Movoto’s shameless listicles

Did you hear? Sacramento’s been voted the eighth most redneck city in the country! It’s also the fourth nerdiest in the nation, the No. 1 California city for singles—and, apparently, among the top 10 cities worldwide for marketing trolls.

Over the course of a month, the “Novelty Real Estate” blog on Movoto's website has included Sacramento in three separate top 10 blog posts, two of which proved wildly shareworthy on Facebook.

Using questionable criteria and pseudo-scientific number crunching, the blog keeps churning out lists en masse—and then pesters news orgs across the nation for free press.

Listen, Movoto. We get it. You want clicks, and you're wrangling BuzzFeed's format to get them—when you're not trying to appeal to millennials with posts dedicated to ninjas and The Legend of Zelda video games. But it's too much, too fast. Give it a breather.

And readers: Vet your sources before you “like” and “share.” We're all to blame when inane listicles like these blast across our social media like wildfires.