Question-and-answer articles are very popular on the Internet, as are list articles, or listicles. There’s "9 Reasons Why The Stock Market Has Been Correcting" (Business Insider); "9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask" (The Washington Post); "9 Things You Didn’t Know About Netflix" (Huffington Post), etc. BuzzFeed ("9 More Urban Dictionary Definitions You Need To Know") has turned listicles into an entire publishing strategy.

"6 TITANIC SURVIVORS WHO SHOULD HAVE DIED." "THESE 9 NAZI ATROCITIES WILL MAKE YOU LOSE FAITH IN HUMANITY." "5 INSANE PLANS FOR FEEDING WEST BERLIN YOU WON’T BELIEVE ARE REAL." These are just some of the lists that the comic strip "XKCD" recently joked would result from retrofitting the twentieth century’s most newsworthy events with modern, Internet-style headlines. Despite the growing derision of listicles exemplified by the comic, numbered lists—a venerable media format—have become one of the most ubiquitous ways to package content on the Web. Why do we find them so appealing?

I've always hated lists, and I’ve always hated articles which were nothing but lists; a.k.a. listicles.