Pop CulturePop CultureWe’re launching our freshly redesigned website today, so we’re celebrating our past. And that includes a countdown of lists we got right, the ones we want back, and the just plain weird ones we want you to gawk at again.
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By Justin SaylesDec. 3, 11:24 am UTC • 23 min
You call it clickbait, we call it an art form.
For the better part of the internet era, rankings have been the lifeblood of blogs and online magazines like the one you’re reading now. Even as people bemoan them as cheap traffic drivers or the last refuge of the lazy writer, the Google Analytics numbers tell a different story: Audiences eat them up like a pig does slop.
There are all sorts of completely logical reasons for this. Lists are easy to scan. They provide a road map for the reader. Numbers in headlines are catchy, especially if they’re crooked. And on a primal level, they also speak to our need to categorize things—to find order in chaos, to make sense of the randomness of existence.
Let me propose, however, a different reason for why we love lists: They feed our overwhelming desire to log on and be mad. Chances are, if you’re clicking into a ranking of the best Quentin Tarantino characters, you have strong opinions on where Rick Dalton should land. And when he ends up below Vincent Vega, you get the privilege of unfiltered, unfettered, low-stakes anger. Maybe you spend some extra time on the page shaking your head. Or maybe you hit that quote RT button or post the link on Reddit to let everyone know how bad you think it is. That’s what we in the biz call engagement, and it’s really all we have as content makers.
We at The Ringer understand what makes you tick—and occasionally, what ticks you off. We love a good ranking, and we love it when you engage with it, even if it’s simply because it annoys you. That’s not to say that we try to upset you—speaking personally, I put a lot of effort into the list order and the thousands upon thousands of words that make up the blurbs. I also view every good ranking as an attempt to build a canon—like for cult movies—or provide an entry point for someone coming to the topic cold. (I’m particularly proud of the J Dilla production ranking we ran in 2022.) But I also try to understand that no list will be perfect to every reader—or writer, or even the person in charge of it—so why not try to have a little fun while we’re at it? (Including Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Getting Back Together” at no. 50 on our greatest breakup songs list back in 2020 was sure to upset at least three groups: the people who wanted to see her ranked higher, the ones who didn’t want to see her on the list at all, and the ones who wondered how we picked some of Max Martin’s chaff over “All Too Well.” Every reader is somehow right and wrong in the moment; call it Schrödinger’s list, except when you open this box, you find out that the cat is ranked dead last.)
When putting together the Ringer in Review package to launch this beautiful redesigned website, we knew we wanted to account for our rankings somehow, given how big a part of our DNA they are. And we decided that the best, most meta—and probably dumbest—way was to rank some of our classic rankings. But when the task fell to me, I didn’t find myself drifting toward our objectively good rankings, like the ones we did for the best TV episodes of the century or for TV finales. I found myself drawn to the obscure and galaxy-brained ones, the ones we may have wanted a mulligan on, the ones that really riled people up. In homage to our weirdest rankings, I wanted to make this ranking weird.
So, in that spirit, allow us to present the Definitive, Chaotic Ranking of The Ringer’s Most Necessary (and Unnecessary) Rankings, Ranked. Below, you’ll find everything from sports to pop culture to tech, covering the good, the bad, and the indefensible. You’ll find hot takes and freezing-cold ones, logical choices and real head-scratchers, super-serious opinions and ones that you could only assume were bits—though in some cases, you may not be able to tell which is which.
Before we begin, a few notes:
- This is not an attempt to be completist. You won’t find, like, NBA power rankings or lists of NFL pass-catching groups. This exercise will be random and entirely for the sickos.
- This is a vibes-based endeavor. Sometimes, big rankings get dressed up by adding analytics, like routes per yard run or some imaginary composite score we developed. (I’m personally fond of the remake necessity score.) None of that here. This will be the ramblings of one man who’s spent too much time thinking about this stuff and possibly even more time making these lists himself.
- This is going to get long. Apologies to my editor, but he knows that every good list has to at least feel exhaustive (though hopefully not exhausting). Because surely the reader wants our witty blurbs and not just a straight list, right?
On that note, let’s start the countdown. And like any decent list, it’s got to start with an odd number. A number that I’ll pick for no particular reason …
There is no better place to start a meta ranking of Ringer rankings than with a meta ranking of A Star Is Born, a movie that swept through this company the way the clap sweeps through a frat house. A search of the phrase “a star is born” on this website turns up pages upon pages of content, touching on everything from the memes the movie birthed to the true star of the film (Bradley Cooper’s dog, Charlie) to a cursed piece that I let Rob Harvilla write about a Quavo remix of “Why Did You Do That?” that never existed. (A good editor protects their writers from themselves, but a great editor lets them write 800 words of fanfic about the third-best Migos member.)
