Why do we love lists so much?

An aerial view shows damaged and collapsed buildings, in the aftermath of the earthquake in Hatay, Turkey, on February 10, 2023. The tragic earthquake kicked off a feverish online search for the world's worst earthquakes. (Image: Reuters)

The list of the world's richest has been going through some churn lately, though the billionaires moving places have other things to worry about than loss of ranking. Meanwhile, the tragic earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria, kicked off a feverish online search for the world's worst earthquakes.

Sadly, lists, regardless of the subject or the circumstances, are a source of endless fascination. Dangle a top 10 or a bottom 5 before a reader or a viewer and you have him hooked.

That’s also because lists, or listicles in journalistic terms, are among the easiest things to turn out on a vapid news day. Which is why the top 10 stocks, top 10 movies, top 10 Twenty20 batsmen, are regular staples of news sites and magazines. They rarely break any new ground but are still keenly followed.

Then there are those that arouse morbid curiosity, like The Gnarliest Crashes From The 2022 World Rally Championship. That promises thrills and chills amidst the spills even if we know that some people get hurt in the process. To be fair, watching it gives you some sense of the skills of the drivers but also of the dangers that lurk in every corner at the top level of racing.

The really creative lists though are often hidden away, usually with good reason. Do you really want to go through details of 10 Crazy Things Nature Does with Mucus or 10 Slithery Surprises about Snake-Handling Churches or even 10 Strange Examples of Mass Hysteria? The latter incidentally includes the strange case of the Monkey Man (in a helmet) who terrified all of Delhi in the summer of 2001.

For those not satisfied with merely perusing lists, there are lists which they can get on to, for a price. That includes the likes of the best chole bhature joints in north-west Delhi's Kanjhawala and Karala areas as also those insufferable poetry collections.

My favourite ones, though, are those that list dubious distinctions. Years ago, the Limca Book of Records would feature many of these masterpieces. One entry from the 1994 edition is about Mewa Singh, his wife Giano Devi, their children Dalbir Singh, Anil Kumar and Rekha Rani, all of whom share the same birthday, February 15. The years are 1955, '58, '78, '82 and '84, respectively. Another record listed in the same edition was that of Dr Hridai Narain Singh of Rajendra Medical College, Ranchi, a man who peeled and ate 22 bananas in 2 minutes on January 28, 1989. The average edible weight of each banana was 84.1 grams. For good measure, we were told that one Praveen Kumar Sharma of district Batahri in Himachal Pradesh ate 62 bananas in 9 minutes on June 16, 1992.

Can you think of any earthly use for this information to anyone besides the blessed family or the eater? Yet the Limca Book of Records much like the Guinness Book of Records had a huge readership.

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In recent years, those anthologies have lost ground to the newest menace, social media. Turn to Twitter and you are simply besieged by lists of all kinds. One man's Five things my dida taught me about ginger paste competes with 10 things I learnt from my first cousin twice removed about how to build biceps. You might dodge some of these but how do you get off that Twitter oddity, Lists you're on.

Psychologists say the human brain processes information better if it is placed in a hierarchical pattern, which probably explains why we have a list for just about everything. In 2013, New Yorker magazine summed it up perfectly in a piece titled, rather aptly, A list of reasons why our brains love lists. Ok it wasn't actually a list but as the magazine wrote, that headline ensured its readability.

Judging by their sheer popularity, what we really need now is a list of all the lists that are there.