“What’s a Swirly?” It’s our rating system

The Watch List rates videos by awarding them between one and five swirlies.

You know what we mean. It’s those swirling Web 2.0 animations that we watch while we’re waiting for something to happen. We spend around 9/12th of our waking lives looking at them. (Don’t believe me? Look it up.)

We thought what we needed was a ranking system that would tell you how long you should spend watching the swirl for any particular episode. The higher the number of swirlies we give it, the more the wait is worth it.

(Please note: The number of swirlies has nothing to do with how long you will wait. It does not describe how long it takes the video to load. Really we just think it’s a fun name for a rating system. It is purely a measure of how much we liked the episode.)

Here’s how it breaks down…

1 Swirly – Terrible. Not worth the time it takes to watch, let alone load.

2 Swirlies -  Bad. If it loads right away, and you have time to waste, this video probably won’t make your head explode.

3 Swirlies – Average. It’s probably worth waiting less than minute for this one to start. Worth watching, but nothing you’re gonna twitter about.

4 Swirlies – Pretty Good. If it is slow loading, give it some time. Maybe even pause it, let it buffer, and watch it stutter free in a minute or two. Very much worth watching. Not perfect but pretty damn close.

5 Swirlies – Epic. Wait all night for it to load if you have to. Not only worth watching once, but over and over again.

So there it is. You think you have a way to make our rating system better? Leave a comment below!