Culture Cracked is dying? Finally? - It's been swirling around the toilet bowl for years but here comes the drain.

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Entire album: https://imgur.com/a/gwciU

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Edit: Some of the better Reddit responses

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A Name But Backwards said:
Cheese turned to writing about how hard it was to quit smoking when people no longer cared about his drinking problem.
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And he wrote it with a plethora of cussing, and then wrote an article immediately after tha about how he was back to cigs.


tldr

He's the trash friend that is only tolerated by other trash people.
 
An Ghost said:
Except he tried to paint Trump supporters as people because he grew up in red states and those people were his family. Because of him I understand why people voted for Trump and sympathize with them, and he does too.
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And I'm saying he was being disingenuous.

Anyway, there's a "Best of Cracked" subreddit that was mostly inactive until these recent happenings.
One of the top posts at the moment is a video where Swaim talks about why he quit and his future projects (I've summarised and partly transcribed the video for anyone that doesn't want to watch).

The video:
https://youtu.be/GNdwD8gQbSU
He starts by saying that he's worked at Cracked for 11 years, it’s the only real job that he’s ever had (besides working for six weeks as a "Mac specialist" at his university).

He says that Cracked will continue, but with a lower budget.

The people at Cracked that he collaborated with are his best friends and he feels lucky to have worked with them.

Says he quit on October 13th of this year but kept his resignation private because he wanted to get some projects off the ground before revealing his resignation. There were “massive layoffs” of 19 people after he quit (the topic of this thread) and he feels that the layoffs have “forced [his] hand” and he’s now decided to talk about why he quit and his future projects.

He says that when Cracked.com first started getting popular the “infrastructure” got bigger and bigger, and, as it did, there became “more things to worry about,” such as shareholders.
He says that there were more “legal ramifications” for things that they could and couldn’t do (he doesn’t elaborate on what he means by “legal ramifications”).

Says that he bears no ill will towards the managers at Cracked or the companies like E.W. Scripps and Demand Media that control/controlled it.

Quote: “what it comes down to is, as a creative on the ground-level, and, as I’ve said, I love all the creatives at Cracked on a ground-level, they always want to take big swings and spend money on an ambitious project”.

He says that he can understand upper management not wanting to take financial risks. He says that he thinks that Cracked could have been a bigger brand, that they could’ve “spent money to make money”, and that they could’ve been on the same level as SNL “or, at least, expanded into more areas.” He thinks that that it could have been a National Lampoon type brand with feature films and so on.
“But, that’s easy for me to say as the guy that writes the movies and plays around with his friends and doesn’t foot the bill and look at the company as a whole and try to maintain the company.”

He says that he has “nothing but gratitude” for his time at Cracked.
He says that he thinks that there’s a new “fiduciarily conservative viewpoint taking hold,” that articles are “still cheap to produce and still make most of their money back”

He tells the story of why he left Cracked. I’ll transcribe it all (with the things he says in reference to the videogame that he’s playing whilst he’s talking ommited):

You all remember when I got fat? That’s probably the easiest way to start...
Long-time fans will remember that I seemed to start steadily gaining weight at a certain point in my career.

Well, that was the point at which I became a pretty robust alcoholic.

And, uhh, that’s all booze weight. Uhh, yes, very impressive. You’re welcome. The beard is not from the booze.

But I was, for maybe six years, a secret alcoholic.
I would drink about a half-bottle to a bottle of Jameson a day. But no one knew.

I never drove drunk. I never was drunk at work. I held my shit together.

Cracked is such a great job that I, for the last few years, was able to work at home. And, of course, as nice as that is, it enabled my drinking.
Which enabled my depression. And they eventually became one and the same.

I’ve grappled with chronic depression for a long time. And I plan to post a lot more about that in the future.

But alcohol... Hey, people who are chronically depressed?: alcohol is not helpful. It seems like it at first, then later it’s not. It makes you eternally depressed and then unable to get out of the depression.

The short version of it for me is that I’m someone who needs a lot of creative challenges and has a lot of passion to give. Cracked went in a more ‘fiduciary responsible direction’, shall we say. And that led me to become depressed. Because I felt that I wasn’t living up to what I was supposed to be doing in this world.

I wanted to be closer to making a second movie.
We made our first movie, “Kill Me Now,” I enjoy [sic] it. But I was hoping it wouldn’t be eight years before I made another movie. And, uhh, as much as I love everything we do at Cracked, I’ve always dreamed of making films and long-form... You know, at least a television series with long-form...

