About

Cracked is an award-winning entertainment and humor website founded by Jack O'Brien in 2005.

History

Cracked was started as a humor magazine in 1958 and was known for its conspicuous copying of Mad in layouts and style. In early 2005, editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien founded the website Cracked.com as a separate website. Though the magazine discontinued soon after, the website was purchased by Demand Media in 2007, and rapid growth followed.

Cracked.com

In 2007, Cracked reported a few hundred thousand users per month and 3 to 4 million page views. Cracked's 2,000 to 3,000 word articles, which are published daily, usually are read by over one million users on the day of the upload.

In 2010, Cracked released an iPad application, which allows users access to mobile browsing of Cracked's articles, videos, and contests. The site's traffic has doubled each year, and it has become one of Demand Media's most successful properties. In 2010, Cracked reported over 1 billion page views. As of 2012, Cracked receives over 300 million monthly page views, making it the most popular humor site in the world, ahead of The Onion, CollegeHumor, and Funny or Die.

2017 Layoffs

On December 4th, 2017, several former Cracked employees tweeted that they were looking for work and were no longer employed by the website, including Katy Stoll, Tom Reimann, John Cheese, Cody Johnston and Josh Sargent.^[2]

That evening, Cracked Forums^[3] user SemiSpy submitted a thread titled "Did something happen to Cracked?", which discussed speculation that the site was "possibly done." In response to the post, Cracked executive editor Jason Pargin responded under his pseudonym David Wong, saying "a core group of editors" remained on the site but that several Los Angeles-based staff had been "let go" (shown below).

Features

Cracked features a blog, videos, forums, a writer's workshop, four weekly Image Manipulation contests called Photoplasty, and small, one-shot articles called "Quick Fixes."

Web Series

Roughly 30% of Cracked's content is video. As of 2012, Cracked has 10 web series that are exclusive to the site. They debuted the web series "Agents of Cracked" in 2009, and it generated 20 million views over three seasons. In July 2010, Cracked debuted "After Hours," a video-debate version of Cracked's lists. The show has generated over 15 million views. Other shows include "Stuff That Must Have Happened" and "The Katie Willert Experience".

Cheat Sheets

Cracked, along with Rotten Tomatoes and Movieclips, launched Cheat Sheets in 2011, a comedic, user-generated guide to popular movies.

Book

In 2010, Cracked released its first book, entitled You Might Be A Zombie And Other Bad News. The book features 20 articles previously published on the website, and 18 new ones made for the book.

The book reached #9 on The New York Times' "Paperback Advice and Misc." best sellers list, and has sold over 40,000 copies.

Live Shows

Cracked has expanded into live shows. At the 2011 SXSW festival, Cracked hosted Cracked Live, which featured live performances from notable Cracked staff members. In November 2011, Cracked hosted three panels at Comikaze Expo, a multi-media popular culture convention.

Reception

Cracked has been generally well-received on the Internet. Wired Magazine called the site "addictive," "hauntingly funny" and "terrifyingly well-informed." In 2010, Cracked won the Audience Choice Award at the second annual Streamy Awards. In 2012, Cracked received a People's Choice Webby Award for best humor website. Some have criticized the site's move toward promoting social justice-oriented or other political content under the leadership of executive editor Jason Pargin (a.k.a. David Wong). On June 4th, 2014, an image comparing the front page of the site before and after the editorial shift was submitted to /r/TumblrInAction,^[1] where it received more than 1,200 points (75% upvoted) and 590 comments prior to being archived.

Search Interest

External References