Infinite Steez's Top 5 Websites that depend entirely on Top 10 Lists

Like most of you in the unwashed rabble, I have a love/hate relationship with top-10 lists. They can be fun to read, but on the other hand they're completely subjective and usually bullshit. On the other other hand, as a blogger I can see the appeal in boiling your writing down to a few bullet points. Apart from anything else, I suppose it gives your work an air of finality. It sounds better to say "Top 5 Crazy Cat Pictures" than it does to say "Here Are Some Pictures of Crazy Cats That I Found." Therefore, I'm going to give it a shot and provide you, the loyal Infinite Steez reader, with my top 5 list of sites that would be nowhere without their top 10 lists.

#5 Time Magazine.com





Time Magazine, which apparently used to engage in journalism, now relies solely on lists. This used to be the province of late night host David Letterman but Time Magazine figured it made more sense to save it's dumb as dildos readers the trouble of sifting through pages and pages of writing and instead disseminate everything into bullet points. I actually just remembered that I have already ragged on Time Magazine for this shit in a previous blog post, but whatever, here we go again.

With Time, it usually starts out something like this,

"Tom Hanks isn't the first celebrity to activate a particle collider, in honor of the famous actor being tapped to switch on the Large Hadron Collider, we take a look the top 10 ten Celebrity Particle Collider Moments."

This prevents them from providing much in the way of opinion or commentary, they just have to say that whatever it is has happened before. It's kind of like when you're watching football and the commentator says, "This is the first time a Quarterback has run in more than three touchdowns since 1965, when..." You get it, right? Time Magazine is kind of like the dipshit who passes a card with the fact on it to John Madden.

Right now, they'd be happy to tell you about Letterman's Top 10 Awkward Guests, Top 10 Celebrity Twitter Feeds (+10 pts for Celebrity inclusion), and Top 10 Pregnant Performers (+25 points for the always rewarding baby, vagina, celebrity trifecta. Fuck you, Time.

#4 AskMen.com





I actually have no real beef with AskMen.com. My original number four was College Humor.com, but that site depends entirely on videos developed by others, drawing only a small amount of it's readership from lists. Ask Men, on the other hand, is largely lists. I do have a book by them entitled, 'From the Bar to the Bedroom' which one of my roommates found out by the trash and gave to me, but other than that I've had little interaction over the years.

You see, this is the part of list formation that presents something of a challenge. You can think of three examples of something, but 'Top Three' doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Therefore, you have to spin it out and pick some subpar examples. Fortunately for me, however, Ask Men is ripe for pwnage.

Here is a list of some of there current top lists:










They also offer a list of top ten long construction projects (sounds riveting-- see what I did there? If you didn't it was a great fucking pun), top ten female spies, and a top ten list of myths about Canadians. Good work AskMen.com. The only thing worse than the inane subject matter of these lists is the staggeringly irritating format in which they proceed. You begin with a splash screen, suggesting that, before reading the article, you buzz it up, or put it on digg, then you start a tedious slideshow, and when you press the button taking you to the number one, you get some shit ad in your way. God I hate advertising... Fuck You Askmen.com. I have proved, yet again, that I can spend 5 minutes thinking about any subject and manage to get really annoyed about it.


#3 Spike.com








Spike is another one of those websites that men should feel embarrassed about. It's sort of like Ask Men except stupider, and more proudly ignorant. Spike drinks Budweiser. Spike goes to stripclubs. Spike votes Republican. Spike is dumb as shit. I don't really have time to get into the abysmal programming the network has to offer, as this article has already taken me literally minutes to write, instead I will focus on the terrible top tens.

Case in point, the article that inspired this whole blog post, a top ten list of deaths caused by video games. While I enjoy schadenfreude (lulz) as much as any other asshole, I have some serious qualms about any article that has a top ten list where two of the answers are about babies being beaten to death.

