Something very, very bad is happening at Cracked. These truly feel like the end times. Obviously, various stages have felt like the end of Cracked to other people, and those people were all wrong, so maybe I'm wrong too, but this is not the only upheaval they've had in the past couple of weeks.
Robert Brockway, formerly popular writer and now one of the leading editors, has been unceremoniously shitcanned because
the site no longer wants long-form content. It's those shitty five-sentence Facebook-comment articles from now on, and nothing else. Fuck your quality. Fuck your effort. It's time to burn this admittedly frequently insufferable titan of online publishing to the ground for the insurance money. Like and subscribe!
But at least we have the image contests, right? They're the most financially lucrative type of article; they always have been. They wouldn't wipe those out, would they? I don't know if you need to be registered to view the forums, but
shit, never mind. Even Kalli, the absolute goddess, nicest moderator and leading light of the image contests,
is no longer required and has been shown the door. If the rest of you
can read forum threads, they discuss it
here.
I really, really can't avoid being afraid of these changes. Cracked's business model, as I perceive it, has always been to post lots of articles, some good and some awful, spread out randomly because
that is the best way to make sure people keep clicking. But now they've got rid of all the good, and just kept the bad. I didn't read the bad articles because I love being sarcastically lectured or because I enjoy half-assed garbage; I read them because you never know which ones will be good and which ones will be bad unless you read all of them. But now, it seems like a pretty safe bet that Cracked is moving to a novel new Shit-Only model. Who would keep reading?
I used to buy
a PC gaming magazine every month from 1999 to 2010, long after I stopped actually playing new games. So I have a track record of compulsively following things I have lost interest in, and I will probably keep reading Cracked for the same reason. Also, I watched that magazine go out of business, and I saw frantic staff changes in the months leading up to it, as people either bailed on the sinking ship or were fired from it. It looked exactly like what Cracked is doing now. So maybe I won't have the option to keep reading.
Last of all, SandTea, did you point out the spelling error by the Editor-in-Chief in that article's comments as well, under a different username? If so, I am very sorry for my extremely low-hanging-fruit reply about Americans being fat. I thought it would be fun and anarchic to do some very mild trolling and not have to answer for it. If it was you, then I have to answer for it and suddenly the fun has gone out of saying something I didn't mean.