I can always count on the Beervana blog to alter my view of the beer world. Jeff Alworth can evenhandedly explain a subject where I would be jokingly dismissive.
Such is the case with his post on Lists and Awards. Read it right HERE. After I read it, I immediately wanted to clarify my position on the dreaded “Ten Best”.
Right up front, I acknowledge that I have read many and used some in research. Furthermore, I have written various beer lists (by style, best of and the like) and will do so in the future. There are lists of books and favorite beers on this very site as well. So why do I deride them as lazy? Isn’t that hypocritical of me?
As with most things in life, the answer is a complicated maybe.
There are two red flags for me when it comes to the common listicle or Best of post. First is the source. More than the actual content itself.
If you are a food or travel or beer blog, I will take a gander at your list and ascribe authority to it depending on my thoughts on the writer. If say, John Verive who writes for the L.A. Times amongst many other publications writes about places in Neigborhood A to visit, I can trust that he will list places of merit or interest because I know him. Same with CraftBeer.com and other websites that I routinely click on. The content provider needs to inspire trust. And this is true for practically any information that I consume.
On the other hand, if the list of best IPA’s comes from a place that isn’t beer related, then I will move past it. It may be a perfectly serviceable list but if I don’t have any verification of the writer or writers or site creators then it is no better than a random stranger on a soapbox yelling that Sculpin is better than Two Hearted.
This leads to the second flag, the purpose which is tied to that source. Buzzfeed is the protoype of the genre (Thrillist as well) and catches the most heat from me because they are not in the beer education business. They are in the clicks business. If their base would mouse onto lists of the best widget makers or snipe hunting gear, they would write listicles about it. You can tell a website is not in the giving a shit business when they move from lists to videos about people eating strange food for the first time without looking back.
Once you get past those two hurdles with me, the content itself better be useful. Which is really hard since taste is so subjective. This goes for blog posts or awards . For example, the Tony Awards gave statues to Hamilton and The Humans for Best Musical and Best Play. I have listened to the soundtrack to Hamilton and I had the fortune to see The Humans on Broadway and now when I see the phrase, “Tony Award Winning” my estimation goes up just as my estimation of the Oscars have gone down due to some strange “winner” choices in the past few years. It is why I give more weight to GABF awards since I have seen how that sausage is made.
In the end, not many awards or blog lists pass muster with me and those that do can see their influence on me wax and wane because I am constantly re-evaluating. That is what really chaps my hide about people who religiously consume them or who find it fun to create arguments because of them. Those basket of deplorables are not even using them correctly as guideposts or jumping off points. It is simply my favorite beer won a Gold Medal so now I am validated in my views and seemingly more importantly, you and I are wrong in ours. Maybe it is part of our “agree with me culture” that is so evident in our current election cycle and social media feeds.
I strive to make any list on my website or on Food GPS to be helpful in the way that a curator in a museum is. I want to put interesting beers on view so that the reader can find a new brewery to follow or to simply find a new beer to try. I am not aiming for clicks. I won’t put a beer on a list to get comments or troll people.
After all these blogging years, the goal is still to search the beer world and bring back those that I find so that others can start their own adventure.