This Used to be Interesting

It's been a while since we last checked in with Cracked (back when this site was a blog called Musings of the Jewpacabra). At that point I said I was essentially done with that site because the quality of the articles on offer had gone way down. Well, I didn't realize it could get much worse over on Cracked because, damn, has it ever and now it's barely the site I remember at all.

Cracked.com spun off from Cracked Magazine, itself founded back in 1958 as an alternative to Mad Magazine. Cracked Magazine was purchased by Jack O'Brien with the goal of spinning up a website and relaunching the print editions. While the print magazine didn't last long (as all magazines are steadily killed by the Internet), the website quickly took off, becoming a solid product in the comedic infotainment section. Under the leadership of O'Brien, alongside David Wong (ne Jason Pargin) and other associate editors, the site found just the right mix of comedy and information to become dedicated reading for its many fans.

Part of what made Cracked so much fun to read was that its writers (many of whom were readers who contributed their own articles to the site) found interesting topics that they could write about. These articles had a comedic bite to them, but also taught the readers about history and other cool facts. "5 Soldiers More Bad-Ass than Rambo," "Six Times the U.S. Unleashed Bears in Combat," "5 Times Syphilis Saved the World," and other topics were discussed, at length, giving readers information that was cool, but also very funny (one of those three articles I listed is actually real but the other two sound like they could have been features on Cracked).

But the focus of the site shifted once some of the early editorial staff left. David Wong went off to write novels (starting with the sublime horror comedy John Dies at the End) and a new batch of featured writers came in and, I think, that's when the issues started cropping. They had their own voice, their own opinions, and the topics they covered didn't feel the same as what Cracked had been known for. In essence they had their own agendas.

Now, I am an unabashed liberal, and I have no problem with people espousing topics that match my ideals. But there were articles on Cracked that cropped up in the post-Wong era that felt like the people were pushing their perspectives. They were often "liberal" topics, but they were written from a hard-left perspective. "Here's All The Things Wrong With the Male Agenda," shit like that. Your argument is blunted when, in the first paragraph, you out yourself as a raging misandrist or the like. Not every article was like this, but enough of them had this weird, hateful edge to them (not just to men but all kinds of other topics and groups) that I found myself tuning out. I like my news neutral so I can make my own opinions and suddenly Cracked wasn't even close to neutral ground.

And also the articles became less funny. Now, some of this I blame on there maybe not being as much to write about. Yes, there's thousands of years of history to pull from, but how many topics can you write about before the things you're covering start to feel repetitive. Hell, associate editor Daniel O'Brien wrote countless articles about Die Hard, and while that was fun for a while, it did start to run out of steam eventually. History is great, but how much can you really write about.

So I tuned out, having gotten my fill of Cracked for a time. I came back recently, though, browsing on my phone as bathroom reading (short articles are good for that). And I have to admit that the site has gotten even worse over the last couple of years. Some of the topics they covered were amusing, but once Literally Media bought the site, is feels like it's truly gone down hill.

You can feel that when you look at the site now, where 90 percent of what's on offer isn't original content, it's just stuff regurgitated from the Internet: "15 Funny Jokes About Office Life" (taken from other sources), "!4 Unforgivably Tasteless Stunts from Television History" (which is just a set of quick pictures with text where a post like that would have been an actual article in years past), "78 Trivia Tidbits about Steve Martin on His 78th Birthday" (they love their bullet points of trivia now), and "21 Impossible Scenarios That Terrify You" (which is just pictures with text submitted by users). All the quality content is missing now.

The biggest waste of space is the picture postings. Browsing last night I saw 15 posts on the front page and of them, only two were anything more than pictures with captions. I get that pictures are fun to look at, and little captions are easy to read, but the point of Cracked was to be informative. I don't need a Pinterest of trivia, I was actual info that will make me think and laugh. That used to be the site's bread and butter but, no, not now.

You can chalk some of the brain drain from the site up to the previous owners. E. W. Scripps Company bought the site in 2016 and then, in readying it for sale (as these conglomerates often do with products they buy) they fired 25 of the full time editors from the site. Bear in mind that currently the site only has 12 dedicated writers and editors total now, so it's pretty clear the kind of damage that wholesale firing had on the site. There's no way to keep producing the kind of quality content that the site was known for after that. Just no way.

At this point Cracked.com bores me. It's not even worth reading in the bathroom while I have nothing better to do. There are other, better sites out there that give me my quick fix of well-written content when I'm just looking to zone and read. Cracked at least used to be good for that, even if that was a steep drop from how good the site used to be. Now, though, even thinking of it as bathroom reading gives it too much credit. The Cracked of old is dead and, once again, I'm done with the site.