Note that there is more to BuzzFeed than listicles (listicles are about 26% of all BuzzFeed articles), although they are certainly the most notable part of BuzzFeed content. In fact, the "The [X]" listicle prefix construction has died off.
I wrote a blog post this week about the subject: http://minimaxir.com/2015/01/linkbait/
(HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8893448)