Cracked.com


Cracked.com is an American website that was based on Cracked magazine. It was founded in 2005 by Jack O'Brien.
In 2007, Cracked had a couple of hundred thousand unique users per month and three or four million page views. In June 2011, it reached 27 million page views, according to comscore. According to O'Brien, the site had about 17 million unique visitors and 300 million page views in February 2012.

History

Cracked was founded as a magazine in 1958. In early 2005, its owner Dick Kulpa sold the magazine to a group of investors who announced plans to revive a print version of Cracked with a new editorial focus and redesign.
In October 2005, Cracked.com launched as a separate website under editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien, a former ABC News producer. Although the magazine folded soon after launch, the Cracked website gained popularity and was purchased by Demand Media in June 2007, setting off Cracked's rapid growth period.
In 2007, Cracked had a few hundred thousand unique users per month and three to four million page views. The site fit well within Demand Media's network, with Jack O'Brien noting "They understand the web, and they made us nail down a voice". The editorial staff includes original editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien, Jason Pargin, founder of website PWOT, who was added as an associate editor later in 2006, and Oren Katzeff, who became Cracked.com's general manager in November 2007 after running business development for Yahoo Media Group. Cracked.com published two to four articles daily, along with video content, short-form content, and contests. The feature articles were the most popular, usually pulling in around one million views in their first week.
In 2010, Cracked drew over one billion page views. By 2012, Jack O'Brien reported over 300 million page views in February and 7.3 million unique monthly users, making it the most visited humor site in the world, ahead of The Onion, CollegeHumor, and Funny or Die.
Writer Daniel O'Brien was questioned by the FBI and United States Secret Service after writing an article titled "How to Kidnap the President's Daughter".
In November 2013, the Cracked web site was hacked and was unwittingly delivering malware to site visitors. The hackers injected JavaScript that caused malicious software to be distributed to page viewers.
In 2013, Cracked.com launched "The Cracked Podcast" on the Earwolf podcast network.
On April 12, 2016, Cracked was purchased by the E. W. Scripps Company for $39 million.
In June 2017, Jack O'Brien stepped down from his position as editor-in-chief and left Cracked to build up the new comedy podcasting division at HowStuffWorks. Jack O'Brien chose Alex Schmidt as the new host of "The Cracked Podcast". Schmidt hosted more than 150 episodes, and toured the podcast in the U.S. and to London.
In October 2017, Soren Bowie left Cracked to become a writer on American Dad!, while Michael Swaim left Cracked to pursue other interests.
On December 4, 2017, E. W. Scripps laid off 25 staff members from the website, including Daniel O'Brien, Cody Johnston, and the entire video team, in an effort to cut costs.
On September 10, 2019, Cracked was acquired by Literally Media, home to KnowYourMeme, Cheezburger, and eBaum's World.
Literally Media fired Robert Brockway in February 2020. Afterward, Brockway and fellow longtime Cracked writer Sean "Seanbaby" Reiley then co-founded their own comedy website, 1900HotDog.com. Alex Schmidt was fired by Literally Media in June 2020. Afterward, Schmidt started his own podcast, "Secretly Incredibly Fascinating".

Features

The Cracked "front page" formerly contained columns by a staff of regular contributors, including Sean "Seanbaby" Reiley, Daniel O'Brien, Robert Brockway, Cody Johnston, Soren Bowie, Chris Bucholz, host and writer of the web series Hate by Numbers Wayne Gladstone, John Cheese, Christina Hsu, and Michael Swaim, head writer and performer of the sketch comedy group "Those Aren't Muskets!". It also published videos, weekly image manipulation contests called Photoplasty and Pictofacts, and a daily "Craptions" contest where users added funny captions to odd photographs. The site also hosted Pointless Waste of Time, Pargin's old forum, which contained a writer's workshop, a section for readers to submit content for the Photoplasty and Pictofacts contests, and a template for generating small, one-shot articles called "Quick Fixes," along with general and specific discussion threads on a variety of topics. Eventually the Craptions contest was moved from the front page to the forums.
The Writer's Workshop section of the forum was limited-access, and it functioned as a "virtual writer's room", where more than 2,500 would-be writers pitched articles to which other users and editors provided feedback. According to former general manager Oren Katzeff, "Nothing gets on the homepage without heavy editing"; "pitch the site's on-staff editorial team, who give out assignments and feedback to writers after an idea is greenlit". O'Brien and five other editors picked and refined the best material. More than 90% of the stories on the top spot of Cracked's homepage came from the Workshop. Cracked became known for its popular listicles, which include titles like "The 6 Most Insane People To Ever Run For President" and "7 Basic Things You Won't Believe You're All Doing Wrong".
After being sold to Literally Media, the forums were taken down and all reader-generated content was discontinued in favor of Image macro sets created by a few regular inside contributors, due to their suitability for posting on social media. Old articles, columns, and image sets are still hosted on the site but many of the old videos are only available on the Cracked YouTube channel.