This ranking, however, is the apex mountain of The Ringer’s fixation with the Gaga-Bradley crossover event and its biggest song. It was a one-man job by culture editor and special projects lead Andrew Gruttadaro—my North Star for all of our bizarro rankings—and this list stands as a testament to our ability to take minutiae, throw them under a microscope, and blow them up in a ranked format. Andrew zeroes in on the most famous part of “Shallow”—the 55-or-so-second buildup where Gaga and BradCo trade guttural noises and nonsensical syllables right before the song’s coda. Because while the entire song is fantastic, that small portion is where it reaches a state of transcendence. The no. 1 in Andrew’s ranking was, naturally, “HAAAAAAA AH AH AH, AHHH,” though he’s right to shout out the “OH” at 2:27, which he calls “the nonword that sweeps the listener off his or her feet, gently preparing them for the fireworks to come.” As Andrew says in the intro text, these noises convey emotions that no word in the English language could. Think of this ranking in a similar way: It conveys an obsession that no other piece of writing could quite capture.
Not a ranking, strictly speaking, but ultimately a collection of mini-rankings. Ever wondered who said fuck off the most on Succession? (Probably not, because it’s obviously Logan Roy.) How about who was told to fuck off the most? (Eh, obviously Kendall.) But even if these weren’t exactly two of TV’s great mysteries, it’s still stunning to see them broken down into data and charts—and then placed alongside a wonderful assemblage of words like “rat-fucker” and “Professor Can’t-Fuck.”
Beyond the way it beautifully quantifies our modern-day, foulmouthed King Lear, this entry is worth including for two other reasons. First, it taps into our long-standing and fervent obsession with all things Waystar Royco. Second, it gave us an early glimpse into the brain of Austin Gayle. Speaking of which …
When the average reader thinks about rankings, they imagine it’s all light work. Listing and riffing, and none of the effort or stress that goes into capital-W Writing. It’s not really true, especially the way we do it—you try writing and wrangling 30,000 words of copy on horror movie kills while worrying you’re gonna get flame-broiled on Reddit because you missed some awful ’80s slasher. Rankings are often more work than straightforward articles, but in a way, they’re easier, if that makes any sense.
That is, unless you’re Austin Gayle, the author of the lists in this entry. For all three, Austin put himself through the most grueling—and quite frankly, demented—research process I’ve ever witnessed. Each time, he rewatched dozens of the most punishing movies ever made in a matter of days, then wrote tens of thousands of words about them. The horror movie villain list—where he tried to figure which bad guys he could actually take in hand-to-hand combat—was particularly impressive and galling. My guy watched hundreds of deeply disturbing movies, sometimes at two-time and four-time speed, and then wrote close to 40,000 words on them. All in, like, a week. (The one villain he couldn’t defeat, however? Me, his editor, who cut about half of his copy. Sorry, bud, ain’t nobody reading about how you’d beat the hot priest in Don’t Torture a Duckling.)
Austin basically tore through the canon of some of the greatest movies ever made as a bit. It was a twisted education in cinema history, and I felt privileged to witness it. I just hope his fiancée can forgive us.
This gonzo—and totally accurate—ranking by my former colleague Michael Baumann ignores one fact: The scariest thing of all is posting your opinion on the internet for hundreds of thousands of strangers to tear apart. If you’ve survived that, you can survive the goddamn luge.
I’m going to give away a trade secret: You’re likely to see more lists in the dregs of summer because that’s when the content calendar slows down. (See: one of my favorite videos we ever made, “The Worst Sports Week of the Year.”) This is even true in Olympics years—because, let’s face it, even if you’re willing to watch the archery or pommel horse competitions, there’s only so much commentary you’ll read about them.
Shea Serrano, however, understood what really got readers to click through: a totally rational ranking of which country has the best flag. This list, which ran in August 2016, just as the Olympics were winding down, is totally stripped of politics and mostly devoid of nationalism. It’s just vibes and aesthetics. While one could accuse Shea of slight bias—I’d personally go Japan over Mexico at no. 1, though it’s close—this is exactly what every good list should look like. The writing’s funny, it has a clear point of view, and it helped me discover some things I didn’t know beforehand. (That Albanian flag does go hard.) Plus: No one has ever been more right about anything than Shea was in placing Canada dead last. (“It’s all there for you. And you settle on … a leaf? Not even the whole tree?”) You know what? Put this list on the Ringer flag and fly it high.
