The list gives a structure—a numerical narrative—to a text that would otherwise lack any kind of internal architecture. If you wanted to write something about, say, the phrases people use on Twitter that you find highly irritating, you can get away with not making any kind of over-all, analytical point by imposing the framework of a list. The enumeration itself, the getting to the end of the counting, becomes the point of the writing (and the reading). It’s not simply a jumbled heap of complaints about how people talk on Twitter; it’s a list, and in this sense it means business. It’s “10 Phrases People Need to Stop Using on Twitter,” with all the interventionist urgency and narrative propulsion that implies. As a reader, you’re probably going to click on it and read it, out of the expectation that some of your own most-hated phrases have been included therein, or out of the desire to experience some harmless outrage that they haven’t. (“Jesus, I can’t believe they left out ‘breaking: …’”)