Why are list channels so ****ing boring?

Whether it's the try-hard "comedy" of WhatCulture, the colorless nature of Looper, the irritating tabloid-esque Screen Rant or the absolute king of bad list channels WatchMojo, they all share one thing in common:
A lack of passion.

Either they misread or make up what they perceive as public opinion (Putting Gravity Falls on a list of Most Hated Disney Shows when it's almost unequivocally adored), or they get so godawfully repetitive it's unbearable.
YES, WhatCulture. I get it. You hate Adam Sandler.
YES, WatchMojo. I get it. You think Songs Of The South is the most racist movie ever made.
YES, Screen Rant. I get it. You think everything has some "subliminal message" everyone has missed.

It's so factorly made and vapid that if I watch too many of these type of videos in a row (because that's the worst thing about them, they're addictive despite their poor quality), I feel stupider afterwards. My brain gets numb.

I finally gave up on WatchMojo after years of going back to them way too often, but I still find myself watching the same ol' WhatCulture videos with grating music and forced commentary.

But why is it like this? Why are good list channels seemingly impossible to find?

And I'm not just talking movies either. Even AllTime10s has gotten much worse in its recent years, recycling the same topics and even getting facts wrong sometimes.

WatchMojo is lazy, ignorant, or just wrong.

Like this ...


Top 10 Movie Snipers

#9 The Jackal

Has anybody at WatchMojo actually seen The Day of the Jackal? He's one of the worst movie snipers!

I forgot to mention, the various contradictions as well (I guess we're talking about WatchMojo mostly now). They will claim Nicki Minaj is good enough she deserves a top 10 songs list, and in the next video she'll be total trash. In one list they praise Borat for its provocative but clever comedy, in another they act like "Oh, it's so offensive and wroooooooong". Pick a freakin' side.

What's your opinion on Cinefix? I think their Top 10 videos can be quite interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/user/CineFix/videos

They're boring because those types of lists are written explicitly because they can't think of a better thing to do.

Do you regularly watch these sorts of videos? Why?

I mean, I've seen a few but I typically only watch when I'm really bored.

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I guess the obvious answer is quantity-over-quality clickbait.

If you do want a good list channel, I recommend CineFix. Here is the full playlist for their list-themed videos, and while they do touch on a lot of the usual "Top 5 ____ of All-Time" kind of topics, they mix it up in ways that actually explore filmmaking technique (see the "Shots" and "Editing" videos) that actually offer insightful commentary and well-researched picks (you've got to love a channel that made a running gag out of how much they love The Mirror). They've certainly become a favourite channel of mine for those reasons.

EDIT: heh, too slow.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

List channels have always been horrible. They create the most bland, boring, and inoffensive-as-possible content for the sole purpose of maximizing content. There are 99 things you can do at the moment, but watching Top 10 videos ain't one of them.

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Letterboxd Profile: https://letterboxd.com/GatsbyG/

I've been watching some of those Cinefix: 7 Things you (Probably) didn't know about vids about specific movies. I've learned some pretty cool factoids lately.

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

List channels? I have zero idea of what that is. Some sort of video opinion on what to watch? If so no thanks.

Yeah, I mean, there's quite a few of them, really. Just the straight lists are pretty repetitive. But there's lots of channels out there.



Here's one of those 7 things vids I watched recently about

Spaceballs. If that last bit about the title of the movie is true... that's hysterical and hadn't heard it before.

YouTube channels that post nothing but top ten (or top whatever) lists.

WatchMojo, for example, is one of the bigger ones. Just today they posted a "Top 10 R-rated Super Hero Movies" video and a "Top 10 Craziest Car Stunts in Movies" video.

You know what kind of lists I DO love? The ones Siskel and Ebert used to make back in the day. Good times.

Thanks, ahh I see now. You know what I watch on Youtube? old vintage TV commercials, they're fun.

I use to watch Siskel and Ebert back in the day. Sometimes I'll look up an old review from Ebert. I haven't found any for Siskel though

People are easily baited to those kind of videos, easy money I would say..jeez, they make top 10 on every possible topic, watchmojo posted "top ten youtube channels with eating chalanges", really? Who cares?

I think you would despise the kind of stuff I usually watch on YouTube, except maybe the aquarium keeping videos.

Probably.

I should check out some aquarium landscaping videos, some of the photos I've seen are amazing, I haven't ever watched a video though.

It's quite strange how reviews from Siskel are pretty much impossible to find while Ebert has a whole archive. That's why it's great we have the show though.

I haven't watched any of the Roeper episodes, but the ones inbetween where Ebert had guests could be entertaining. Mostly because they were downright buffoons at times, and Ebert would counter some truly absurd arguments.

I'd love to see old Siskel and Ebert At The Movies shows, are they even around? I use to watch those all the time, that would be great to see them talk about a movie I just watched.

Some of them are available on YouTube, especially the episodes from the late 90's. But for something more complete, ioffer is currently selling a set with every episode from the 1986 At The Movies show containing Gene Siskel and Ebert in them.

https://www.ioffer.com/i/siskel-and-...-dvd-636472022