A ranking of people and things named Jack in remembrance of the discontinued iPhone headphone jack. Inspired headline, but terrible for SEO and workplace browsing. You love to see it. Also, a bit of a missed opportunity to include Jack (Anton)off. (I would’ve had him above Jack Johnson the singer and below Jack Johnson the boxer, personally.)
Questionable celebrity tattoos have been a reliable source of content for us over the years. (Shocked we didn’t squeeze a little more juice out of the Ben Affleck back tattoo.) But, with all due respect to the authors of these lists, I’m a little upset that I wasn’t asked for my takes. I’m pretty sure I have more tattoos than anyone else at The Ringer (though to be fair, I’ve never seen Sean Fennessey’s back, so who’s to say?), and I once did an investigation that may have proved the Houston Astros cheated in the American League Championship Series but that definitely proved that Jose Altuve has a really bad tattoo. But also, with all due respect to list makers Andrew Gruttadaro and Hannah Girorgis, Drake’s Drakkar Noir tattoo kinda rips, and we need someone who’s unafraid to say it.
Readers are going to yell about rankings in general. They’re really going to yell about rankings of nerd culture stuff. It’s well known around here that I don’t care at all about Marvel and DC things—I leave that to House of R and The Midnight Boys—so I can’t comment on the quality of this ranking. What I am certain about is that many, many people did comment on this—loudly and with language that would make even Deadpool blush. (Am I doing this right?) What I am curious about, however, is the “Honorable Mentions” section. Look at the titles on these things: The Spirit, Elektra, Max Steel. Those sound more like something you’d find in a sex shop than in a movie for kids (or at least a movie that should be for kids). I refuse to believe these are real movies, and I also refuse to google them to find out whether they actually are. And ya know, yelling about a list that I didn’t do the legwork on and don’t know that much about actually feels nice. Maybe the readers are on to something.
The secret weapon of The Ringer is our copy desk. I can’t tell you how many times a copy editor has saved us from saying something boneheaded or a fact checker has stopped us from being dead-ass wrong. But given the nature of the role, their work is rarely public facing. Which makes me proud to include one of my favorite rankings from one of our favorite people here: the Chief, Craig Gaines. If you’ll remember, this was the NBA draft when everyone became obsessed with how Woj worked around the ESPN-imposed restrictions on tipping picks before they were announced. He was getting really creative—“Boston is tantalized by Robert Williams,” “The Spurs are fixated on Lonnie Walker,” “The Lakers are unlikely to resist Mo Wagner.” (Who among us is?!) And Craig broke these all down—not the value of the pick, but the value of Woj’s tweets. It was a lesson in language and usage. It was a good bit of SEO on a thing everyone was talking about. But most importantly, it was just a good blog. I’m tantalized by Craig’s work here!
OK, first, who wrote that tortured headline? (Oh, wait … I’m getting word that it was me. Blame the SEO game.) Second, which editor let Charles Holmes put “Devil in a New Dress” at no. 24, a few spots below a fucking La Roux remix?!?! (Oh, hmm. Me again. I swear I’m OK at this job.)
This was an exhaustive list that arguably should’ve been a little less exhaustive. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Charles and I ranked every song from his Rosewood era. I still stand by some of this—“Christian Dior Denim Flow” belonged in the top five then, and it does now—but so much of it keeps me up at night. The “Devil in a New Dress” placement. Letting Charles trash “So Appalled.” Basically half the shit we wrote. If you yelled about this one, I can’t blame you. I maybe yelled about it myself.
In my defense, I had just met Charles. I didn’t know his deal yet, and if you know his deal now, you get why that could be a problem. I was overpowered by the strength of his takes. I know better today, and I’ve learned something important since we published this: Every ranking needs a strong guiding voice, and that voice should never be Charles Holmes.
A twofer of sadness. Typically we rank things to celebrate them. But for these, Rodger Sherman ran through the long, tortured histories of both franchises’ quarterbacks. The Bears one was particularly sad—he had Jay Cutler ranked first and Mitch Trubisky ranked fourth, and you can’t really argue with him.
