You have to give it to BuzzFeed – their ability to churn out ‘top 10′ lists defies anything the internet has ever known before. There is certainly a skill to compiling completely meaningless lists (as we’re doing here), and it’s about time the much laughed at media company got some credit for making everyone more stupid.

This week, the team at BuzzFeed have really worked hard to swamp the tubes with gratuitous nonsense, giving us top-something lists on a host of topics only seriously ADHD creative people could come up with.

Here’s a round up of their best pieces:

1.“21 Reasons Johnny Depp And Winona Ryder Should Get Back Together”

Reason number 9 is particularly persuasive:

2. “27 Reasons Deep Dish Pizza Is Better Than All Other Pizzas”

Seriously, they came up with 27 ways of saying this:

3. “16 Sassy Tweets From The Nation’s 16th Largest School District”

Yes, you read that correctly. It has actually inspired a couple of posts I’m working on – “167 facebook photos from the 167th best tennis player in DC”, and “56 text messages from the 56th ranked college in America”.

Not that we’re desperate for content or anything.

4. “15 Reasons You Totally Looked Up To Conor Oberst In High School”

1. He’s sensitive.

Who is Conor Oberst?

5. “23 Signs You’re Too Obsessed With Your Person” 

Amazingly, BuzzFeed found another way to do a big list about kittens:

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BuzzFeed, ‘The Next Big Thing’ in journalism has a very clear business model: Do anything to get clicks, regardless of how fucking stupid it is.

This isn’t to say that the viral site is without merit – BuzzFeed is certainly very clickable and quite fun to read (the french bulldog/baby pictures really were hard not to smile at). But it’s foray into journalism is misguided at best, and at worst, downright dangerous. Take this epically irresponsible piece titled “Boston Bomber’s” Former Friends Suspect Him In Triple Murder“.

The staff at BuzzFeed interviewed three of Tamerlan Tsernaev’s friends who now suspect the killed suspect may have been involved in a triple homicide involving a close friend in 2011, because he ”didn’t show up” at the funeral. If you’re looking for some serious evidence or argument that Tsernaev had something to do with the horrific murders that saw three men have their throats slit, think again. The thousand word piece speculates that because Tsernaev didn’t appear at the funeral, may or may not have been with one of the people killed the night before the incident, went to Russia a few months after the murder and apparently slept a lot, he might have had something to do with the killings.

Apparently this constitutes journalism – interviewing anonymous people who claimed to know Tsernaev, pondering whether his behavior was suspicious at the time, and quoting tweets from other supposed accomplices like this:

Tsernaev may well have committed the triple homicide. He might have committed all 51 murders in Boston last year. While we’re speculating, lets throw in 9/11 given we don’t know his exact whereabouts or what he was doing at the time. After all, as his buddy told BuzzFeed, Tsernaev “kind of had an accent,” and “was sociable but kind of distant.”

Case closed!

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It’s official: Mitt Romney has decided this election is about the base, and not the center. From BuzzFeed:

Three Romney advisers told BuzzFeed the campaign’s top priority now is to rally conservative Republicans, in hopes that they’ll show up on Election Day, and drag their less politically-engaged friends with them. The earliest, ambiguous signal of this turn toward the party’s right was the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate, a top Romney aide said.

“This is going to be a base election, and we need them to come out to vote,” the aide said, explaining the pick.

Another adviser, who also discussed strategy on the condition of anonymity, described the campaign’s key targets as Republican activists: “The people who are going to talk to their neighbors, drive them to the polls on Election Day, and hold their hands on the way in to vote.”

As Sen. Lindsey Graham observed, there aren’t enough angry white people to keep the GOP in business for much longer, so this seems like a pretty foolhardy strategy. George W. Bush won the 2004 election by driving out the base, but he had some charisma and actually resonated with his core constituency. Romney however doesn’t resonate at all with the base so it seems like a pretty silly strategy to build an entire campaign around getting them out to vote. Maybe if he had focused on the center by appearing rational, he would be in this election with a fighting chance. But he didn’t and he isn’t, much to the relief of anyone with a semblance of common sense.

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Oh, BuzzFeed. I know the competition for campaign scoops is intense, but you shouldn’t need to go down this road. Similarly, the White House pool reporter on duty tonight — Todd Gillman of the Dallas Morning News — should know better than to throw this kind of poop against the wall.

Buzzfeed is selling this story (sans byline), complete with a Fox News question mark designed for plausible deniability as “Did President Obama Just Make A Blowjob Joke?”

The bulk of the Buzzfeed story is this:

So says the pool report from his gay and lesbian fundraiser at L.A.’s Beverly Wilshire tonight. Incredibly awkward.

From Gillman’s White House pool report of Obama’s comments at a campaign fundraiser:

The stage was striking. Obama spoke from a lectern, no seal, with an enormous American flag draped behind him like the scene in “Patton,” his head not even reaching the top of the fourth stripe.

He warmed up with some jokes about the first lady’s appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show. “Michelle outdoes me in pushups as well,” he said, after saying that she’s taken some criticism on her technique “because she doesn’t go all the way down” – a line that he let hang, naughtily, provoking laughter from the crowd.

The key word here is “naughtily.” Gillman doesn’t clarify, and BuzzFeed takes the ball down the field and goes right to blowjob joke.

Except, the more accurate word here is probably “cheekily.” The President has a habit of chiding the First Lady about her healthiness, dance moves and the likes. For evidence, check out the White House transcript of Obama’s comments:

I want to thank my wonderful friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in pushups — (laughter) — but I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down. (Laughter.) That’s what I heard. I just want to set the record straight — Michelle outdoes me in pushups as well. (Laughter.) So she shouldn’t feel bad. She’s an extraordinary talent and she’s just a dear, dear friend — Ellen DeGeneres. Give Ellen a big round of applause. (Applause.)

There’s a joke about the First Lady cheating at exercise, but where Gillman comes up with naughty and where Buzzfeed somehow extricates a blow job joke from that… only the Gods of “I really want web traffic” can divine.

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