So, the point is: I, who am genetically prone to depression, got depressed.
Treated it with alcohol. Which was a bad idea. Finally got into therapy and admitted to my loved ones that I was an alcoholic, which runs in my family.

I’m doing much better now, thank you very much.

I expect to lose weight any day now; I’m older now, so it’s a struggle, but I’m working on it. I’m not drinking any more.

And, more importantly, my depression has lifted. In large part, because took the decision, which I’m not arguing was right objectively, but it was right for me at the time, to leave Cracked. And try to see if that made room for something else.

Because I have been there eleven years – that’s a long time to work somewhere. I had seen Jack O’Brian leave. And it just felt like time for me to free up my time, work on projects I wanted to work on without any bureaucracy – which also means no budget, unfortunately. See what I could come up with on my own, from scratch, like in the old days. And see if anything builds from there.

So, speaking of which, if you’re interested in following my future work and the future work of me and my friends: that will all be available at... Patreon! Dot com.
P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com, forward slash ‘Small Beans’ S-M-A-L-L B-E-A-N-S.

Tiny little baby beans... That’s the theme we’re going with this time. You may know us from all the way back to ‘Those Aren’t Muskets!’ days. We were ‘Those Aren’t Muskets!,’ then we were ‘Cracked Video,’ now we’re ‘Small Beans.’

So, that’s where you can find us. If you’re not familiar with how Patreon works, you don’t need to donate to us in order to follow our content. You will get lots of bonuses for following our content. And our content will begin dropping next week.

And what is our content? Well, given that we have zero budget, as I elucidated, full disclosure: I have about seven-thousand dollars to my name at the moment.
I spent a lot of it on booze. [laughs] And a failed marriage, that takes some money outa you.
I’m not perfect, people. I’m funny, but I’m not perfect.

Where was I? Oh! Anyway... Right now we only really have the set-up, financially, to produce audio content.

So we will be producing four podcasts right away:

A podcast called ‘Frame Rate’ in which Abe Epperson and I discuss films we love and don’t love;.

A podcast called ‘1-Upsmanship’, in which Adam Ganser and I, formerly creator and co-creator of the Escort Mission series) discuss and review video games.

I will be producing a weekly podcast called ‘Extree Extree’ in which I make news jokes, which is something I wanted to do at Cracked for many years - maybe seven years – finally gonna get to do it, in podcast form at least.

And last but not least, coming up soon, will be a limited run series called ‘Tales from the Pit,’ about not only my struggles with depression, but many of my friends, autistic [possibly he says “artistic” here, it’s hard to tell] people, and experts in the field of psychology, social services and depression.
On depression, about coping with depression and other mental illnesses.
There’s actually gonna be some very exciting guests on that, so I’ll keep you guys posted about that.
That’s not gonna launch right away.

But, basically, Small beans is an attempt to [not sure what he says here] until we have new things popin’ off. And, all that is to say, if you do - If you’re blessed enough – I’m saying ‘blessed’ so much... If you’re fortunate enough to have money to spare and you value the arts... We’re not bullshitting: we don’t have the money, we want to keep making stuff.

If we don’t get money we’ll eventually have to get day jobs. Which is no shame.
But I would, I’ll be honest, prefer to keep making things for you; to be entertaining. So, if you’re able to lend us a few bucks a month, or even just once, that will definitely help us towards our goal of making skits.
At first, all the money that goes into Small Beans will go towards purchasing the equipment we need to start producing videos. After that: rent. But, you know, priorities.

So, first: videos for you guys. Then rent for me. And Abe. And Adam to a lesser extent.

So head on over to the Patreon.

I’m probably gonna wrap this up because I don’t want the video to be too long for people that don’t give a shit about twitch streams.
But you can find out everything there.
This twitch stream will be very active because it’s the companion stream to the podcast ‘1-Upsmanship.’
And I hope to see you guys over at Small Beans or my twitter. [he gives his twitter details].

And, if I’ve ever made you laugh I just really hope you’ll give me another chance in my future endeavours, because that’s what I’d like to keep doing. Thank you all so much for your continued support. My inflection does not equate to how deeply touched I truly am.
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Tl;dr: There were budget cuts at Cracked and he couldn't make the content that he wanted so he quit and is now using Patreon to fund projects with some old colleagues of his.
Also, he's been struggling with alcoholism/depression and his marriage failed, things that also contributed to him leaving Cracked.

His Patreon seems to be doing pretty well, already:
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Michael was always one of my favorites--I love to rewatch his old Does Not Compute videos. I'm glad his Patreon is doing well. I hope he gets a new better job.

