comment on something when it’s broken down in to a numbered list. I could easily comment on this list, “Ummmmm #3 wut the hell waz that? Why r u talking about doing coke on da internet U SUCK STUPID UGLY IDIOT.” Full disclosure, I would not label myself a “coke user” but I have been around many at parties and am familiar with that sweaty guy chain smoking and yell-talking at you about himself.
5. Why did I just have to get so judgmental there about people doing cocaine? I mean look, if it makes you happy who am I to say what you should or shouldn’t do. I’m like, super glad to have a chance to talk about this, because I get really irritated with how drug users are always the bad people in stories. Super drunk people are equally bad as coked-out people. Although alcohol is a drug, too. People don’t recognize that enough…
6. When stuff gets all weird in the bullet points, you can just skip ahead and try to find a good one! For instance, bullets 3 through 5? Totally ignore them! No bullet point list is PERFECT. Think of them as albums. Most albums have at least a couple Octopus’s Gardens. Seriously don’t even try to defend Octopus’s Garden. It’s like a booger someone wiped on the diamond that is Abbey Road.
7. They are perfect for posting on people’s Facebook walls. “LOL #4 is sooooooooooo you! #hilarious” makes a lot more sense than trying to explain why you think something in paragraph form applies to the person you’re sharing it with. What would you say in that situation? “Omg the third paragraph so encapsulates that ‘being stuck’ feeling we were talking about last night whilst we played chess in the study…”
8. Only nerds read full paragraphs.
9. No one wants to be a nerd.
10. You can very easily copy and paste a bullet point and post it as a Facebook status or Tweet it and everyone will think you came up with it yourself. Consequence-free plagiarism! The only kind of plagiarism worth a damn, if you ask me.