I have to admit, I'm rather disappointed in this video. I'd honestly looked forward to it hoping to gain some insight on their rather bizarre practices, but instead it came off more as self-excusatory hand waving and blaming your target audience for internal issues and decisions.
Funny thing is, I can't even blame Sargent for this one. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but this video reeks of something pushed by editors/executives as a (poor) attempt at damage control.
As for my thoughts on what they actually said, well, I don't think I can sum up my feelings any better than I did in the comments of the video.
Re: Titling on Cracked
I don't think most of us mind the buzzwords or the hyperbolic overselling of certain qualities of the article, even if we lovingly poke fun at it.
It's mostly when the title is changed to something that is either misleading or flat out untrue, or tries to shoehorn in an idea that wasn't in the article in the first place for the sake of generating outrage to garner clicks that most of us get annoyed.
Case in point-there was an archeological submission a while back about discoveries regarding badass females in history that made us rethink the roles of certain groups of women. It was informative, interesting and entertaining, and stood entirely on its own merit.
By the time the evening had rolled around, the title had been changed to something about how these discoveries somehow meant all archeology was secretly sexist, thereby insulting the concept by making a f**k yeah! article about awesome women an issue about MEN, trying to generate unnecessary anger towards the discoveries and tricking the readers into thinking it was abut something other than what it genuinely is.
Being hyperbolic and trying to sell your article is fine-blatant deception is not, and Cracked's been guilty of the latter a few times as much as any of the other sites he referenced.
To put it in another perspective, let's treat this as we would advertising a product. After all, that's basically what this is, isn't it? Advertising an article.
Now when it comes to advertisement, most people know to take it with as grain of salt. A certain amount of hyperbole is to be expected. That's why while we may snicker about an article being "mind blowingly amazing", we (mostly) keep quiet because you more or less gave us what you said you would.
However, imagine that you bought said product, but rather than it being simply overhyped, it either didn't do what it said it would, or worse, you were sent an entirely different product altogether. You would rightfully be angry. You'd likely be wary of buying from that company in the future, and maybe even seek legal recourse (I'm not actually suggesting anyone should be able to sue for mistitling of articles-that's both absurd and unenforceable. This is merely for the sake of this example).
Just because what you're selling is an idea on the Internet rather than a tangible good, it doesn't change how people react to this sort of practice. Plain and simple, we don't like being deceived. We place a certain amount of trust in this site. When you abuse that trust, it's a hard thing to gain it back. Being a site on the Internet doesn't absolve you of reproach for such actions.
By sacrificing long term reputation for short term views, you make your own core dynamic of fans mistrustful of you. I can't speak for anyone else, but as a result of these practices, I've gone from reading every article and replying multiple times a day to sometimes going three or four days at a stretch without reading by vice of the titles alone. And sometimes it turns out they were good articles too! Just horribly misrepresented.
Bottom line, you're a (social) media site, and venues like this that don't evolve with the times and needs of their target audience are on a fast track to nowhere (just look at cable). Perhaps instead of blaming your audience, a bit of introspection is in order to determine why they are reacting the way they do and what you can do to change it internally.