Zoe Zombie

Monday started off like any other – I get to work and the first thing I do is check my google reader. The only thing that was different is this – for the first time in two years I felt like I was going to burst out in a rage. Why is that? All of the titles I saw looked something like this:

15 high quality premium-like wordpress themes
370+ Free photoshop actions for everyone part 1
33 beautiful border and corner brush sets
5 beautiful penstyle fonts
16 web based handy web designer tools
10 useful articles about database design
6 vector food tutorials
25 refreshingly blue website designs
50 more amazing 3d typography works
11 free and helpful web based tools that every designer may want to know
30 beautifully blue website designs
22 free fonts from myfont
45 rules for creating a great logo design
103 really cool advertisements
35 essential jQuery tutorials, code chunks and plugins for designers
35 photoshop tutorials inspired by apple

Let me ask you something. Did you read all of those? If yes, then you were like me about a year ago. Keen on reading and learning everything I could about my trade. If you said no, then you are me today – tired and frustrated with the endless crap that is put out there on the interwebs.

Lists are something that get people interested because they present an easy alternative to reading a whole block of text that people get turned off by. It is an ongoing trend that should have seen the light of day yesterday – yes I want to read things now and if I want to learn something I want to learn it now. I want to read things that people really have to say, their advice – not in a list. I want to be able to get in depth information on it because if I want to learn something, I will read whatever is there so I do.

Sometimes I question the integrity of those who do write lists – their posts are mostly unoriginal. It is unoriginal information or screen shots that have been seen all over. I think it’s great that many will love a design or technique but is there a need to regurgitate something that’s already been seen many times before?

I have been guilty of writing lists but realized straight away it is a gimmick. It’s not natural to write an article in such a way unless you’re writing a step by step or a plan. They’re just cheap shots at getting some undeserved traffic – believing that compiling huge ridiculous lists will get them the visits they want from people who don’t know any better.

I hope in the very near future this fad will die out and people will start writing articles like they used to – with integrity and originality. Really offering something to their visitors other than just regurgitated crap. Is tomorrow too soon?

Tagged as humour, lists, stupidity, web design + Categorized as humour, web design