Cracked.com

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Cracked.com, or just Cracked, is a website created by humorist Daniel O'Brien. The website is the online successor to a long-running (1958 to 2007) humor magazine of the same name. After amassing a stable of some snarky authors and later providing a smorgasbord of video content it has become one of the most visited humor websites on the Internet,[1] with the average article amassing well over a million views after a couple of weeks.

While at first glance the website seems to be glorifying broscience and sensationalism, dig deeper and you'll find that Cracked.com is one of the most sincere pro-science and pro-skepticism advocates on (the popular part of) the Internet. Articles like "The Truth Behind 5 Real Monsters That Fooled The Internet" and "5 Retarded Get Rich Quick Scams People Still Fall For" (most articles are lists) show what the site is capable of. Like Wikipedia with dick jokes.

Despite being despised by the site runners, Cracked.com commentators are also, surprisingly, smarter and wittier than most visitors to similar websites, making the comments section often just as much of a treat as the actual article. This says more about the rest of the Internet than Cracked.com's clientele.[2]

Contents

[edit] Amounts of clue may vary

While Cracked consistently and genuinely takes a stand against all forms of homophobia, racism, sexism, and religious bigotry when it is being serious,[3] its love affair with black comedy, self-deprecation, dead baby humor and (of course) dick jokes often create a mini Poe's Law. And of course there were some writers genuinely guilty of some or all of the above failings, especially in the earlier years of the site.[4]

Even though Cracked generally takes an anti-bullshit, pro-skepticism stance, stray bits of science woo will creep into some articles anyway (And sometimes they'll defend woo promoters like Dr. Oz.)[5] But articles debunking or critical of science woo well outnumber the ones supporting it. While you're generally safe in relaxing standards of due diligence for this website, it's not as ironclad as, say, Snopes.[6]

Additionally, the ads that often infest the site are sometimes not mindful of its attempts to amuse and inform, and instead cater to a projected audience consuming the material—which it seems to think would like to attend disreputable online "universities" or purchase aluminum 'ninja swords'. Ads, of course, are chosen by a script that picks out keywords instead of understanding context, so any "controversy" here is due more to computer error than editorial decision-making.

[edit] See also

[edit] Persistent memes

  • Thomas Edison - While the real life Edison was kind of a dick, Cracked.com puffs up his villainy to a hilarious extent.
  • Theodore Roosevelt - Cracked.com loves Roosevelt almost as much as it hates Thomas Edison. At least it's not Andrew Jackson.
  • Zombies
  • Spiders - They're fucking evil.

[edit] More linksies

[edit] Footnotes

  1. As of August 2012, Ebizmba.com puts it only behind Break.com. The discussion of that website's contents will probably remain beyond the scope of this wiki as it has no real persistent theme or mission other than 'present random PG-rated content a general audience might find funny/interesting'.
  2. Weep for the future.
  3. Such as in this fine article
  4. For instance, contrast Seanbaby's 2009 articles to his 2012 articles.
  5. http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-dumb-celebrities-who-are-way-smarter-than-you-think/
  6. Cracked articles generally lack any citations more rigorous than embedded Wikipedia links... for the most part.
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