Why meaningless lists are taking over your FYP

Lists tend to go viral. That fact defined an entire era of the internet.

Lately, though, a bizarre new type of list has been blowing up on TikTok. The best way to describe these lists is incoherent. Here's the formula, obviously generalized:

• An anonymous account with a username that consists of a mishmash of letters and numbers posts a clip of a TV show, movie, or similar piece of media.

• During that clip — which is typically longer than a minute — a numbered list is revealed one at a time.

• The listed text is utter nonsense. At best, it's vaguely related to the clip. Mostly, it's just words or phrases slowly being revealed.

These videos have insidiously wormed their way onto FYPs, in some cases racking up millions of views.

If your brain is half turned off, that TikTok might seem normal. But what does "compromise" or "question" have to do with the dialogue of that scene from This Is Us? These sorts of videos are everywhere, and they're racking up engagement with such stellar insight as, "1) going 2) no 3) have."

People are noticing the weird trend. Go to the comments, and you'll find folks wondering, "What is with the numbered words?" or "What are we ranking here?"

We're ranking nothing. The words mean nothing. People are simple creatures. We love lists. We love rankings. We want to know how the story ends, even if the story sucks or makes zero sense. The incoherent, nonsensical lists are a hook for your attention. It's an incredibly low-effort bait for engagement, and it works, even if it's silly.

If the clip doesn't catch your attention, maybe the unrelated list will. It's also a simple way to alter a video that clearly doesn't belong to the person posting it, perhaps working to hide it from platforms tracking that down.

And would it be surprising if these list-clip enterprises were at least partially AI-created slop? Of course not. It's 2025, and slop always muddies your FYP in one form or another. The latest version just happens to be incoherent lists.