10 things about 14 things about 6 things about 4 things about 43 things.

As a new blogger, I spend a little bit of time every day reading other blogs. I have liked (and sometimes subsequently unliked) a dozen or so mom and dad humor blogs and other parenting blogs and pages recently. (I’ll write about unliking pages another time. S’gonna be funny.)

It’s a jungle out there I tell ya. There are mean mommy blogs, nice mommy blogs, religious mommy blogs, happy dad blogs, and bitter and angry daddy blogs. There are “I know everything” blogs, “I know nothing” blogs, “drink wine all the time” blogs and “never eat this or that blogs.” There are the blogs which are set apart from others with the fact that they have a NAUGHTY word in the page title. oooOOOoooh. There are political blogs right, left, up and down, and blogs that blog about blogs.

And what stands out to me? I’m a little mental, I know. (Example: I have debated with my husband for years about why comedies are actually tragedies and I’ll probably never let that go.) But what caught my twisted humor’s attention was the numbers.

The numbers! My head is swimming in numbers after reading what’s out there in the blogiverse.

Not sure what to make for breakfast? Here are 14 ideas you can make in 5 minutes using 2 pans and 17 ingredients. Easy as 1.2.3.
Need ideas to keep your toddler busy? No sweat! Here are 18 ideas which he will blow through in 16 minutes and you only need 42 items from 3 different stores and $235.

Can’t get your little darling to sleep? Your worries end here. You just need to follow this 82 step algorithm, and you’ll wonder why you ever had trouble with naptime or math in the first place.

Raising a teenager? Guess what? YOU ONLY NEED TO KNOW 10 THINGS! 10! (There will be 800 articles on the 10 things you need to know, and the 10 things in each of the 800 blogs will all be different. That’s only 8000 things you need to know about raising teenagers, which sounds about right to me.)

It’s ridiculous but I can’t get passed the chronic listing of things and things in lists. I’m just totally consumed with how bloggers listers list and list and list and list. List-i-posts are e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e. I can’t not see them anymore. Sorta like dead people.

Maybe it’s the shortest way to get a lot of content out there? Maybe it’s become a self-fulfilling, self-propulsion thing and since everyone else is writing 11 things about 9 topics or 89 ways to do 45 things, then the self-aware blogisphere thinks everyone really just wants a listosphere? Maybe it’s really a marketing thing, and if an article has only 8 “things” in it, bloggers think the holders of the all important “like” readers might take 300 seconds to read their brilliant 8 things? (Some of them are totally brilliant, but some of them also suck. 9 ways to fold socks? Really?)

You know how you might get a new faux alligator purse or something, and you think it’s all original, until you see it EVERYWHERE and think damn, that was a big faux alligator? (Obviously the natural progression of argument WOULD evolve from listing stuff to faux alligators, which are totally a thing.)

Here’s the part where I try not to alienate anyone who’s ever written a list:
I’ve already been tempted to do it.

It seems like a natural attention grabber, and provides a structure for writing. But then again, so does a drawing of a hamburger.

I usually play Ask the Googles at least once when I write, so this time I just started typing in “1 thing” and “46 things” and “39 things,” and I still haven’t found a number under one hundred that doesn’t have oodles to teach me about rap music, the Dalai Lama, graduation speeches, how to not be a party-pooper, what your 5th grader should know, how to tie shoelaces, and program computers. Try it sometime. It was kind of a hoot actually (Hey- do you want to know 11 or 16 neat things about owls?)

And my closing remark is that at some point, I will probably have already put a number in the title of a post. Or maybe 5, but NOW it’s just because it’s too ironic to pass up.

Aaaaaaaaand I just realized there’s a number in the title of movie with the dead people remark. See? My subconscious is obsessed 2 I guess.