Still, I don't want to impose my prudish sense of good taste on you, so it's fortunately that in addition to finding Spike to be morally questionable, I also find to be trite and unfunny. Their Top 10 Valentine's Day Tips was peppered with the predictable included (Spend a Ton of Money, Surprise Her) as well as stupid shit (Give her a Nickname, Don't Groom). In addition to this, the topics they choose aren't even really especially interesting. They tend to favor the Ask Men formula of _______ that will get you laid, and that's pretty much the height of their creativity. Having said that, this blog has a 'Shit that will get you fucked' tag, so maybe I should hold my tongue...

Anyway, Spike would be nowhere without these lists, and the lists fucking suck. Maybe that's why Spike.com is fucking nowhere. Next.

#2 GamesRadar.com







You've got to love Games Radar, because they make no fucking effort whatsoever to make their lists coherent. It's kind of like they just sit down and go, "Alright, let's think of something bizarrely specific and then get a bunch of examples. As they say themselves, they have Top 7 lists of " everything from girl-on-girl kisses to Mario Party drinking games." The lists on Games Radar are always full of bizarre shit, and like all good lists, the order pretty much doesn't matter. Unlike the previous two entries, I dig this site because there's some creativity involved in what they do. The kind of creativity it takes to find 7 Gory Deaths in Cutesy Games, 7 Shower Scenes, 7 Enemies You Didn't Want to Kill.

Better than this, however, are the lists that aren't simply weird, but are also interesting.The 7 Worst Parts of Best Games is pretty interesting, as is their compendium of 7 worst release dates. They sort of lose it with their crazy long lists such as the top 101 best moments in gaming (part one) but on the other hand, who the fuck cares.

Now, while I dig the lists on GR, I totally hate the shit out of everything else they do. The reviews are terrible, the features are weak. All this site has is lists. Still, unlike many other sites, their lists are pretty much okay.



#1 Cracked.com







My whole life I had always considered Cracked Magazine to be a runner up to the already fairly lackluster Mad Magazine. A Pepsi to their Coke, a Penthouse to their Playboy. You get the idea. Anyway, over the summer, when I first began getting all of my news from the always intermittently funny news media compiler, Fark, I started reading Cracked Magazine's Top # List of Whatever. These were pretty good, as you can skim them for the gist of what they're talking about, and get your lols that way. They are pretty varied and sometimes interesting, though never particularly funny. Still, I kept reading away for a few months before I started to reflect on what bullshit this is.

I probably go to Cracked two or three times a month and I can confidently say I have never looked at anything but a list. Somehow, their lists manage to pop up on Fark every week, and people are getting a little sick of it, with "Still no Cure for Cracked lists" being a common headline ammendment. Anyway, good or bad, there's little doubt that without it's lists, Cracked.com would be a fucking ghost town.

Don't believe me? Here's their homepage-- Can you spot any lists?













Runner Up:

Digg

Prove me wrong.

Know What I Don't Care About? Other People's Kids.

Now Missing White Girl Syndrome is a well documented phenomenon, as is the MSM's fascination with shit nobody oughta care about. In the past week there have been stories alternating on the news--- The Stimulus Package, That Caylee Girl, and The Octuplets. Can you guess which one of these will have an effect on your life? Only one. It's totally sad that some crazy broad killed her adorable little girl, but tons of sad shit is happening all the time. Just because something is unpleasant doesn't make it news. The Nooz runs shit like this all the time, and then, they feel like they need to run human interest pieces to make us feel better, so we get stories about children writing letters to soldiers in Iraq, which I also don't give a shit about. Oh, and that chick who had like a hundred babies-- I don't even know how that qualifies as news. What the fuck.


Oh, I also don't care about hotel fires in China, particularly if the hotel isn't built yet and nobody was fucking hurt.

Culture: The International Kinda Sucked.

Here's a tl;dr for you-- the international, that clive owen movie, kinda sucked.

I saw an advanced screening and while I was expecting to be wowed, it actually was pretty weak. Not only is this not Clive Owen's best film, it isn't even his best film about a bank. Side Note: I when I saw the trailer I was hoping it was a sequel to the brilliant inside man (but in fairness when I saw the trailer for inside man, I was hoping it was a remake of the brilliant Quick Change starring Bill Murray) and this was not the first time I was disappointed by this movie.