I'm surprised they lasted this long, because even without politics, there's only so many 5 item list articles about neat historical facts/vidya game details/weird medical conditions you can write.
 
Yes, Michael Swaim is a sweetheart and he deserves good things to happen to him. I had no idea he was struggling with alcoholism. Unlike John Cheese, I actually give a shit about Swaim because he's genuinely likable.
 
I liked the magazine. And the website was ok in the beginning. But when it started to churn out too much virtue signalling clickbait about how much you suck for being white, straight and male it was no longer entertaining. The constant stream of pictofacts with poorly researched "facts" wasn't helping either. Some actually contained very bad medical advice too. And they started churning out more and more rehashed content.

People got sick of coming to the site and being told how awful they were for not supporting SJW ideologies.

Then they started hiding ads to their store among the article list in such a way that you wouldn't always notice you were clicking. That's deceptive advertising.

Like most sites that have that stupid popup for newsletters and notifications that appears as soon as you go to the site. I am so sick of those. Just put a button somewhere to turn those on. There's a footer that begs you to like Cracked on social media too. But now they also have a popup begging for donations. And nothing makes me want to close a tab more than having my browsing interrupted by e-begging. Notifications is one of the most annoying things on the internet now. Click yes by accident to get the dumb popup to go away and you'll be bombarded every few seconds.

A lot of sites have these disruptions. But Cracked is one of the more excessive ones. I get bombarded by several stupid promotions as soon as I put in the address and before I even click on an article. The only thing it makes me want to do is go to another site.
 
I used to read Cracked everyday many years ago but unlike most of the people in this thread I didn't rage quit or anything—just started hanging out in other websites and lost interest. Either way, this thread is bringing back memories and I'll make sure to press F a few times to pay my respects.
 
Dysnomia said:
I liked the magazine. And the website was ok in the beginning. But when it started to churn out too much virtue signalling clickbait about how much you suck for being white, straight and male it was no longer entertaining. The constant stream of pictofacts with poorly researched "facts" wasn't helping either. Some actually contained very bad medical advice too. And they started churning out more and more rehashed content.

People got sick of coming to the site and being told how awful they were for not supporting SJW ideologies.

Then they started hiding ads to their store among the article list in such a way that you wouldn't always notice you were clicking. That's deceptive advertising.

Like most sites that have that stupid popup for newsletters and notifications that appears as soon as you go to the site. I am so sick of those. Just put a button somewhere to turn those on. There's a footer that begs you to like Cracked on social media too. But now they also have a popup begging for donations. And nothing makes me want to close a tab more than having my browsing interrupted by e-begging. Notifications is one of the most annoying things on the internet now. Click yes by accident to get the dumb popup to go away and you'll be bombarded every few seconds.

A lot of sites have these disruptions. But Cracked is one of the more excessive ones. I get bombarded by several stupid promotions as soon as I put in the address and before I even click on an article. The only thing it makes me want to do is go to another site.
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Website on mobile used to kill my battery. And physically make my phone hot. KF doesn’t so naturally it became my go to time killer.
 
I used to read Cracked for the history and science lists. Really lightweight stuff, for the most part, but they had fun tidbits. I remember laughing at their description of the trial of Pope Formosus' corpse. But I stopped reading regularly around the time John Cheese came in--his stuff was too depressing for me. And every time I came back, there was more Cheese and less fun.

Can't say I'm surprised that they're dying. The clickbait market has exploded in the past few years, and if you can't keep up the quality, you're sunk.
 
I always remember those awful articles written by some history sperg about how much "better" life was in the fucking middle ages.
 
Kinda late to this, but good fucking riddance.

I don't quite remember when exactly I stopped reading Cracked, for me it was a gradual thing. Like the new articles were less interesting and, more importantly, not funny. I didn't pay attention to GG at all, so I didn't connect that at all with the site's decline. I do remember the last article that made me stop reading; it was some article discussing the depressing realities of living as a crackwhore.

I read Cracked to laugh. I adored the Seanbaby's writing, and Felix Clay's old stuff was goddamn brilliant (especially his food articles). But I didn't read it to feel angry or depressed or any of that shit. I distinctly remember posting a comment on the Facebook page saying that a recent article wasn't all that funny and someone responded with, "Well it doesn't have to be funny."

Except it does when you brand your site as America's Only Humor Website, which they've quietly done away with I noticed.

We all know Cracked got worse. And at this point I'm happy with it dying. It's not even a shell of its former self, it's somehow less than that.
 
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