The Ten Best Top-Ten Lists

By Tai Moses, AlterNet. Posted December 29, 2005.

Top 10 lists are a staple of a culture obsessed with ranking things, yet in recent years the ubiquitous best-movie, -book and -music lists have become so baffling it seems as though their only goal is to eclipse the Top 10 lists of other critics. Still, lists can tell us much about ourselves -- our obsessions, anxieties and passions. Our Top 10 List of Lists hopes to capture the essence of 2005 by compiling the year's most superlative, truly notable, absolutely blue-ribbon cultural bric-a-brac.

1. Words

Merriam-Webster Online has created a window into our national preoccupations by releasing the Top 10 most-looked-up words of 2005, in order of their most-looked-uppedness.

1. integrity

2. refugee

3. contempt

4. filibuster

5. insipid

6. tsunami

7. pandemic

8. conclave

9. levee

10. inept

Does this list prove that scores of people in the land know not the meaning of "integrity"? I don't think so. I think these people were perfectly confident they knew the meaning of integrity until certain others started throwing the word around like last Sunday's bagels, and so, head in hand, people went back to double-check, only to find that integrity was still integrity and in shorter supply than ever.

What the list actually proves is that no one really understands popular song lyrics. Apparently most of us are just mindlessly mouthing the words without the slightest idea of what Don McLean was doing when he drove his Chevy to the levee or what on earth it means to live, as Tom Petty implores us not to, like a refugee.

2. Birds

Everybody's heard about the bird / b-b-b-bird bird bird / bird is the word. Since "pandemic" was the year's seventh most-looked-up word, we were curious about the creatures that sparked this lexigraphical frenzy. Topping the list of most commonly reported birds of 2005 is the northern cardinal. The state bird of no less than seven states, this is the bird you think of when you hear the word, "bird." So far, not a single cardinal has been involved in any global pandemic.

3. Idiom

The Top 10 Global YouthSpeak Words is so fully fundoo that I encourage you to start the new year by using as many of these brill words as you can.

1. Crunk: A Southern variation of hip hop music; also meaning "fun" or "amped."

2. Mang: Variation of "man," as in "S'up, mang?"

3. A'ight: All right, as in "That girl is nice, she's a'ight."

4. Mad: A lot, as in "She has mad money."

5. Props: Cheers, as in "He gets mad props!"

6. Bizznizzle: This term for "business" is part of the Snoop Dogg/Sean John-inspired lexicon, as in "None of your bizznizzle!"

7. Fully: In Australia, an intensive, as in "fully sick."

8. Fundoo: In India, Hindi for "cool."

9. Brill!: In the U.K., the shortened form of "brilliant!"

10. "S'up": Another in an apparently endless number of "whazzup?" permutations.

4. Internet Hoaxes

By now everyone has encountered at least one of the Top 10 Most Commonly Encountered Hoaxes and Chain Letters. In 2005 the No. 1 most common internet hoax was the pernicious Hotmail chain letter. It is incredible that anyone would fall for something as badly written as:

"If you do not send this message to fifteen Hotmail users within 24 hours of recieving this message, your account will be PERMANETLY SHUT-DOWN. When and if you send this, we herebygrant that you will no longer recieve such messages as this one."

5. Baby Names

Trying to forecast the popularity of baby names is like trying to predict where the Dow Jones Industrial Average will close at year's end. The definitive list doesn't actually exist yet, because, as baby-name bigwig Laura Wattenberg writes on her blog, "Baby naming is the kind of business where you write your 'year in review' articles in May." However, this Top 10 Baby Names of 2005 list identifies the year's likely naming trends. For girls, Emma maintains a hold on the first-place slot; for boys, Aidan unseats the popular Jacob, which led the pack four years in a row.

6. Bad Jobs

Conservative politics positively screams from between the lines of Popular Science's 10 Worst Jobs in Science. Why is it no longer any fun to be a nuclear-weapons scientist? Because in 1999 the federal government tried Wen Ho Lee for espionage. Why does it suck to teach biology in Kansas? Because a gang of religious fundamentalists took over the state board of education, delivering a painful kick in the Bunsen burner to all Midwestern devotees of true science. Unfortunately, we can't blame everything on the right-wing; it is hard to believe that anyone ever enjoyed inspecting manure.

Tai Moses is the senior editor of AlterNet.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »