I feel confident in saying that BWE.tv has firmly established itself as one of the Internet’s finest purveyors of posts in which things are catalogued, placed into groups of 10, listed and presented in a humorous manner. But while these posts seem like Internet meme lay-ups, there’s actually an art and a craft that goes into writing them, as I will now demonstrate. Ladies and gentlemen, here are my Top 10 Tips For Writing An Awesomely Funny Top 10 List on the Internet…

10. You must include the crucial phrase “Top 10″ in the headline of whatever you’re writing on the Internet. If you don’t write this, and you put something on the Internet, nobody will read it or care. Your headline must also include some variation on the words “Awesome”, “Funny” or “Ridiculous”. Preferably all of them. The perfect headline would be “Top 10 Funniest, Most Awesomely Ridiculous Things You Remember From The 80’s”. That’s practically guaranteed to get Dugg about eleventy bajillion times.

9. You must pick some kind of topical event to which you can make a tenuous connection in your premise. You can’t just start listing off the “Top 10 Cartoons From Our Childhood That Should Also Be Made Into Movies” all willy-nilly, you’ve got to set that up with some kind of current cultural event that makes your list relevant (even if it’s not really that solid). Like so: “Now that Tranformers came our last year and there’s this G.I. Joe movie I heard they’re making, here are 10 More Cartoons From Our Childhood that Should Also Be Made Into Movies”. See how that works?

8. You must build your premise around a really obscure question that no one would otherwise think or care about being answered. Who ARE the Top 10 Greatest Character Actors Who Played Ninjas? I have no idea! Why don’t you tell me!?!

7. Write brief blurbs humorously describing why you’ve chosen to include each item on the list. Your insane rationalizations for why you’ve chosen to include the various components of the list is the primary reason why it’s funny.

See the rest, after the jump!

6. Include enough earnest entries on the list to validate the premise, but don’t forget to be wacky! See #6. That wasn’t very funny, but you really do have to write those humorous blurbs. Hey – UNICORNZ!

5. Find AT LEAST one obscure nostalgic reference from people’s childhoods to remind them of. Remember that show Gummy Bears? Or those M.U.S.C.L.E. toys or Def Leppard or Intellivision? Of course you do! And for some reason it’s entertaining to be reminded of these things. Our entire TV network was built around this strange-yet-inarguable fact. Also, this is very important – if your list contains no mention of Alf, Patrick Swayze or The Simpsons, it’s utterly worthless.

4. You’ve got to have the nonsensical wild-card. At least one of your list selections should stand in direct logical contradiction with your stated premise, because for some reason that’s funny. For example, if you were listing the “10 Hottest Oscar-Winners I’d Like To Do It With”, you might want to consider throwing Jessica Tandy in there, because she’s not hot, or alive, and that’s funny.

3. Carefully selected photos and video supporting evidence can make or break your list. A potentially hilarious mention of Zubaz (remember those!?!) could fall flat without the direct visual connection the reader needs to make with those ridiculous 80’s tiger-print parachute pants, which is why I have chosen to include the photograph to your left.

2. When all else fails and you’re totally out of ideas, just start making lists of T&A. We all have those days when we’re not feeling the artistic inspiration required to think of thematically-related lists of pop cultural references, but luckily many of the Internet’s most popular list-loving link referral sites are comprised almost an entirely of a male readership, so if you just throw the words “Top 10″, “Drunk”, “Horny”, “Teen” and/or “Chicks” in front of a bunch of PG-13 pics from the Maxim Magazine archive, you’re still golden.

1. The number one item on the list should be vaguely disappointing and anti-climactic. But as a consolation, please enjoy the half-naked girl to your right.