by gregfrankenstein » Sun May 06, 2018 11:27 pm
Can I be honest? I just found out this week. Some part of it is the rock I've been living under. Emotional and life crap has lead me to fall behind on podcasts on drop off the planet on this forum.
Mostly though? This got no coverage. Not one Wired article. No statement from Cracked. All I can find are tweets, this thread, and a bunch of right-wing/pick-up artist sites celebrating the demise of an "SJW" site. Admittedly I thought it was suspicious that their content became a dark void. Their Facebook posts consisted of reposting ancient articles and some of the worst Photoplasties I had ever seen. Really, even as a Photoplasty goes, they looked like they were judged by a twelve-year-old boy. I had heard rumblings that they got rid of all their good writers, but I thought that was the usual "Cracked has gone downhill" complaints that have gone on for years, especially since the election. I also heard their YouTube channel was dead, but I thought, "Oh, they must have switched to some other platform." I mean, YouTube's monetization has been in the crapper. Even the Angry Video Game Nerd seems to be moving toward Amazon Prime. It never hit me that there had been a complete bloodbath.
When I finally knew what had happened, I felt sick that for six months, I had been commenting on their Facebook posts, mostly disagreeing with people. I was supporting this husk of a website that now exists only for cynical clickbait, like Buzzfeed but without even the spectre of legitimate content. I also learned how much I had been relying on my YouTube subscription for their video content. When that stopped, I was in the dark.
Honestly though? How much of their traffic is from people who know what After Hours is? How many people watched the sketches and the pop culture analysis? We're a niche, and most of their clicks come from their provocative, inaccurate article titles that they change every hour. I hope their talent ends up somewhere that actually wants them, and based on the Patreons I see popping up, many of them already have.