The acting was pretty much alright but then again I know dick about acting, I won't address that too too much. The plot was sort of convoluted and this comes from a guy who likes shit complicated. The bank didn't reall come off as sinister enough, but paradoxically at the same time they seemed to be just as ridiculously and lamely evil as a 90's era Bond villain. If this is Owen's attempt to show us why we should be grateful to have Daniel Craig as bond, mission accomplished.

It wasn't all bad though. There were a few sweet scenes including an epic shootout that I was hoping was the signal of the movie's upturn. Sadly, it was both the first and last truly balls-out epic part of a movie that should've been balls-out epic from start to finish.

TL;DR-- Seriously, kinda sucked.

Ad Stuff: Burger King kicks even more ass than I thought

If there's anything I love it's shitty food. I also love shitty movies, but I feel like I've been scooped on that front by some dude here who reviewed the Unborn, focusing entirely on the star's epic booty. Oh, I also love epic booty. But returning to my original point, I love shitty food. As a result, I'm sort of a fan of Burger King. I don't eat there very often, but whenever I do I always think it's pretty rad. The soft drink recipes are always good for a lol, and the general demeanor (especially born out by any and all ads they run not feature that asshole Puff Daddy) is that they don't really give a shit. The stuff with The King is brilliant and a great example of when advertising enters into culture in a way that is not lame and abrasive ( See: Whassup, Got Milk, Where's the Beef etc.)

Anyway, enough silly bullshit. Burger King's agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, has taken this FGSFDS attittude to the next level, branching out from lols into lulz and pwnage. Their new(ish) facebook app allows facebook users to delete friends in exchange for Whopper gift certificates. This shit is epic. Everybody knows that facebook is crap and forces you to be friends with a bunch of people from freshman year who you don't care about anymore. Burger King helps you solve that problem. The only catch is that it informs the former friends that they have been sacrificed for what is probably a pretty lackluster burger. Oh well.

Now, Ad Week updated this story saying that facebook starting bawwing about this and forced Burger King to end their updates and blah blah blah blah. It was still an epic idea and probably the only worthwhile facebook application I have ever heard of. Props to you Burger King, for being the rare client willing to risk being a total douche. Also Props to you, Crispin.

TL;DR-- Crispin Porter + Bogusky--- please hire me when I graduate and give me lots of money to be an asshole to strangers. Love, Josh

Before you even ask, Helicopter Sex

So while cruising the Internets, I stumbled upon a sporadically lulzy site (more like shite, am I right?) called BeforeIDieIWantTo.org Guess what the site has users post? I feel like this is totally intrusive and epicly invasive. The standard answers are fall in love, have kids, travel the earth, and publish my novel. I feel likt if you weren't a cynical prick, you could infer that this means we're all striving towards the same goals in life. I'm in a bad mood though, so I'm in more of a mood to poke fun of these rubes. Here are some of the better entries, for the lulz.



There are the practical:









The creepy:









The stupid:
(I bet you do, horseface)








The Bawww:










And even the occasional epic win:

What I want to spend my life on.

As a leading young advertising intern, I often pause to reflect upon what ads I used to enjoy as a kid, especially when, as I now am, I am working on ads for children. In that spirit, here are a few spots I remember from my youth. The colors, duke, the colors!





I really don't remember these commercials being so shitty. What's wrong with them, you ask? Everything. Everything is wrong with them.

Chi-Chi-Chi-Chi-Chi-Chi-Chi-Chi!

And this is what I spent my day on while at work yesterday:

Culture: Hope Poster Round-Up

Politics aside, I think that Shepard Fairey's 'Hope' and 'Change' (Progress was really weak) posters were extremely important culturally speaking. Fairey, who spent the past like 10 years doing the same thing (though extremely well--Obey Giant is always cool) achieved an unprecedented level of notoriety for his iconic images of My Fucking Hero Barack Obama. In honor of that, here are a bunch of epic internets revisions. I have selected a few of my faves, not on political lines but based on creativity, humor and technical proficiency.





















































All images were found on encyclopedia dramatica, 4chan.org, and this place, which has a great selection of these images. That last one, poster place, has links to the original artists who did this baller work. I actually made one of that broad I get around with for her birthday, so I know the amount of effort that goes into making even a simple image, so bravo to all you internet geniuses.

