Good way to sell Magazines

I haven't read the article yet, but this months The Atlantic provides us with a list of The 100 Most Influential Americans. Magazines have gotten into this habit of hipping sales with their notorious top ten lists. The ten best restaurants in your city. The ten best places to have a romantic weekend. The idea's go on and on, but one of the reason they cause so much attention is that no one agrees with the rankings except the people that publish them.

Readers will deluge the publication with the kind of letter that starts out."How could you leave (My favorite candidate) off of your list? Or, anybody that would rank so and so ahead of what's his name on a list of the ten best whatever has got to be nuts. This controversy helps circulation and I would bet that magazine covers that announce an article ranking almost anything of topical interest sells better than most.

We Americans are enthralled with the ranking of number one. We agonize over ways to define and prove who is the number one, basketball team, football team, Chinese restaurant, vacation destination, airline, make of car ... . Why we care I do not know for sure, but part of it might be validation. If we own, can identify with or have used the services of the number one ranked entity, does it makes us part of it's success and somehow more worthy?

That is why the other kind of letter that the publications get after they have published their "best" list is the how could you have left off my selection plea. The concern that my favorite restaurant is not even on list, much less not number one, is too much to bear. How can these people be so stupid? Or is it the internal feeling that somehow I am not hip and up on what is happening now?

Than there are the conspiracy theory's. Aren't there always conspiracy theory's? The people that make up the list are only dealing with the possibilities that advertise in the magazine. Or in the case where they poll the readership, that the ballot box was stuffed by the staff and employees of the winner. Or in the case of important personages, the ten most influential people of the 1990's, that political belief's or other prejudice exists.

All of this means little in our everyday lives. It's like reading the box score of the ball game. For a moment you feel good or bad depending on how your team did the night before, but it doesn't ruin your day. It merely gives you something to talk about with your friends. If the list of the top ten places to purchase bar snacks gets you any more excited than that, you either own a bar that's not on the list or you need to get a life.