Both of these lists were made with the thought—the hope—that these curses would soon be lifted. In 2021, the Bears had just drafted Justin Fields. In 2023, the Jets had just traded for Aaron Rodgers. But both only added to the pile of sadness. Fields was serviceable but is currently Russell Wilson’s backup in Pittsburgh after Chicago traded him to make way for this year’s no. 1 pick, Caleb Williams (who’s currently being outplayed by Jayden Daniels, Bo Nix, and possibly Drake Maye). Rodgers ruptured his Achilles about three weeks after the list dropped, on his first drive as a Jet, shortly after running onto the field with an American flag. He returned this year, but, well … let’s just say he’d better hope Trump is holding a cabinet spot for him. It’s tough to believe he’ll likely have a Jets career worse than Brett Favre’s, but I look forward to finding out whether that’s the case if we update these rankings when both of these teams are right back in the same position in 2031.
The most recent entry on this list. It pairs nicely with the Jets’ quarterback sadness ranking and gives us a road map for when we need a darkness retreat away from the content.
All the power to Andrew and Miles for putting Pauly D down the list at no. 27. I know that if I had done this, I wouldn’t have been able to resist putting my fellow countryman (from the same Tri-Guido area of Rhode Island that I am) a spot above, like, Paul Giammati. Now, if we’re ranking Italian Pauls, I’ve got the Jersey Shore DJ up at the top, right below Paul Sorvino (inexplicably absent from this list—fellas, now I’m gonna have to turn my back on you).
Done in response to the last great (terrible) gimmick boxing match, Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather, and thankfully before the latest great (terrible) gimmick boxing match, Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul. If we could update this list for that one, let’s add no. 40: losing to a former YouTuber in a possibly rigged fight just for a payday after having your ass cheeks memed to death.
I am particularly proud of this one—we had about 25,000 words of copy ready to go three days after Kendrick Lamar dropped “Not Like Us.” And, from my perspective, it essentially tells the history of hip-hop through feuds while also playing our favorite game, Let’s Remember Some Stuff. (My favorite entry: Lil B’s Kevin Durant diss song at no. 50.)
But a minor (eh?) issue with the list that’s revealed itself only in hindsight: We had K.dot’s final Drake diss at no. 7. Under any other circumstances, that may have seemed way too high for a days-old song. But the rest of 2024 proved we actually underrated the song. Just look at the score card: the thousands of memes, the Pop Out show, the new album, the impending Super Bowl halftime show, where Kendrick will almost certainly call Drake a pedophile in front of an audience of 100 million. If we had a mulligan, we could go as high as no. 1 for this one. (A decision we stand by, however, was not including “meet the grahams.” That song is cursed, and not in the way something like Magic!’s “Rude” is. More in an ancient burial ground kinda way. Just a truly diabolical object.)
Deceptively sicko shit. If I were to show you the spreadsheets we used for these two exhaustive, completely scientific studies, you’d wonder why we didn’t go into STEM instead of media. (The answer, as always, is the money and respect that comes with a career in journalism.)
To start, this was done somewhat as a bit. The second Daniel Jones was drafted in spring 2019, he was pegged as a bust. So when he looked shockingly competent in his first start that fall, we (or rather, I) decided to lean all the way in, ranking every single one of his pass attempts from that game. I spent probably a full day’s worth of work rewatching this meaningless Week 3 game against the Buccaneers, and then I cut some tape and uploaded it as GIFs (since stricken down by the copyright gods). Then, crucially, I tried to slot all the chaos into list form. (In the words of my dear friend Yasi Salek, “Men used to go to war.” Now we do this.) I stand by this exercise—it was a good idea for a blog, and I’d do it again.
But what’s hard to read now is the intro, where I wrote, “Consider this a mea culpa for the entire NFL draft media industrial complex.” Jones was benched by the Giants last month, then cut. His head coach from this season—Brian Daboll—is likely to get fired, which would make him the third head coach to work with Jones and suffer the same fate. Danny Dimes has proved to be exactly what we assumed he was the day he was drafted—an athletic, limited passer who was taken too high and needs a superteam around him to compete. Before we were very wrong, we were very right. Consider this a mea culpa for the mea culpa.
This one’s a relic from a pre-COVID era when Danny Heifetz would blog, like, seven times on an NFL Sunday instead of debating dinner rolls or some shit on The Ringer Fantasy Football Show. It’s also a relic from a time when Josh Allen seemed like the most athletic doofus in the entire league instead of an MVP candidate who could carry a barren offense virtually by himself.