PSA: Free Illegal Anime Online

Apparently, you can watch all the free fucking anime online you want. Not literally fucking anime, that would be hentai, and you can probably find that free too, but you can read about that type of thing on my other site, The Niche Pornography Blog. Anywy, more importantly you can watch dragonball z for free online. If you don't like dragon ball, then fuck off, but if you do, you can see that shit, along with lots of other weird shit from overseas for free, quasi-illegally at http://animecrusade.com.

Enjoy.

Dear Bill Murray, Please Come to My Next Party

Okay, so I broke my longstanding habit of not reading full articles to read an amazing article about my fucking hero Barack Obama Bill Murray, star of every movie I retroactively loved from the 1980's, and one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies.

Well, according to a totally interesting article in the usually shitty NY Post, Bill Murray is apparently now crashing parties, apparently for the lulz.

This is great news. I understand that not everyone will be as moved as I am to read this epic article, but basically, the recently divorced ghostbuster/ international mega star is now spending his nights attending random parties and talking to strangers at bars. We're not talking random parties in the sense of random Hollywood parties. In the article, it talks about him showing up at some crappy house party at some crappy apartment in the middle of NYC, the crappiest place in the world (EAT IT NY-- LA FUCKING RULES!!!!1!1!!!one) hahaha disregard that, I suck cocks, New York is actually pretty okay Fuck New York.

(In related news, I just found out how to use strikethrough)

Anyway, so basically, one of my greatest heroes is apparently now just raging with strangers of my generation. The article seems to indicate that he's doing it mainly to pick up chicks, but I feel like this is not the case, since if he were looking to meet new babes, he'd probably just reenlist in the army and meet some saucy MP's. I like to think that the old guy is just looking for a good time, of the non load-busting variety. So, in the spirt of that, I would like to invite Bill Murray to attend a party at my apartment next semester. We will schedule it around his busy... schedule. Bill Murray, please message me privately so we can set this up. This would be the greatest Celebrity moment of my life, even better than seeing Neil Patrick Harris at some art show in Culver City. Please note that Bill Murray is now my most under-used tag, so I will try and incorporate more BM (Bowel Movement?) themed posts in future.

Culture: Whatever, I dig Kanye

So I read part of some article about what an arrogant douche Kanye West is and I gotta say, who cares?

Kanye's not my favorite rapper, that would have to be Immortal Technique, matter of fact, Kanye isn't even my favorite mainstream rapper, (Jay-Z) but he's pretty solid and he's distinctive from the other 90% of rap which, like 90% of all music is utter garbage. Kanye and I have a lot in common: We're both young wunderkinds in field, and we both appreciate women who "got more ass than the models." Thus, when I see me friend and colleauge being hated on in the Media (pronounced Mee-juh) I feel that it is my perogative to step in.

Anyway, the way I see, it's pretty much nbd that Kanye west thinks he's such hot shit. I mean, you can look at the transverse property and see him as saying he's bigger than the beatles when lennon said the beatles were bigger than Jesus, so therefore Kanye thinks he's bigger than Jesus but the reality is, who gives a shit. Everyone thinks they're better than everyone else. Prove me wrong.

The music you choose to listen to is based on your mood, and when you put on a song in which Kanye West is rapping about what a badass he is, it isn't because you feel like listening to some braggadocio talk about how rad he is, it's because you feel like a badass.

Generally, people listening to music put themselves in place of the I in the song, not the you. When you listen to Tom Petty sing, "I won't back down," you are thinking that you, the listener will not back down, not marveling on the steadfast Mr. Petty. So too in rap. When Kanye raps, "there's a thousand you's, there's only one of me/ so how the hell could you front on me" (excellent use of rhyming me with me, btw), you don't think of yourself as one of the thousand "you's" but rather as the primary "me."