Video content

About 30% of Cracked's content is video. In 2009, Cracked debuted the web series Agents of Cracked, which generated 20 million views over three seasons. In July 2010, Cracked debuted After Hours, a video-debate version of Cracked's lists, which features four Cracked staffers discussing topics such as "Why Batman Is Secretly Terrible for Gotham" and "Why 'Star Wars' Is Secretly Terrifying for Women". In October 2014, Cracked had 22 web series exclusive to their site.

Original run of video content (2009–2017)

Cracked ran the following video series from 2009 to 2017. In December 2017, Cracked ended its original video productions when E. W. Scripps Company, which purchased the website in 2016, laid off the entire video production and writing staff.
  • "Agents of Cracked" – Michael Swaim and Daniel O'Brien portray fictionalized versions of themselves and their bizarre experiences while writing for Cracked.
  • "After Hours" – Soren Bowie, Daniel O'Brien, Michael Swaim, and Katie Willert share a meal at a diner and discuss a pop culture issue.
  • "Today's Topic" – Two staff members sitting in adjoining office cubicles discuss a pop culture issue.
  • "Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder" – Daniel O'Brien, sitting at a desk in a studio, rants about pop culture issues.
  • "Hate By Numbers"— Wayne Gladstone lists the reasons why a clip from a news report, music video, movie trailer or viral video is great or terrible.
  • "Cracked TV" – Michael Swaim commenting on media trends, pop culture, and viral videos in a list format. The precursor to "Does Not Compute".
  • "Does Not Compute" – Michael Swaim shows strange videos found on the internet based on a different theme in each episode.
  • "Stuff That Must Have Happened" – Sketches purporting to show the true origin of events.
  • "Honest Commercials" – Jack Hunter portrays Roger Horton, a businessman who promotes products of his various companies with brutal honesty.
  • "Escort Mission" – Two roommates, a hardcore gamer and a casual gamer discuss modern video games and the unexpected implications of their worlds.
  • "New Guy Weekly" – Alex Schmidt, then a newcomer on Cracked, demonstrates his extreme work ineptitude while filming himself on the phone for his video blog.
  • "Cracked Responds" – Cracked staff members share their reactions to a recent topic, such as movie trailers or politics.
  • "Hilarious Helmet History"—Alex Schmidt corrects your commonly held historical mis-conceptions... but with funny hats!
  • "So You Want To Be..."—Alex Schmidt talks about how challenging it would be to be a pop culture hero in real life.
  • "Some News" – Cody Johnston delivers a recent week's news report, while being increasingly frustrated by some of the news subjects' behavior. Johnston formed the YouTube channel Some More News as a continuation of the show. The show has also continued in podcast form, and now releases extra episodes every Friday which feature a co-host, Katy Stoll.
  • "Katie Willert Experience" – A sketch comedy series featuring Katie Willert.
  • "The Start-Up" – Michael Swaim, Cody Johnston, and Katy Stoll as three people working from home who meet through teleconference to discuss their new start-up company.
  • "Marvels of the Science" – A parody of nature documentary films featuring Cody Johnston as Prof. Scott Bug who is totally clueless about things he is talking about.
  • "8-Bits" – Sketches parodying life as depicted in video games.
  • "Dispatches from Goddamn Space" – Soren Bowie plays an astronaut stationed on the International Space Station giving lectures full of misinformation to elementary school students watching from classrooms on Earth's surface.
  • "The Spit Take" – Jack O'Brien addresses some theme, usually illustrated with video clips.
  • "Adventures in Jedi School" – A Star Wars parody focused on the Jedi.
  • "Rom.Com" – Employees of an online dating website company deal with various workplace situations.
  • "Welcome Back Potter" – A parody of the Harry Potter franchise.
  • "Antiheroes" – A parody of a superhero origin story.
  • "Starship Icarus" – A parody of Star Trek from the viewpoint of the lower-deck crew.
  • "The Stumbling Dead" – A parody of the television series The Walking Dead from the zombies point of view.
  • "We're Not Alone" – A parody of science fiction movies about the first contact with alien life.
  • "Galactic War Room" – Another Star Wars parody, this time focused on the Rebel Alliance.
  • "After the Trump" – Daniel O'Brien, Cody Johnston and Katy Stoll discuss the ongoing Donald Trump presidency as if it was a scripted television drama, with spoilers, theories and predictions.
  • Live episodes of "The Cracked Podcast", hosted by Jack O'Brien and then by Alex Schmidt.