"7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass"

Our thoughts about the famous Cracked.com.

"7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass"

Postby cmsellers » Sun Jul 29, 2018 5:39 am

I brought this up on Discord yesterday, but I realized it predates TCS, plus it is interesting in hindsight. In 2011, Luke McKinney, my third-least-favorite columnist in the dying days of Cracked, wrote "7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass."

At the time, I was furious, and doubly furious that the comments section took up the meme whole-heartedly. People were using the meme on other articles, and I would downvote them, but I wanted to downvote almost everyone in that comment thread. I thought about posting something to the effect of "being bad and an ass does not make someone a a badass" but also knew I would get downvoted heavily. I actually went through all of the comments to see if I decided to post it regardless, but it appears my fear of downvotes prevailed and I noped out of there.

Going through, I only noticed the postings of two TCS members, and I am happy to say that they both went against the grain of the comments. When the article was published, Nathan Loiselle correctly noted that Putin is more like Blofeld than James Bond. (Sorry for not upvoting you when upvotes were free Nathan, I clearly noped out of the comments rather quickly.)
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Three years later, Kleiner Killer came back after the annexation of Crimea to note that the article was horrifying in hindsight. He got a lot of downvotes, while the pro-Putin comments maintaining the meme got none.
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I have opposed Putin since W. "saw into his soul" and I googled Vladimir Putin. I have thought he was a serious danger to US interests, global freedom, and world peace since the 2008 invasion of Georgia. So this article infuriated me in 2011. In 2014, it was horrifying in hindsight. In 2018, it is kind of funny in hindsight. But I am still annoyed at how many people refused to see Putin as a threat or even a bad hombre right up until he (possibly) gave us the gift of Trump.
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Last edited by cmsellers on Sun Jul 29, 2018 10:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: "7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass

Postby KleinerKiller » Sun Jul 29, 2018 6:47 am

Well, that's a nice little blast from the past. I never checked back with that comment (I think I forgot I'd made it the day after), but going by the general quality of the Cracked comments by that point, I can't say that I'm shocked at the response.

Being as young as I was when the article was released, I had the excuse of not knowing of goings-on with Russian politics until the Crimean invasion. Grown-ass adults reading and writing on a major website had no excuse -- especially McKinney, one of the self-proclaimed bastions of moral righteousness. I'd kind of love to see someone rub it in his face today.
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Re: "7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass

Postby Marcuse » Sun Jul 29, 2018 1:02 pm

This article already tried to portray the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko as a "badass Street Fighter laser blast" as though straight up murdering someone with radioactive material on foreign soil is a thing anyone should be proud of or cool with. In the context of the time that should never have flown, even if I can think that the Judo stuff or the ridiculous calendars might have at the time qualified as a "badass" thing for a world leader to do.
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Re: "7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sun Jul 29, 2018 6:06 pm

Did I........did I really spend five years waking up at 5 am for this shit?
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Re: "7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass

Postby 52xMax » Sun Jul 29, 2018 8:42 pm

So you're saying that murdering sovereign citizens of your country on foreign soil without a trial is not okay?
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Re: "7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass

Postby NathanLoiselle » Mon Jul 30, 2018 1:59 am

I keep pressing the link to see the two replies to my rambling and in-coherent response but it wasn't working!!! Why won't it work????
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Re: "7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass

Postby cmsellers » Mon Jul 30, 2018 3:10 am

Max, is this a reference to drone strikes?

Nathan, they were dull and uninteresting responses, so I did not screenshot them first time around. Still, just for you I went back and found your comment again, because I am just such a mensch.

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Re: "7 Reasons Vladimir Putin Is the World's Craziest Badass

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Jul 30, 2018 8:15 am

I didn't comment (not sure I was commenting yet at that point), but my initial reaction to that article was that I thought it was funny. I also laughed at "the 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back" in 2012. It wasn't until Crimea that I stopped laughing. So yeah, I was quite late to the party on that one.
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