Ranking culture turned taste into a sport, and the sport is rigged.
Best-to-worst lists travel because they are fights. They are also a lazy way to avoid a sentence.
A ranked list is a machine for comments. Put a beloved film at seven and you can take the rest of the week off. That is why every platform learned to love a countdown. It looks like criticism. It behaves like bait.
Lists can be useful when they are honest about the criterion: scariest onboarding, funniest guest, most rewatchable, worst sequel hangover. ‘Best’ with no rule is a personality quiz.
How Glare will use lists
Rarely, with a rule at the top, and with the understanding that the order is an argument, not a court. If we cannot explain why number three beats number four in a sentence, we do not have a list. We have a randomizer.
We will not do 50-item galleries that exist to multiply pages. That is an old ad-network trick and it is how you look like the thing we said we would not be.
A better habit
One claim, developed. ‘This is the most dishonest trailer of the month’ is a piece. ‘Here are 14 trailers, ranked’ is a stall. If you want a fight, pick a fight worth having. If you want a catalog, call it a catalog and stop pretending it is a verdict.