The fact that this arrogance moves from his songs to his personal life is irrelevant-- it's just part of the show. This shit goes for everyone. I think it was hugely disappointing when John Lennon retracted or clarified his statement about being bigger than Jesus. If I were him, I would've just gone with it and been like, "No, yeah, I personally am more important than Jesus Christ, and those who worship HIM as their risen Lord and saviour (he was from England so he woulda spelled it that way) should begin worshiping me instead."

TL;DR-- leeeeeeeeeeeeeeave Kanye alooooooooooone

Culture: The Internet is Terrible

I fucking love the Internet is terrible. I stumbled upon it last year on facebook by accident and have never looked back. Basically, it collects some of the worst shit on the internet and puts it all on one place. The author, 'Raisins', draws heavily from the chans, (which I may discuss later) and youtube and the results are great. 4chan is a little bit much to sift through, so I rely heavily on the internet is terrible when I need to find some quality weird shit to send to my friends and associates. Noted asshole, Freddy Nietzsche once said "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you," and Raisins has a simmilar quote "Sometimes the Internet changes a man." You can tell, from the contempt he clearly has for his subjects, that the dude spends a lot of time sifting through crap. I love it. Sometimes, when he posts images of disableds, I cringe a little, but mostly its lulz.

Props to you Raisins, for consistent win. Double props for censoring some of the more extreme stuff so I can surf at work. Five stars.

Culture: Conor Harrington

I'll be the first to know I don't dick about art, but, as the cliche goes, I may not know art, but I know what's dank as fuck, and the paintings of Conor Harrington are dank as fucking fuck.

Since I don't know anything about art, I won't waste your time trying to pretend like I do, instead I'll waste your time with opinions. I first read about Harrington in Swindle, Shepard Fairey's monthly, (see how I just made myself look cultural by just acting like I just assumed you'd know who Shepard Fairey is-- that's an important part of looking cultural). I was immediately blown away by the amazing imagery. Anyway, here's more sweet stuff, hope you dig it.

Culture: Changeling Was Rad, But Long

I went out for a hot date with that broad I get around with to go and see Changeling. Directed by that asskicker Clint Eastwood, it stars that hot broad with the pouty face. Basically, her kid gets nabbed and then the police show up with some other kid and say it's hers. She get's pissed off and lulz ensue. There's some intense shit with an ax, a trial scene, shock therapy, negative portrayls of the Irish. It's got it all.

Normally I think Jolie's a pretty so-so actress, but this time I thought she was pretty dope. I read some article in AV Club like a year ago saying she oughta give up on the whole acting gig, since she's so famous and so distinctive she's always playing herself. I was pretty much taken in by the whole thing though, and I thought she did a great job making me forget that she's actually some hot broad who's into tattoos and kinky sex.

The movie was a bummer and way intense, which means I have am going to label it as "shit that will not get you fucked." It also went on for two fucking years, which sucked. It was kind of like Zodiac, in that I kept thinking it was about to end, only to be stuck with another act. That said, it didn't feel bloated; everything seemed necessary. Visually it was really rad looking, and being that I love me some LA, I very much enjoyed seeing the old timey LA. Plus, it showed what assholes cops are, especially the notoriously douchey LAPD. On the other hand, they were pretty hard on the 'changeling' which is sort of weak. I feel like they made no effort to make the kid sympathetic, and I think it's a bold choice as a director to villify a small child. Overall though, if you've got a heart, you'll come out of the story wanting to call your mom. Which reminds me, I'm not in love with the title, since my darling Ma used to call me a changeling when I was misbehaving as a child. Okay, just give me a second to repress that memory... okay done. Anyway, the movie was really sweet and intense, but also really long.

TL;DR-- Changeling was pretty solid, but felt maybe 35 minutes too long.


PS, It also reminded me of this epic book I had to read Freshman year called City of Quartz by Mike Davis. I wasn't as brilliant as I now am, and I was also a little bit of a republican tool in my younger days, so I didn't really appreciate it at the time but it was probably pretty epic and worth a read. It's basically all about how much LA sucks, which I don't agree with but it was certainly an interesting and class conscious look at the history and culture of Los Angeles.