I don’t care. I stopped reading it years ago.
They did a very informative video on pregnancy a couple weeks ago.
One of the ladies (with kids) telling the two pregnant ladies what to expect during labor. Their eyes got bigger and bigger. One lady got a bit pale discussing after birth pads. 
They didn’t know they’d be wearing them for a couple weeks after delivery.
JPrescott:
It is a shame, but when ads become a vehicle for delivering malware, what’s a consumer to do? Maybe if website owners solicited and vetted their own advertisers instead of farming out the task to services that pass along crap and don’t care what’s in it, people would be more understanding. I, personally, held out against ad-blockers for a very long time, and there are a few sites that I trust enough to white-list. I don’t know if Cracked should be one of them (I stopped finding their stuff interesting ages ago), but for most web sites, they have only themselves to blame.
Ads hijacked my phone 4 times at Cracked last week.
It was the roulette wheel, you won a prize, one time.
I got the, INSTALL OUR CLEANER NOW OR YOUR PHONE DIES, threat 3 times.
Fuck Cracked. I ain’t going back.
They ARE bad with hijacky ads. It’s half the reason I pay the $2.99 a month.
To be clear,I agree completely with what you’re saying. There’s no clear answer. Companies won’t pay extra for “clean” ads, and consumers won’t waste effort trying to find “friendly ad” websites. Knowing how these things usually pay out, people will continue to whine while reading the websites anyway, while the companies look the other way and whistle to themselves.
My favorite features on Cracked were always the articles where a person explained what it was actually like to have a particular job or experience like being a legal prostitute in Nevada
Mara Wilson’sextremely insightful descriptions of the pitfalls of being a child actor is one of the best articles I’ve read on the site. Not only was the content fascinating, but as a fan of her work as a child actress, especially in Matilda, I had thought/hoped that she would go on to a successful career as an adult actress. On one hand, I am disappointed that she walked away from acting, but on the other, I am delighted that she not only is doing right for herself, but also took the time to tell us why.
We just don’t get such good ones anymore.
I also always loved the old Photoplasties that were actually photoshop jobs. It often took a few moments to find the joke, and sometimes I had to search the comments to find the answer. Things you didn’t notice in famous picturesones were favorites. In the linked one, The Scream guy reacting to a great sale and Darth Vader at the lonely cafe slay me every time. Now most photoplasties are just lists of rehashed observations.
Plus, it got overly political for a while. I may have agreed with their politics, but they were just saying the same things as everyone else. Boring!
I totally agree about the overbearing ads and the sneaky sales articles. I used to get lost in Cracked for hours, but now I just read a few things, get annoyed, and leave.
Oddee.com has imploded even more profoundly! The new format makes it really hard to find the good stuff for sure.
Even I am tired of that shit.
There is no Cracked without DOB. I was already done with them, but this about seals it.
Where will I go for laughs now? It was America’s only humor site!
External ad clearinghouses are the entire reason I use an ad blocker. I got fed up with sites being coded in such a way that the ads would load before the content, and if the external ad server was down or there was a traffic problem upstream, the content wouldn’t load because my browser was waiting for the ads to load first.
For anyone who genuinely cares about ads and websites they like getting ad revenue, there’s a nice little Chrome extension called Stands: Fair AdBlocker that allows you to adjust the types and quantity of ads you’re willing to see either across the board or through specific websites. You can block popups or scrolling ads, for example, while allowing 3-4 normal ads to show. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
I don’t care about them being harsh on Trump. The problem is that just about every freaking article is about him, and it’s tiresome and not funny.
Not just Trump but every hot-button social issue imaginable, in a way that sounds condescending and lectury rather than innovative or funny. I never missed dick jokes so much.
I miss their Weird World stuff.
On a similar “dissect and analyze everything in the most negative way possible” theme, after binging season 1 of Future Man recently, I went looking for reviews of it. The first site I found ranted about how horrible it is in 2017 to make “a show for guys.” Down deep in that review, I discovered for the first time that Back to the Future is racist and problematic. Googling around for more sites, I foundanother site expanding on that (without overlapping any of dougie_monty’s concerns.)
tl;dr: everything is bad and everyone should feel bad about it.
It’s fatiguing. I miss a lot of it now that I’m off social media.
How is Future Man? I am thinking about watching it.
But then, I’m a big fan of the reality show Comic Book Men. Geek boys are my people. It would have never occurred to me to be upset about shows who target men. As long as they aren’t degrading women, I’ll probably enjoy them more than programs commonly targeted at women.
Ok, I just read that review and it made me want to watch the show. Not sure that’s what the reviewer was going for.
I enjoyed it. Funny and well written. Lots of SF callouts. Here is a (not too long) thread I started about it.
So the site’s just had its own #MeToo scandal break over the past week as writers started speaking up on social media about their experiences with sexual harrassment and bullying there. Looks like all of John Cheese’s old articles have been erased from the site.
It’s a shame John Cheese was a creep. He wrote a lit of good articles about being poor in America.
In more positive news Daniel O’Brien is now a writer on John Oliver’s show.
He’s a great fit for it, but I do miss Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder. Hopefully he has a chance to do some of his own work besides being a staff writer…
Stranger
Weird that they aren’t calling him David Wong, his real name. It’s not like it’s a secret.
David Wong is Jason Pargin, no?