Ah, the listicle. A summertime tradition! The District does not lack for honors (and dishonors) when the temperature is at its height and its just easier to crunch some numbers and put together a list than hit the streets and do some real reporting. Of course, we are always somewhat piqued when we see our fair city being judged in comparison to other cities and states. Maybe we’re just competitive.

But it seems like this summer, we’ve been really inundated with these kind of stories.

We’re the veg-friendliest city, home to two of the top 100 schools in the country (not really) and the eleventh most-caffeinated city in the nation. The Redskins and area restaurants have both been ranked by various metrics. Our universities rank highly on lists of the best colleges to work for and on lists of the most gang-affiliated headwear. D.C. ranks 42nd in internet connectivity in the United States. We’re the second-best place for working moms, and sixth when it comes to the risk of mortgage fraud. Washington’s one of the least miserable economies in the country, and second-best for graduates coming to contribute to that economy. That’s just the last couple of months, and I fully admit that I’m probably missing some that are buried somewhere in the great Google ether.

Our trying-so-hard-to-care reactions to the poor methodologies that most of these rankings utilize — like Lydia DePillis’ Housing Complex post about the working mothers’ article I mentioned somewhere up that morass of lists — do little to discourage their flow, most concluding with little but a collective meh. I suppose if we got a little more upset about these pointless exercises in time wasting, then we would have rated a little bit higher than third on the list of most irritated cities in the country, eh?

Oh, wait, that one’s actually about shaving cream. Meh.