Thursday 2 June 2011

The Ten Most Important Things I’ve Learned From Reading Cracked.com.


For those of you who don’t know, Crapped Cracked.com is a “humor” (sic) website which advertises itself as being “America’s Only Humor (sic) Site Since 1958.” It’s also a site that specialises in lists of this and that. Accordingly, I’ve decided to make my own list of the Ten Most Important Things I’ve Learned From Reading Crapped Cracked.com.

In no particular order, here they are.

10. The word “badass” is badass.

If you want to write a truly badass article, the word “badass” has to be used once every ten sentences. Otherwise you fail the Crapped Cracked.com test for legibility and should go and drown your sorrows in some little known Kenyan bootleg drink, changaaa for instance. In any case, you aren’t fit to be seen in society.

9. Never, ever, let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Oh, hey, you know that the tale you’re telling about the amazing exploits of the Guy Who Strangled Himself has been debunked, like, 999 times on the ‘net? You don’t? Never mind, go ahead and post it anyway. It’s a “humor” (sic) site, as your defenders will point out while jumping en masse with hobnailed boots on anyone pedantic enough to point the facts out in the response column.

8. If someone does something stupid, he or she is “retarded”.

I suppose calling that someone stupid, moronic or idiotic isn’t funny enough, and calling him or her something like autistic is too over the top even for Crapped Cracked.com. So, everything is...retarded.

7. Anyone brave has elephantiasis of the testicles.

If you’re brave, you need, for example, a wheelbarrow to carry around your balls. This makes one wonder if the sheer existential torment of testicular hypertrophy is what makes one want to end it all by acts of such mindless courage that one gets the reputation of needing wheelbarrows to carry one’s testicles around.

6. All Germans of the World War Two period are “Nazis”.

Self-explanatory, and has the great advantage of not requiring one’s readers to do any thinking whatsoever.

5. Gratuitous insults directed at the French are always good for laughs.

You know how all the French are – well, I don’t think it’s PC to call them “cheese eating surrender monkeys” any longer – eager to surrender as soon as the first shot is fired? No? Well, you know how all French men have bizarre accents and even more bizarre moustaches? No? Well, you certainly know it now, this being Crapped Cracked.com.

And if you can’t find some way to insult the French, try insulting the Japanese, Russians or Germans, in that order.

4. Anything American is universal, while nothing non-American is.

You know that baseball record nobody outside the USA has ever heard of, in a sport that just about nobody outside North America gives a damn about? Well, boys and girls, this is Crapped Cracked.com, so that record is one of the Most Hallowed In All Sport, Anywhere. You know that obscure cultural trope nobody even in the US gives a damn about, except for a tiny fan community? Well, again, that obscure cultural trope is Number Three (or whatever) on the Ten Most Awesome/Most Retarded Acts of (Fill In The Blanks) Ever Attempted.

Meanwhile, a billion people elsewhere might be doing something more recognisable to the world at large, but for Crapped Cracked.com, it just...doesn’t...signify.

3. Anything unusual, by your standards, is “insane”.

You know how your dog turns around three times before lying down? Well, that’s “insane” behaviour. You know how your cat brings home dead rats and gives them to you? That’s “insane” too...explained by science, but still “insane”. You know how that message hidden in some video game was overlooked by you? Well, that was because it was...insane.

2. Australia is full of things out to kill and eat you.

If it’s Australian, it’s evil and full of poison, and its only purpose of existence is to destroy you. Even if, in reality, it couldn’t kill you if it stuffed itself down your throat to try and choke the life out of you.

1. A single idea can easily be padded out into a list.

For example, you read somewhere about a strange coincidence (of course, it goes without saying that you shouldn’t check to see if it actually happened or if it was a hoax). Now, you want to expand that into a list of strange coincidences, but you really can’t come up with any others to match it. Never mind, bung in anything, even if the last ones on the list barely merit being called “strange”. As long as it’s on Crapped Cracked.com, it’s kosher. After all, see Point number 9, above.

Honourable Mention: The word "Freaking" is to be used whenever you want to emphasise something.

As in, the battleship Bismarck sank the battlecruiser Hood with one freaking shot (a real, almost verbatim, and completely inaccurate quote from an actual Crapped Cracked.com article).

Now you see why I call it Crapped.com?

Update: Oh yeah, and Teddy Roosevelt is the Greatest Man Who Ever Lived. Bar none.


7 comments:

  1. You have read Cracked online????

    Good Lord, man - whatever for????

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, it helps keep my brain adequately stewed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bill, 'Cracked' is a guilty-pleasure, much like chatrooms, PeopleOfWalMart and watching your next-door-neighbors get it on when they've accidentally left the blinds open.

    Some comments on the list:

    7. Remember Judd Nelson's comments from "The Breakfast Club"? ("...do his nuts just ride shotgun, or what?....")

    2. Drop Bears. Remember the Drop Bears....

    ("Freakin'" is a good word. "Friggin'" is a good word, too. I use 'em both. Remember that this list usually applies in informal writing, much like you'll find in my very own Batshit Roundup. Speaking of which, look for an update this Friday. Gratuitous self-promotion never hurts....)

    ReplyDelete
  4. "If it’s Australian, it’s evil and full of poison, and its only purpose of existence is to destroy you. "

    You mean that isn't true? Really?

    Even the freakin' Platypus is poisonous! It's insane man. And let's not forget about that badass blue-ring Octopus.

    Between that and the Great White you would need gonads the size of beach-balls to go swimming!

    ReplyDelete
  5. My dear Dio, those beach-balls-sized balls would probably make you sink.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Dio

    We breed 'em big Downunder. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Cracked is just a cheap ripoff of Mad Magazine.

    ReplyDelete

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