If you need a refresher, this is from the playoff game when Allen ran for a massive first down and then lateraled the football backward into the abyss as he was getting tackled. A phenomenal play by a phenomenal player—one whom we were dead wrong about when he came into the league. (Many mea culpas on this one.) This piece is also my favorite kind of ranking: a dumb, fun, ultimately frivolous in-the-moment reaction to a dumb, fun, ultimately frivolous moment. We’ve called Allen many things in the past six years: a mobile mountain, a golden retriever, etc. But in our heart of hearts—and especially Andrew Gruttadaro’s heart—he’ll always just be Joshy.
OK, this is an actual mea culpa to Andrew Gruttadaro, who organized this list. At the last minute, I talked him into letting me rank Twin Peaks: The Return’s “Part 8.” In my head, a bottle episode is an installment of a TV show that feels unique or separate from the rest of the series. Like a flashback episode or, hell, even something like “Pine Barrens.” Unfortunately, for most of the internet, bottle episode means “an episode that takes place in one location with a limited cast.” So an hour of the Twin Peaks reboot that traveled across decades and universes and was ultimately about the nature of the atomic bomb and the evil it unleashed did not qualify. My mistake! But I’m pleading with you: Expand your mind! Reject strict constructionism! Consider a new definition of bottle episodes that isn’t just about trying to kill a fly or waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant or saving the network money! And while we’re here, you gotta light?
Someone described this one to me the other day as having big “we’ve been locked in our homes for too long” energy. Our dead GOT characters ranking came two months after COVID lockdowns began—before the NBA entered the bubble, before baseball got going again, before Christopher Nolan launched Tenet into the ether. As a sports and culture company, we had nothing outside of Tiger King and The Last Dance. (Cue the “We were never going to financially recover from this” and “And we took that personally” memes.) We needed to invent stuff to blog about, so went back to a reliable well for us: Westeros.
No complaints on this list, though I wanted to call out the perfect placement of Rickon Stark, dead last at 101. The idea that he should’ve zagged or run a dig route or done literally anything other than what he did during the Battle of the Bastards remains a foundational Ringer belief. (I’m working on a theory that he was GOT’s Darrius Heyward-Bey—he can run only in a straight line, even when the situation calls for more than that. Though in fairness to DHB, at least Rickon was surrounded by talent early in his career.)
The best part? Ranked directly above him, at no. 100: Mole’s Town Whore. At least she probably could’ve run a curl route or something.
Speaking of being locked in our homes for too long …
In 2020, as the entire world moved inside and Jerry Jones moved to a Bond villain’s super-yacht, the NFL draft became a remote affair. Cameras took us into the homes of the likes of Kliff Kingsbury (spacious and modern), Bruce Arians (chill and cozy), and Joe Judge (cavernous and unsettling, which made it clear why he tries to never spend a waking second with his family). But the whiff here—which I take complete ownership over—is missing out on the moment cameras captured Bill Belichick’s dog, Nike. Somehow, I spent thousands of words on one of the biggest traffic days of the year and didn’t capture the night’s lasting revelation: that a purebred Alaskan Klee Kai was the one drafting those shitty wideouts for all those years.
One of the more perfectly constructed blogs I’ve ever witnessed. In summer 2020, a totally normal time to be making a sports and pop culture website, our old pal Rodger Sherman dived into the somehow deep well of music videos by the Haim sisters showcasing them walking. He not only ranked them on form and style but also calculated the time and estimated distance the girls walked in each. Unfortunately, not a ton of people read it—other stuff going on in summer 2020, after all—but they should teach this one in blogging class, or at least while walking to another, more important class.
Rodger again. Fantastic work. But ya know, fuck this one for reminding me within the first six sentences that the dog who played Air Bud died shortly after the first film and never got to experience the thrill of winning World Series MVP (in a movie, of course). Good boy, good blog, bad vibes.
Hmmm, John Wayne Gacy mentioned.
Hmmm, Justin Fields optimism mentioned.
Damn, it feels a little cruel to put Peking duck near actual ducks.
All right, let’s stop right here, before I say something I’m going to regret about Left Shark.
I grouped these four lists together for a reason: They’re part of a long, informal franchise of rankings by Megan Schuster and Miles Surrey. I like to think of Meg and Miles as two fairly normal people, but every one of these is a journey into light madness. Babies, tigers, fuckin’ popes—they’ve done it all. Maybe they should’ve done this one you’re reading, too. I could’ve used the kind of energy that it takes to put the human centipede from The Human Centipede on the same list as the Beatles and Bugs Bunny.
