This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

If you have spent more than a minute online you will have encountered a dubious form of journalism known as a "listicle."

Listicle is a web term for a list of related items being passed off as an article. Get it? List-icle?

To the untrained eye, a listicle may seem to be real reportage, but the truth is there's no more real journalism in a listicle than there is in this column. Their sole purpose is to attract bored Web surfers with an archaic form of torture known as "commercials."

They do it like this.

"Why Rosie O'Donnell Should Not Sit On Babies."

"18 Best Excuses to Remain Unemployed."

"Top 10 Reasons Not to Apply Electricity to Your Bottom."

Listicles are everywhere online — Cracked, Buzzfeed, etc. You can even find them at the bottom of this newspaper's website. They compete for the meager remnants of our attention by offering a quick perusal of something curious or even licentious. Who wouldn't want to know what Kanye West wears to bed? Some are marginally informative. "75 Historical Photos You Won't Believe," announces one listicle. Who wouldn't want to look at that? Maybe there's a picture of Josef Stalin in a Speedo.

But click and you'll be dragged through an agonizing gauntlet of web-vertising in order to see a picture of Gandhi riding a pig, or a fuzzy photo of Abraham Lincoln inventing basketball.

I'm a history buff. I've clicked on listicles like "40 Unbelievable Nazi Secret Weapons" only to find that I've already seen 39 of the photos. That alone would have been enough to annoy me, but it's the speed at which the listicle drags on that makes me nuts.

See, a listicle is really just a vehicle for advertising, a way to suck you in and drive you insane with information about car insurance, mortgage refinancing, vitamins, investments, etc.

"Rush Limbaugh's Top 12 Wardrobe Fails" or "15 Reasons Not To Suck Your Dog's Nose" are chock full of advertising in the form of pop-ups, roll-overs, floating ads and wallpaper ads.

While your computer's processor is trying to pull up "Things That Should Never Be Used to Hit Your Mother-in-Law in the Head," it's also throwing unwanted advertising in your face.

Sometimes the listicles don't wait for your eye to wander over to an ad. The listicle itself will be interrupted with an add. You click next hoping to see another picture of an actress with catcher's mitt lips, but it's a "word from our sponsor" instead.

The thing about listicles is that they work. Not only do they generate ad revenue ($40 billion a year, according to one source), I got my start in this business with a couple of irreverent listicles: "Five Kinds of Mormons" and "Five Kinds of Non-Mormons."

Money and dumb luck. Lists of bullet points works so well that they're almost certainly here to stay. It could well represent the future of journalism.

It won't be long before newspapers will stop headlining the current way — "Newspaper Columnist Critical After City Gun Battle" — in favor of the listicle approach: "Eight Guns You Don't Want to be Shot With Downtown."

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.