Not Another Top Ten List

NOTE, 12/28: Since I wrote this post on 12/22, I’ve come across many, many more amazing Top lists. I’ve amended the post to add those

I once had a roommate who made a lot of lists. She’d make a homework to-do lists, shopping lists, cleaning lists, and, sometimes, even lists of lists. I used to mock her a little, but realized it was a really good way of keeping yourself organized when you have a lot of stuff going on in your life.

At the end of every year, magazines and blogs feel like it’s their job to do a year-end countdown lists of their favorite things. The Aughts are almost over and I’ve noticed an overwhelming number of Top Ten of the Decade lists to make it to the front page of my favorite websites lately. I’ve even seen some Top 17 and Top 40 lists.

It’s amazing to think about what’s happened in the past decade. Personally, I started and finished high school and college… lost my first and second loves… started and got fired from my first job. Instead of writing my own Top list of things that would undoubtedly become trite or boring, I’m going to share some of my favorite lists I’ve come across.

• Entertainment Weekly online’s 10 Biggest Comebacks and Career Collapses of the ’00s is a good list. It’s interesting to compare the comebacks next to the collapses because you can see where some of the career paths were kind of the same.
• CNNMoney.com‘s 8 Names You Know, RIP list compiles the top brands that died during 2009. Circuit City and Gourmet magazine were the biggest losses for me. I don’t own a PC or drive a car, so the Encarta, Saturn, and Pontiac closures don’t affect me that much.
• New York Magazine‘s 17 Extinct Things You Probably Don’t Miss list is a funny one. Because of my age and my industry, I’m expected to, and do, adapt to things rapidly. Some of these things I stopped using long before they “died” (many still exist, they just aren’t popular anymore) and I’ve long since moved on to other technologies to get what these things once provided. For instance, Floppy disks are still on this list… the successive technology is technically CDs, but those are pretty much long gone in my world too. My computer doesn’t even burn CDs, nor do I ever put CDs in to listen to music.
• The Top Ten Awkward Moments from Time Magazine is the list you always dream of, but never actually think about making, unless you’re that particular writer on Time.com. I’m a big fan of awkward moments, mostly because I’m basically a genius when it comes to creating awkward moments in unawkward situations, and 2009 really was a year of the awkward and political correctness. If something wasn’t necessarily awkward, the media or coverage around the event made it awkward by analyzing every single angle of every single story.

These lists are all great, but I the last list truly captures the massive shifts in culture and technology in the 00′s.

• BuzzFeed.com‘s 40 Things That Were Popular at the Beginning of the Decade that Aren’t Anymore basically sums up the past decade of my life (with the exception of JNCO jeans, trucker hats, or parachute pants… I never wore those). This is that list that makes you go “WHAT THE FUCK was I thinking?” The list that reminds you of seeing  your parent’s prom pictures for the first time and kind of giggling and their long hippie hair and silly tuxedos. Why, why, why did I like boy bands? Why did they think frosted tips and bandanas were cool? Why’d everyone freak out over Anthrax? All good questions.

Finally, my favorite: a video of the top political, cultural, and … just plain weird news of 2009 from JibJab.