Listicles Pffticles

Written by

steve gillies

Jan 17—2026

On lists, sets and tuples

For the love of God, will everyone stop using lists. They’re driving me mad.
Here are seven reasons why.

1. They make you unattractive.

No one wants to sleep with a lister.
Nobody has ever leaned across a table and whispered, God, I love how you structure things.

Well, not to me anyway.

2. Everyone’s done it.

Just ask Moses.
Or Paul Simon.

3. It won’t increase your CTR.

No one gets past reason number three.
If they did, we wouldn’t still be doing this.

4. They’re addictive.

Here are four reasons why.

Once you start, you can’t stop. It leads to madness. Lists. Sub-lists. Lists of lists. A flowchart explaining the lists.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If the only tool you have is a list, everything looks like seven nails.
The dopamine hit is immediate but short-lived. Like sugar. Or applause. Or watching Stranger Things.
You will develop a God complex.
And on the seventh bullet point, he rested.

5. They confuse the reader.

Ordered lists are different from unordered lists.
Tuples aren’t the same as sets.
Sequences are something else entirely.

If you want to see mathematicians in full emotional collapse, present them with a list and don’t specify order, repetition, or meaning. Chaos will follow.

6. They insult, annoy, and piss off the reader.

This is what the reader hears:

“I have researched everything there is to know about [insert subject], and because I assume you are too lazy to think for yourself, here is a list.”

Thanks. I feel smarter already.

6½. One list good, many lists bad.

One list giving advice on how to get the best from ChatGPT is great. 57 lists is not so good. 957 lists is just as useless as not having a list in the first place.

7. There is always one item too many.

Everyone aims for the magic seven.
Even if it means inventing something contrived to get there.