Lists as Social Grid: Ratings and Rankings in Everyday Life

It is argued that the inundation of lists in our everyday lives has become part of the social grid, which tells us who and what we are and how we relate to the world. Using Baudrillard's three mutations of the sign, this paper examines the relationship between lists (rankings and ratings) and social life. This updated grid, which is increasingly defined by market capitalism, makes for not only a greater commodified self but a simulated self based on the external statistical world.