How to Rank Stuff with Your Friends (Without Losing Your Mind)

We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in a Discord call, someone is sharing their screen, and you’re screaming at them to put Shrek 2 in the S-tier. Meanwhile, they're fumbling around with a slow browser, accidentally deleting images, and ignoring your valid arguments.

Ranking things together is one of the best ways to kill an evening, but the actual process is usually a pain.

If you're tired of watching one person do all the dragging and dropping while everyone else just sits there, here are the absolute best ways to make tier lists as a group.

1. Use a Tool Built for Multiplayer Let’s be honest: most tier list sites are built for a single person. One cursor, one mouse, and a lot of waiting around. To make it a group activity, you need something that lets everyone click and drag at the exact same time. TierFast: This is easily the most seamless option right now. The best thing about Tierfast is its real-time collaboration feature. You just spin up a list, text the link to your group chat, and everyone gets their own cursor. It turns ranking things from a passive viewing experience into a chaotic, fun multiplayer game where you can actively fight over where things go.

Mural: If you want to rank weird, highly specific inside jokes or weirdly cropped photos, Mural works well too. It's technically a digital whiteboard, but because it lets multiple people drop in images and move sticky notes simultaneously, it makes for a solid, free-form tier list builder.

1. Set Up a Discord "Jury" If you end up using a standard, single-user ranking site, you can still make it work. You just need to change the dynamic so that the host isn't just making all the decisions.

The trick here is to assign one person as the host (the one sharing their screen) and treat everyone else in the call as the jury.

The 2-Minute Rule: Set a strict timer for every item. The host brings up a topic, everyone debates it, and if a decision isn't reached in 120 seconds, it goes to a quick vote.

Use Discord Polls: To keep things moving, the host can drop a fast poll in the text chat. Majority wins, the item gets placed, and you move on to the next one. This stops the loudest person in the room from taking over the entire list.

1. Do a Live "Couch Co-op" Night If you're hanging out in the same room, stop passing a single laptop back and forth. You can turn a tier list session into an actual party game with a few simple tweaks.

Cast it to the TV: Plug a laptop into the living room TV with an HDMI cable. Give everyone a wireless mouse, or just take turns acting as the host.

The Whiteboard Method: If you want to get really creative, print out a bunch of pictures of what you're ranking, draw some tier lines on a physical whiteboard, and let people physically slap the pictures onto the board. There is nothing quite as satisfying as literally slamming a terrible movie into the "F Tier."

Quick Ground Rules for Your Next Session
To keep the peace and make sure the night stays fun, agree on a few basics before you start:

Define what the tiers actually mean. Does "D tier" mean it’s completely unwatchable, or just aggressively average? Get on the same page early.

Get specific with the categories. Instead of just ranking "Fast Food," rank "Late-Night Drive-Thru Items." The narrower the topic, the better the arguments get.