A podcast ranking! And possibly the most chaotic list on this ranking. In response to a Twitter-circulated, definitely non-Ringer list of the 50 greatest rappers of all time (Joe Budden at no. 3 is, however, particularly inspired), Amanda Dobbins, Kate Halliwell, and Andrew Gruttadaro jumped on the Ringer Dish podcast feed and ranked the 50 greatest celebrities ever. There are some questionable omissions (no Michael Jackson, which I get, but c’mon, guys), some great bits (John Lennon at no. 9, right above Jesus Christ at no. 10), and a few random white dudes who do be everywhere. (Diplo, of course, but also Napoleon Bonaparte.) But I would like to call your attention to this part of the list.
This, my friends, is art. This is why we do it—why we wake up in the morning and rank things so that strangers can get mad about it. It also introduces a new, exciting idea: a Joan Didion dispatch from Flavortown featuring a rough beast deep-fried and glazed with almond honey sriracha.
OK, deep breath …
We’ve had plenty of rankings that have made people upset, but this one took on a life of its own. I will be the first to admit it’s a tough look to have a romantic comedy list and omit Billy Wilder’s oeuvre, but we were trying to capture the modern ideal of the rom-com, not realizing that in the process, we may have been unintentionally besmirching the genre’s foundational texts. The branding of “Best Rom-Coms Since 1970” should’ve helped us sidestep some of that, but … well, explaining the when and how we introduced that time constraint may lead to more questions than answers.
Whatever the case, the list launched a thousand “Where’s Some Like It Hot?” tweets, and one website was angry enough to try to take us to film school while doing everything but naming names. (Sorry, The Wrap, but no subliminals in the blog-diss game.)
But here I must admit something else: Perhaps we didn’t take the “since 1970” part seriously enough. Only one movie from before the Reagan administration made the list, and it was a movie about a death-obsessed young dude who falls for a 79-year-old woman. There’s no What’s Up Doc?, no Foul Play, no Heaven Can Wait.
OK, fine, but what about what is here? Well, there may have been a few misses there, too. (Legally Blonde? Scott Pilgrim? 27 Dresses over Bull Durham on a sports and pop culture website?!) We can chalk some of this up to the process—maybe democracy doesn’t work—and some of it to the staff’s age. (As an elder millennial, I’m basically a boomer to some of the kids here.) But also, maybe the definition of a rom-com isn’t as cut-and-dried as I assume. I mean, look at some of these reply tweets of people calling out some of their favorite rom-coms. Shaun of the Dead. Mean Girls. Goodfellas. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Goddamn Shrek. It seems that no one knows what a rom-com is. Possibly including us. (But not that one guy at The Wrap.)
Nearly three years later, this one still stresses me out. We need something more calming. More agreeable. More simple to define.
Ah, yes. Steven Ruiz’s weekly QB rankings. The only consistently updated ranking on this list, so the only one that consistently makes people mad about Brock Purdy. I’m not here to say whether Ruiz is right or wrong, though the guy does his homework, so I’m going to agree with him over some rando yelling about Geno Smith.
But even if you don’t agree with him, you have to admire the commitment—to the work, but also to the bit of placing Brock Purdy in the low teens. (Though, if you give Ruiz truth serum, he will tell you that this is decidedly not a bit and that Purdy is that mediocre.) Steven, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re still doing this in 2043, and I hope you’re still placing Purdy in the low teens, long after he’s been replaced by Eli Manning’s grandson or whomever.
This list lives on in Ringer infamy. It’s been called an affront to decency and the entire concept of voting, and it changed parts of the way we make our lists. Our own founder tore it to shreds on his very popular podcast, and it still comes up from time to time in the office, whenever someone (read: me) needs to make a cheap joke about a list gaffe. You can read all about that in Danny Chau’s excellent oral history of the incident on this very website today. But I come here now to celebrate the fast food list, not to bury it. A list should be idiosyncratic and capable of generating discussion. It should be defensible—which this is—but not so obvious that it gets a nothing burger of a response. (Which this is not.) Most of all, it should make Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers happy, even if it pleases no one else. So you can keep your Big Macs, your Whoppers, your double-stuff-crunched gordita combos. I know where my vote goes. Give us a do-over, and I would hope we’d end up with the same result.
In other words: Waffle fries are a normal no. 1, find a new slant.
Justin Sayles is an editor, writer, and producer who covers primarily pop culture. He’s also the host of ‘The Wedding Scammer’ and the world’s foremost expert on Jose Altuve’s bad tattoo.
