I Hate Lists

I hate lists. I hate seeing: “X amount of Y that you should blank before you are blank.” Who made you the writer of my bucket list? Who said I needed one? I didn’t.

I am sick of people who think they are writers because they capture a brief moment in the teen-twenty-something lifestyle range that everyone supposedly relates to.

I do not care what I should have in my closet.

I do not care who you think I should or should not date.

I do not need to compare the people in my life to the ones in your lists. Stop giving me lists.

At first, they seemed funny, maybe a little bit satirical, even a little bit informative. But not everything needs to be a list.

Lists are too simple. We need to stop being simple. What happened to building your own arguments and putting your own thoughts out there? Can we stop just translating tumbler now? Can we grow up just a little bit? If you had a thought, build on it, fortify it, let it go somewhere. There has to be better things to think about than lists. You make a list when you go shopping or you have to go on a trip. You do not need to bunch life experiences up into insignificant bundles of ongoing sentences.

But if you must number out all your thoughts about one subject instead of letting them all play together in a nicely structured display of conscious thought, then why not write about 21 things that you can do to cut down on global climate change? Or 13 stores not to shop at because they support slave labor?

Please, please, please, I am begging you, make Thought Catalog not seem so thoughtlessly self-centered.